#right relationship

[mindinthevoid]

[lokavisi]

You can start to give more of yourself again after last week's needed refuge and healing work. It might be hard at first, but you can start to move around a little more now that wounds are at least starting to heal. That means you can start giving back to the people that may have helped you, or more readily receive some other gifts. What matters is you'll be better able to more fully engage with the gifting cycle. Remember: it's not about debts and being repaid, it's about building relationships and trust that you'll be there for someone and they'll be there for you.

[songsofbloodandwater]

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🌿 Walking with plant medicine in a good way means relationship over consumption, ceremony over trend, and reciprocity over extraction. ✍🏾: @healinghokte 🎨: @keyraarroyo

[unicorntgoughts]

Being in right relationship with someone is an ecosystem of actions and emotions—love is just one element.

@unicorntgoughts

[fiantacleasai]

Debunking Elen of the Ways

“STOP LUMPING. Please please please stop flaming the creation of a nonexistent deity by Caroline Wise in 2015.” — me

Sorry if this is a hot button topic, but also… I don’t really care. I’m tired of seeing her appear in my tags that have nothing to do with her. Believe what you want, I won’t stop you. Just don’t call her something that she isn’t.

[polyphanes]

Reading the Hermetica: SH 8 + SH 12 + SH 13 + SH 14 + SH 7

For this week’s Reading the Hermetica discussion, we’re continuing our reading and discussion of the Stobaean Hermetic Fragments (SH), specifically fragments 8, 12, 13, 14, and 7 (SH 8 + SH 12 + SH 13 + SH 14 + SH 7).  These texts touch on providence, necessity, fate, and justice as guiding principles of the world, its functioning, and our right-relationship to it and to God.  As ever, if you…

[blackcrowing]

'Right Relationship' in the Modern World

To really discuss the idea of 'Right Relationship', a concept that is commonly held in most pagan cultures, we need to understand the function it filled in the cultures it was created in.

Among the Irish centric polytheistic circles I'm in, I have most often seen the concept of 'right relationship' referred to as cóir, correctness, correct form (of); proper (legal) arrangement (for); procedure, device, means (of doing someth.) but in my opinion might be more correctly referred to as cert, justice, fair dealing.

While both words have legal uses as well as non-legal uses I find that that the non-legal uses of cert more appropriately fit the idea than the non-legal uses for cóir. This is an important distinction for me because while 'right relationship' is important and has a strong level of social compulsion, it is, NOT inherently one of legal binding.

Historically, there was not a specific concept of 'right relation' there were several multi-faceted, overlapping, concepts that worked together to make a complex social network of proper relations and conduct that were all 'over seen' and intricately locked into the Other. We have the form of 'right relation' that is held specifically to a king, fír flathemon, as well as the supernatural and 'right relationship' role of the satirist in keeping those in power in check through their rhetoric and would risk their own health and abilities if they misused their role.

Commoners also had powerful tools offered to them inside the structure of 'right relation' via fasting, troscud. I think it is through this facet that I can best illustrate how the deep integration of 'right relation' relied on all of society and the backing of the Other to be effective.

With troscud those of lesser social status had the ability to force a higher social status person to redress a wrong doing. Essentially what would happen was if a lower status person was wronged in some way and the person of higher status would not redress the issue through normal legal or social means then the wronged person (or person of their family, should the wronged party not be able to do so themselves) would sit in front of the high status persons home and fast, for as long as it would take, to force a redress.

Seems simple enough, however if you think of society today... this would almost certainly not work... even if one fasted onto death it would hardly be a blip on the radar of someone of great means, like say Bezos or the like. It was effective in Irish society in this historical period because their integrated 'right relationship' society forced the social and supernatural leverage to apply adequate pressure. Social media and the court of public opinion does offer a type of modern analog but with significantly less cohesion and a significantly higher chance of failure.

So while the concept of 'right action' is intrinsically important to the fabric and functionality of Irish Paganism (and I would argue nearly all Iron age pagan traditions, though details vary) it has little or even no place inside modern society. Unless prehaps you wish to adhere to ridged social standards which those around you will neither know about nor participate in. You may choose to never, under any circumstances harm or quarrel with a guest of your household but that same guest might have no qualms about punching you at their cookout the next weekend.

I am of the option that while the principal of 'right relationship' remains admirable and nessicary to a functional society, our current society does not operate under the same social restrictions and customs of the past and those customs serve little use (in specific capacities) in the here and now.

The only reciprocal relationship of this kind that can be guarenteed in any capacity is that with the gods, otherwise a blanket concept of 'right relationship' from a pagan/historical perspective is null.

TL:DR The ethics of history are merely morals of today.