The Way of Right Action

Professor Cannon’s short description of the Way of Right Action is:

The concerted effort to bring all of life, individual and communal, into conformity with the “way things are ultimately supposed to be”, however that is understood – that is, to realize and fulfill the sacred intendedness of life which promises individual fulfillment, social justice, and the embodiment of divine ideality in the midst of mundane “this world-ly” life.

I remember back to the days when the only books I could find on Paganism focused on religious ritual or magic or both. OK, maybe there were a few moral-ish tales, but early Paganism seemed to be determined to attempt an apolitical stance. Even authors who admitted that this was an earth-centered religion and suggested that Pagans perhaps ought to recycle balked at recommending political action mixed with spirituality.

Then, in the early 1980s, Starhawk and the Reclaiming tradition leaped forth. They wrote openly about the politics that they felt grew naturally from a Pagan perspective – environmentalism, strongly progressive human rights, radical reconstruction of human relationships with each other, a stance against sexism, racism, and homophobia, and a willingness to engage in direct action in the name of the Goddess. They did private magical workings for political change and public ritual at activist rallies and protests. Some of them got arrested for political protesting; others chided “mainstream” Pagan groups for not being willing to take risks for their spiritual values. It was the era of “The personal is political”, of Christianity flirting with Liberation Theology, and the Reclaiming tradition exploded open the Way of Right Action for Pagans, citing that there is little that is more political than one’s spiritual beliefs. If we really believed that the Earth is sacred, they said, then we ought to be fighting for Her, and for all the oppressed people who are treated like the polluted and devalued Earth.

The concept divided many Pagans, most of whom were basically in the “broom closet” at that time. Some felt attacked, others felt inspired. All were affected in some way. While most groups never went further than running a canned food drive or encouraging members to occasionally work in soup kitchens, the movement caused all of us to reevaluate our stances around political and social values and how that fit in with our religion. It also heralded the beginning of the end of “Paganism is a secret mystery religion”. Thousands were inspired to come out of the “broom closet”, and thousands more were inspired to put their everyday efforts where their spirituality led them.

Today, the Way of Right Action is simply one more choice that a particular tradition might emphasize or perhaps only glance at. Many Pagans have written about how their spiritual values affected their choices around food, clothing, employment options, voting, and relationship structures. Some Pagans are openly activists for their pet causes; others simply try to integrate a Pagan concept of “right living” into their daily lives.

The first step is figuring out what spiritual values you actually recognize in your particular brand of Paganism. Pagans have never been entirely politically homogenous; a member of an all-female, all-lesbian Goddess coven may lean in a very different direction from the member of a conservative Asatru group. In general, however, when Pagans pull their values from their religion – instead of bringing their values into Paganism and cherry-picking ideas and attitudes that fit their existing paradigm – it’s usually from one of three places.

It’s true that most ancient cultures did not draw their values and morals directly from their religion – the Abrahamic faiths were actually anomalous in that way. The pagan ancients were taught their morality by their culture, and some Pagans take their inspiration from the ancient cultures that surrounded the religion they practice. As an example, someone who thinks of themselves as a warrior due to their life choices or career might take on an ethic of “A warrior has a code of honor” rather than “This warrior deity wants me to have a code of honor”. Similarly, another person might come to the conclusion of “I consider myself a bard because my life focuses on singing, performing, and speaking, and in this ancient culture it was the job of bards to speak the truth, so I will speak up and reveal the hidden every chance I get.”

Another place to find morals is in studying the values of one’s patron deity or deities. From this perspective, devotees of Frey or Demeter might lobby for organic farming, devotees of Ares or Odin might give aid to veterans, devotees of an underworld deity might press for green burial, and those who have an affinity to a love goddess might speak up for legalization of prostitution. “My deity values it, so my work in this area is an offering directly to them” is an even more common direction of the Way of Right Action than cultural inspiration. Some Pagans have already begun charities named for Pagan deities – the Ullr fund, named for a Nordic god of hunting and skiing, fundraises to get winter sports equipment for underprivileged school programs, and the Midgard Serpent Reptile Rescue rehomes abandoned and mistreated reptiles.

Yet another inspiration might be the entirely modern context of current Paganism itself. This is embodied in the concept of “The Earth is our mother and we should save her”, or “This is a religion that is closer to the wilderness, and thus we should fight for the rights of people who don’t fit into a rigid social structure”. These are often purely personal motivations, one person extracting a political ideal from an overarching value, but sometimes they can spread through groups if that person has enough influence.

