Lessons From The Beautiful Pilgrim
“François Boucher's Diana Leaving Her Bath. The goddess is wearing a crescent moon crown.”
Readers of A Beautiful Resistance, I assume, are already aligned with ideas and activity that aim to make positive changes in society – a commitment to change the world for the better. One problem, of course, is how to effectively bring about that change. The Beautiful Pilgrim points us, I think, towards an area that Pagans are well-equipped to engage with – sexual freedom.
In his influential book on Italian witchcraft, Aradia: Gospel of the Witches, Charles Leland recounts the story of The House of the Wind. To briefly summarise that story, for readers not already familiar with Aradia...
There was a young girl whose mother was determined that her daughter should take vows as a nun. But the girl resisted this, so the mother employed as governess an older woman who was considered intelligent and pious, to turn her daughter's mind to the nunnery after all. As it happened, the old woman was not at actually a Catholic, but secretly a worshipper of Diana as Goddess of the Moon, and instead of the young girl becoming more devout in her own Catholicism she converted to the worship of Diana in her turn.
Beside herself with fury, the mother had the girl imprisoned. But the girl prayed to Diana, and escaped when her cell door was left unlocked. Dressed as a pilgrim, she travelled the countryside preaching the ways of the old religion and became known to the people, who loved her, as the Beautiful Pilgrim.
The girl was captured again, and again she refused to become a nun, and defiantly proclaimed herself a devotee of the Goddess. Enraged, her mother handed her over to the Church for torture and death. With the help of a lover, the young woman was enabled to pray again to Diana on the night before her planned torture and execution. Later that same night, a great storm came and tore apart the house where she was imprisoned, killing her treacherous parents along with the gathered Catholic priests. Thus the Beautiful Pilgrim escaped with her lover and married him.
There is plenty that could be unpacked from this tale. However, one aspect that the story brings into focus is the role of the Catholic Church in our perception of the relation between spirituality and sexuality. Because Christianity in its politically organised forms, perhaps most prominently even among the monotheistic "great religions" of the world, bears much responsibility for the separation of spirituality from sexuality. It was, for instance, the relation of these two powerful forces within the often Goddess-centred religions of the ancient world that aroused the particular ire of the early Church.
Yet the fact is that, in the natural way of things, spirituality and sexuality are intimately woven together. Anyone who, in any practical way, has worked with the kind of techniques usually described as "energy-raising" should have gained some personal insight into this through the feeling of the technique. Having said this, however, most of us (even Pagans) have become so used to the way in which concepts of divinity and the human spirit are divorced from sexuality that it is difficult for us to fully grasp their true indivisibility.
The tale of the Beautiful Pilgrim explores conflict between two ways of seeing, the Christian and the Pagan. The pious mother in the story is anxious that her daughter should abandon - or, rather, be deprived of - sexual and emotional fulfilment in the cause of religious purity. The daughter responds by turning to the ways of the Goddess, following her fortuitous encounter with an older Pagan woman who becomes her mentor. The struggle that follows between ascetic piety and sensual, natural spirituality is sharp and fierce.
Another conflict addressed by the story of the Beautiful Pilgrim is that between social and economic classes. It is made clear that, in essence, the Christian religion is the religion of the rich and the privileged; while the worship of the Goddess is the spirituality of the poor and the oppressed. The rebellious daughter goes to the people, stirring a potentially insurrectionary message among them. The Beautiful Pilgrim is less a religious evangelist than she is a social campaigner, even a revolutionary agitator.
I think it's important to understand that these are not two separate arguments being presented in the one package of the story. For many centuries now, sexuality and sedition have been very closely associated with one another. It is interesting that the basis of Leland's Aradia was his argument that in Italy, and particularly in Tuscany, a Goddess-worshipping witch-cult had existed among the poor as a form of underground resistance movement that was engaged in an ongoing struggle against the ruling class, and against the Catholic Church that was integral to ruling-class ideology.
The control of sexual identity and behaviour - or, at least, the attempt to control it - acts as an insidious form of social and political control. Whether or not Leland's proto-communist witches ever really existed in any organised fashion, the story that he attributes to their tradition suggests that there was possibly still some residual awareness of this current among the Italian peasants that he spoke with during his researches.
Thus, it is hardly surprising that the apparently petty affair of a conflict between mother and daughter should develop, in this case, with all the intensity and ferocity of a struggle between social classes. The younger woman becomes not only a focus for the anger of the rulers, but also grows to become a beacon of hope for the poor and dispossessed.