(Note: For each of the Six Ways of Being Religious, Dale Cannon lists key ways that they can be performed skillfully or unskillfully. Thus, for each path, we will be exploring competence, incompetence and the shadow side of competence; the balance of finitude and infinitude; and the balance of selflessness and egoism.)

Competence

Master of the art of implementing and living out the ideal spiritual pattern of life; decisive; courageous; steadfast; a clear sense of what is right and fitting; undeterred by social opposition; proactive versus reactive; realistically in touch with concrete obstacles and opportunities; effectively critical of the status quo; master of the arts of teaching morality and exercising moral leadership.

Each of these paths corresponding to the six ways utilizes a specific human attribute or activity as its tool, and that tool will be purified and reshaped by contact with divine energies. In the case of the Way of Right Action, it is the daily life itself that is affected, and undergoes the experience of regeneration. This can be uncomfortable, especially in the early stages when the practitioner faces the vast inconveniences that will occur if they enter this spiritual reshaping of the everyday actions. Eventually, however, the purifications of this path will hone courage, persistence, determination, and a sense of faith that one can survive that inconvenience without nearly as much pain as one feared.

“The changes came slowly, because I know myself and if I were to overhaul my whole life all at once, something in me would rebel. I started with an experiment – I’d spend one-quarter of my food budget on organic food, even though it would mean that I’d either have to expand the budget or go hungry. That was a devotional act for the gods of the harvest. Expanding the budget wasn’t always possible, so that meant I had to learn to cook raw products instead of going for premade. That became a devotional act for the goddesses of hearth and home. I got a library card and borrowed books through inter-library loan as a devotional act for the gods of wisdom, to support libraries. That eventually led to me donating some of my own books, kept for no reason, to friends and a few back to the library itself. When my car died, I spent the extra to find one that got better gas mileage, as a devotional act to the Earth Mother. My recycling bin has a Venus of Willendorf taped on it, to remind me.

I also found that talking about what I’d done and why – not in a tone of “You should do this too,” but just matter-of-factly explaining how the devotional aspect made sustaining the action easier and more comfortable – made people listen. Some of them started thinking about what little changes they could make too. Keeping socially responsible choices going in the face of poverty and inconvenience can be a real grind, and the spiritual aspect can really make the difference over the long haul.”


– Tal Mahon, Indiana Pagan.

Incompetence

Indecisive, lacking courage; of wavering or mixed motivation; ignorant or unclear as to what is right and fitting; overly concerned with what others may think; reactive rather than proactive; insufficiently realistic as to the circumstances in which one must act; uncognizant of the moral shortcomings of the status quo; unable to effectively convey to others a sense of what is right and fitting.

A follower of the Way of Right Action often finds themselves in trouble with others, including co-religionists who may derive different values from the same symbol-set, or who dislike the activist’s vehemence. To be decisive, courageous, and steadfast, and to be undeterred by outside criticisms, is very difficult to do gracefully. This is especially true if the individual is young or has only been treading the Way of Right Action for a short time – in this case, I’d classify that “short time” as less than two decades.

All too often, anger is the fuel that feeds the Right Action fire. It’s hard not to be angry when faced with injustice, and indeed one’s emotions need to be acknowledged and expressed, if only in a safe way, but anger is a tainted fuel to motivate one’s daily moral actions. It encourages people to react in intolerant and ineffective ways, to see deal-breaking differences everywhere, to view human flaws and misunderstandings as political offenses, especially in those close to you or in your fellow allies, and eventually leads to a kind of political paranoia where there is almost no one left on your side. We’ve all met people who spent more energy complaining and attacking than doing actual work, who saw political criticisms under every innocuous comment, who spent a lot of time calling people out but never figured out how to “call in”. We’ve known people who angrily demanded that those around them agree with and enact all their political stances, and then were upset when they had few or no friends or allies left.  We’ve seen those who simply react instead of creating proactive behavior that inspires others – and especially others who aren’t just like them – to band together in Right Action. This is the exhaust trail of someone using anger as a motivation fuel, and eventually it poisons the entire action.

Another “tell” for fueling one’s Right Action with the wrong emotions is a persistent inability to get one’s chosen moral code across to anyone who is significantly different – perhaps it can only be transferred amidst an “echo chamber” of people mostly in the same culture, age group, and area of the world. This is because communicating your ideas effectively requires that you understand your audience, which requires getting into their heads and appreciating their world views even if you don’t agree with them, so that you know what words and images will have the best chance to getting through to them. If you are busy “othering” them, you can’t do this crucial work, and your message will be rejected. In other words, the more tainted the person’s motivating emotional fuel, the smaller the audience that will be able to hear and relate to their message. If you believe, as some do, that this is a Message From The Divine About How Things Should Be; it is important to consider that by refusing to bother with understanding the audience and choosing one’s words effectively, one is dishonoring the divine message with which one has been entrusted.

It’s also important to embody one’s values not only in one’s actions but also in one’s attitudes. If you are the member of a minority group that is often unheard, refusing to hear those with whom you disagree is not a skillful walking of the Way of Right Action. It’s crucial to model the attitudes that you ideally want others to show to you. They may not jump up and copy you right away, but these subtle actions can seep in and penetrate over time – especially if they are spiritually fueled.   In Hinduism, making change in the world as a spiritual offering is referred to as karma yoga. Ideally it should be done not with the motivation of anger, but with the motivation of compassion, joy, and hope – compassion for humanity, the world, and/or the Gods whom you serve, joy in the power to change things for the better, and hope that it can be done. For some Pagans, Right Action is as much an offering to their Gods as is food and drink placed on the altar. For others, it is the peace found in making one’s life congruent with one’s spiritual view of the Universe.

Shadow Side of Competence

(Note: This is not the same as incompetence, which is listed above. It is when a person who is otherwise competent in their chosen path becomes blinded to any other options than that path, not only for themselves but for anyone else in the world.)

Ready to treat all problems as solvable by bringing individual and communal life into conformity with the divine ideal; frenetic activity; doing things with little or no inward centering or reflection.

The Way of Right Action is not necessarily a spiritual path for everyone, nor for anyone all of the time. Even those who take it on as a career may find their spiritual solace somewhere else. Doing this path as a spiritual practice, however, requires that one is calm, measured, and mindful as one does the action, rather than doing it in a harried, furious, or frustrated manner.

Balance of Finitude and Infinitude

(Note: These words are Professor Cannon’s chosen terminology for the balance of the practical details with the numinous energy we are opening to experience.)

Passionately committed to the implementation of the divine ideal but not overly serious (maintains a sense of humor); ready to recognize and admit mistakes but confident of the possibility to change and start anew; committed to justice but with a generosity of spirit that can show mercy and forgive; courageous and composed in doing what is appropriate and sensing what is important in the face of major obstacles and otherwise discouraging prospects.

Without a sense of humor, the Way of Right Action can eat you alive and spit out someone who is rigid, reactive, and at a high risk for burnout. It’s also the path where it is most crucial to be willing to humbly examine and integrate new information into one’s world view, even if that means recanting prior pronouncements. There’s a lot of respect in someone saying, “Yes, I was wrong in this way, and now I’ve learned better.” It’s also important to be able to change the attitudes and ideals that need to be changed while still holding onto the validity of one’s other views, even if some people see a recantation as throwing doubt on everything about you.

“If you’re treading this path as a spiritual practice, it’s also important to be able to forgive others. If your worldview has no place for dignified reparations, if those who err stay the untrusted enemy forever, or if you cannot be compassionate toward those who reject your views out of a clear place of personal damage, you are enclosing your heart in a cage where it will wither and freeze, and you will be opening yourself to similar treatment from others when you are in error. (Which the Gods often arrange in these circumstances to take you down a peg.)”

– Tory Miller, Wiccan covener

I would also put in a few words here for hope, and for self-compassion. You can’t walk on the Way of Right Action without having some serious setbacks, and the greater the sacred work, the greater those setbacks can be. Even if your Right Action practice is only a matter of remembering to recycle or eat a certain diet or donate a certain amount each year to a worthy cause, sooner or later you’ll slip, or something implacable will get in your way, or you will be faced with a decision to make an exception that may have no good option to choose. It’s hope which gets you through – hope that the world can indeed be a better place even with your own meager efforts – and it’s self-compassion that keeps you focused on the good you’ve done instead of obsessing on your mistakes.

Imbalance: Loss of Finitude

(Loss of a realistic understanding of the practical details of the path.)

Perfectionist; overly serious; radically utopian with little or no sense of the concrete obstacles to implementation; failing to distinguish one’s finite will and plan (or that of one’s group) from divine ideality itself; unready to recognize one’s own mistakes, to change, or to start anew; uncognizant of what lies outside one’s frame of reference.

This is the mark of the Savior Of Humanity, or at least the person who believes on some level that this is what they actually are. It’s a good thing to go into this work with some humility, because sooner or later you will run into an ally whom you respect and who completely turns your self-centered world view upside down. (Either that, or some terrible circumstance will stretch you.) It’s more effective to figure out practical solutions than to plow ahead with no real understanding of the context of the problem, and then be angry when it didn’t work. Instead of blaming, try jumping directly to brainstorming.