This might appear to take us some distance from a discussion regarding spirituality and sexuality. Not so. For Pagans today, who seek - among other things - to restore the relationship of sex and spirit, can draw from the story of the Beautiful Pilgrim a beginning recognition of the profoundly radical implications seeded within Pagan spiritual beliefs and practices.
Yet, just as it is unnecessary for Pagans to remove sexuality from the spectrum of spiritual practice, so is it unenviable to remove the spiritual and magical elements from sexuality. There are many forms of relationship and connection that don't involve sex, of course. But when sex is part of the equation, it always creates powerful bonds between participants on a magical, energetic level. This isn’t a question of morality but of magical praxis. A genuinely Pagan, and revolutionary, approach to sexuality and sexual behaviour is acutely conscious that sex and relationship are warp and weft of the same fabric.
This has some deep implications. For a start, it means that there is no such thing as “casual” sex! At the same time, it takes us away from the imposition of any (necessarily subjective) moral code on sexual behaviour – no form of sexual relationship between fully consenting adults, whether monogamous, polyamorous, heterosexual, or whatever, is “better” or more “natural”, or “less moral” than any other - while requiring awareness and a sense of responsibility as integral to sexual expression.
It also becomes implicit that there can be no real, complete, freedom without the liberation of human sexuality – and most especially the liberation of female and queer sexualities. At moments of great social upheaval, there actually seems to be an instinctive recognition of this. As Friedrich Engels pointed out:
“It is a curious fact that with every great revolutionary movement the question of ‘free love’ comes into the foreground. With one set of people as a revolutionary progress, as a shaking off of old traditional fetters, no longer necessary, with others as a welcome doctrine, comfortably covering all sorts of free and easy practices between man and woman.”
Although Engels was writing within the relatively limited understanding of his time – as judged from our 21st century perspective - it's notable that he doesn't consider the question of sexuality as being some fringe element of revolutionary change, but as a central aspect of it. A genuine transformation of society engages not only the explicitly political and economic spheres, but at the same time initiates a revolution in everyday life and in the most fundamental relations between people.
This, to my mind at least, brings us to some central questions for our contemporary Pagan subcultures. What are we actually for? What is the goal that we are working towards? Is mere survival, or even acceptance within the status quo, enough?
It is part of our role as activist Pagans, in my opinion, to set an example. This means practising not just toleration but an active acceptance and promotion of sexual freedom and equality within our own communities; alongside respect for women and for LGBTQI+ people, with a clear commitment to the ethics and practice of consent and safe sex.
Beyond that, we can take seriously our roles as advocates for genuine sexual liberation as an essential aspect of social liberation, and as allies for those facing marginalisation and oppression as a consequence of sexual orientation or identity. And we can make the truly Pagan case that full human liberation requires more than simply a demand for equal rights, but ultimately a revolution in all our relationships, including (and perhaps even most fundamentally) our intimate and sexual relationships.
This takes on increasing urgency. A recent judgement by the Supreme Court in Scotland, in response to a case brought by anti-trans activists and heavily funded by a certain multi-millionaire author, has demonstrated just how quickly the rights of a minority group can be undermined. While the systematic and aggressive moves against women's and LGBTQI+ rights, and against diversity and equality policies, by the Trump administration not only within the USA but as a central plank of foreign policy (as well as similar policies championed by right-wing parties elsewhere) make it certain that issues of sexual and gender identity, and of sexual freedom, are going to be very far from a peripheral concern in the coming period.
The creation of a moral panic is crucial to the ability of reactionaries to carry through these kinds of offensives. Those of us who lived through the fraudulent allegations of "Satanic ritual abuse" in the late 1980s and early 1990s know only too well how dangerous such moral panics can be, not only to the targeted group but more widely in society, and how they serve as a regressive and repressive force to undo progressive gains. Right now, it is trans people who are most forcefully targeted. But others are also in the firing line, or likely soon will be. JD Vance has already talked of connecting women’s voting rights to their fertility. No group of people should be left in isolation to be used as a scapegoat on grounds of identity, sexuality, ethnicity or whatever. To borrow a motto from the trade union movement, "An injury to one is an injury to all." In today's world, that motto seems more appropriate than ever.
Philip Kane
Philip Kane (by Grace Sanchez)
Philip Kane is an award-winning poet, author, storyteller and artist, living in the south-eastern corner of England. He is an “Old Craft” practitioner, a supporter of Anti-Capitalist Resistance, and a founding member of the London Surrealist Group. Philip's work has been published and exhibited across Europe, in the Middle East and in the USA. He is a contributor to The Gorgon's Guide to Magical Resistance (Revelore Press, 2022).