Imbalance: Loss of Infinitude

(Loss of a real connection to the Divine/Universe/All That Is, however you see that.)

Legalistic; preoccupied with detail at the expense of moral substance; obsessed with the letter of obligation at the expense of the right spirit; uncritically repetitious of the precepts of tradition without thought or fresh reappropriation.

I’ve found that if you’re actually supposed to walk this path as a spiritual practice and you get lost in the paperwork, the Gods will jolt you out of it with some experience that reminds you why you began this in the first place. However, it’s best to notice when you’ve lost your infinitude and do something to replenish it, because those experiences can sometimes be rather upsetting.

Selflessness

(Note: This is not suggesting we should always be selfless, but that there will be times on each path when we need to give of ourselves freely and generously.)

Selfless action; identified with the welfare of all; sincere in doing what is right for its own sake and free of ulterior motivation; committed to ongoing moral growth and improvement; never treats others as mere means to one’s ends; free from resentment and not defensive about oneself and one’s reputation; open to criticism of one’s self and one’s projects (and group openness to criticism of itself and its projects); concerned to help others to see for themselves what is right.

If you want others to be inspired to question themselves and grow, doing that yourself where people can see it, that’s the best inspiration of all. If you want others to take criticism from you, learn how to take criticism from anyone else gracefully, and actually consider it to see if there is a seed of usefulness under all the negative emotion. If nothing else, criticism can tell you how you and your message are coming across, and as such it’s useful information. Also, sometimes people need the experience of bumbling around and knocking into walls until they deeply comprehend a message. That’s why there is usually some item in every divinatory method that says essentially, “You don’t get to know this, because it won’t mean as much to you if you hear it out of the mouth of someone else and don’t figure it out on your own.” Respecting this process while still holding space for your own ideals is an important balance to achieve.

Egoism

Morally hypocritical or pretentious; doing on the surface what is right and appropriate but primarily for the sake of some ulterior egoistic motive or material advantage; identified with the welfare of some at the expense of others; ready to treat others as mere means to one’s ends; overly defensive about one’s self or one’s reputation; nursing resentment or desire for revenge; unconcern about others’ need to see for themselves what is right.

Walking this path often comes with a lot of outside judgment, and if you can’t take the heat and let it roll off your back without letting it get to you, you might want to stay out of this particular kitchen, or at least do this practice entirely in private, never discussing it with anyone but your Gods. In the end, our Pagan Gods know that reputation is a fickle thing and means little. A friend put it, “Guard your honor and outlive the bastards.”

Part of the maintenance for staying humble in this path is continual honest assessment of one’s motives. For everything you say or do, ask yourself why you did it. If your motivations weren’t terribly clean, stop and breathe, and perhaps do the thing again if possible, this time focusing on cleaner motivations. If you can’t do an action cleanly at all, take a break from it until you can. If the self-examination hurts, that’s normal, and it means that maybe you hit something important. Take the time you need to work it out internally and sidestep all the dodges and excuses that your psyche will offer. Pray to your Gods to help you with self-honesty. They’re good at that sort of thing.

As I was finishing up this section, I was given information by a friend whose writing brought up a difficult issue in current Paganism that relates to the problem mentioned above – using others as a mere means to an end – and the subject is cultural appropriation, which is definitely a Right Action problem. Modern Pagans have a decades-long history of integrating pieces of indigenous belief systems into their religious practices, sometimes without fully understanding the symbolism and its appropriateness (or lack thereof) to the situation, and often without valuing or understanding the struggles of the peoples who developed that religion. (This is also a problem that haunts practitioners on the Way of Shamanic Mediation, but that needs to be approached from a different perspective.) I’ll end with my friend’s call to action, as I think that they have said it better than I ever could:

“If you’ve already culturally appropriated in the past (like I have), it’s important to think about ways to make amends. I’ve participated in a lot of problematic things in my past, and laying out ways to prevent it and make amends is part of my own amends process. I mostly search for ways to connect with the living members of a culture, listen, and find ways to support based on what they’ve already identified they want allies for. This is a continuous process of uncovering, unsettling, decolonizing, reconnecting, rebuilding, and making peace with the fact that perhaps your debts will never be “settled” in this lifetime by you, but at the very least, you can try to leave this world a little better than when you entered. That’s what I’m trying to do.”


– Lukayo Diwata Bitoon

Resources for the Way of Right Action