This year I have grounded the monthly themes for our new moon circle in archetypes of place. We have taken the meaning and power of such places as invitations to engage with that which they are uniquely suited to provide. While the new moon group I host is spiritual in nature, I’ve avoided much mention of specific deities. Temples often indicate collective worship of a deity, and have been considered homes of deities, but they are also where people gather to engage in a specific set of beliefs. For those of us who exist outside the strictures of a specific religion, I want to expand our ideas of temples, the divine and even gods—because I believe many of us have lost much of what they offer in our lives as we have shed the coats of religion.
I realize that the idea of a temple may not resonate for people who hear the term as a place of worship for a specific religion. It often conjures a sense of human-built, which if that works for you, great, but I would encourage people to conceptualize any contained space including those that are naturally occurring or created in collaboration with natural elements such as groves, clearings, parks, bays, coves, lakes, ponds, marshes, and caves. More so, I would invite us to think of “the temple” as any place we go to be in company with others where we communally connect with a shared idea or experience, that generates belonging, joy, and ideally, engagement with something meaningful that is larger than oneself.
I recently read the book Dancing in the Streets – A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich. The entire book has been a fascinating foray into the joyful and ecstatic experiences humans have engaged in collectively. This shall be no surprise: options are dwindling in modern times. One passage stuck with me particularly:
“Compared to the danced religions of the past, today’s faiths are often pallid affairs if only by virtue of the very fact that they are faiths, dependent on and requiring belief as opposed to direct knowledge. The prehistoric ritual dancer, the maenad, or practitioner of voodoo did not believe in her god or gods, she knew them. Because at the height of group ecstasy they filled her with their presence. Modern Christians may have similar experiences but the primary requirement of their religion is belief, meaning an effort of the imagination. Dionysus in contrast did not ask his followers for their belief or faith, he called on them to apprehend him directly, to let him enter, in all his madness and glory, their bodies and their minds.”
Whether Christianity or any other religion is pallid is strictly a matter of opinion and I’m guessing devout followers may disagree fervently with that assessment. However I am compelled by the larger point Ehrenreich is making in her book that the active, embodied experience of engaging in the ecstatic, or in joy, is essential to human wellness and access to those experiences used to be more prevalent. It may be more passive than the ecstatic dances of the maenads, dedicated to Dionysus, deep in the woodland groves, but going to a predetermined place at an organized time and sitting with others who share a similar passion or belief, is also a physical and embodied action. There is deep value for humans in gathering for a collective joyful purpose, and while Ehrenreich isn’t as explicit on this point, I would suggest that it is especially valuable when it connects one to the spiritual, or the divine.
I looked up the definition of “divine” and found “of or like a god.” What does that mean though to be of or like a god? I don’t think you need to believe in gods to experience the divine. I would suggest connecting to the divine happens when we have an embodied experience with something larger than ourselves, especially experiences that are ineffable. Gods are often attributed with creation, so my working definition of divine is a force or experience of creation and connection, which may or may not be fully comprehensible, or knowable, especially in words, but can be experienced or embodied.
For me, belief in a god isn’t about establishing a fixed, unalterable belief about the creation of the world or about establishing adherence to a higher power who dictates the events of said world. The universe constantly is revealing to us the way in which we all create ourselves and each other, collectively. We—as in all parts of the universe—interact, evolve and bring the world into being. As humans, our gods are the focus of our devotion—they are where we recognize sentience in the world and name it. In our worshipping of gods we collectively come together to make sense of the world. Gods are the ultimate paradox where they must first exist for us to see and name them, and also must be named by us in order to exist. If one person believes in a god, it becomes real, whether I wish to worship at that god’s altar or not. And yet the most powerful gods are those whose power transcends that which we as humans can bestow through our belief, because what we have seen and named is part of a larger sentience, consciousness, or purpose, at work in the universe. (See Andreas Weber’s book Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology for a poetic and scientific view of love as a self-organizing force in the universe.)
To worship a god of creation is to worship life itself. To come together in the enjoyment of life does not require that a god have power over us, or that they judge our every action—those ideas enter as the politics of religion, and are more about enforcing a shared morality to achieve order than about reaching transcendence. Gods make the ineffable relatable. They serve as focal points, gateways. Gods demand attention and gratitude, and in doing so, call us back to awareness and intention, to actions in service of what matters the most to us. They call us into a relationship where no relationship existed before. The act of devotion, the coming together in the temple, creates opportunity to engage communally with the power and symbolism of that god. We do not need to believe that power is running the show behind the scenes in order to find collective common ground that we elevate and worship together, and where the collective engagement leads to belonging and joy.
Many of us do not belong to a religious tradition that provides this, so where are we seeking collective, spiritual joy? Many religions call for a daily practice of prayer or ritual—there is a reason for this that’s not about mere adherence. It’s because every day, we seek connection and meaning.
For those with digital access, our most prevalent daily action is our engagement with our phones. Tiny glass and metal altars that transport us to virtual hallows of our cultivated social media feed. Unfortunately, any holiness in this space is often a masquerade where we only pretend at cohesion and connection. We go there to receive our sacrament in small doses of dopamine, when a post reinforces something we believe, or the bestowing of a heart grants us acceptance. Scrolling through the halls of an app, we know, is pallid in comparison to being in physical proximity to others, engaged in a shared activity, especially one that generates joy. Instagram is not the temple, it’s an interactive church newsletter. And yet we keep going there expecting the divine.
Exhausted by the endless rat race of job and adulting in an increasingly unkind world means many of us would rather sit home and pick and choose our tiny echoes of engagement from the remote and isolated corner of our couches. I understand that. But we also need our temples. Certainly, many people have found ways to cultivate authentic and vibrant communities in virtual spaces where genuine connections are forged, but the vast majority of online engagement is causing us to mistake communication for communion. The group chats I am a part of, that some days feel like a lifeline, a humorous meme bringing me the day’s only laughter, pale in comparison to the rare times we are able to gather together in person.
Ehrenreich argues that patriarchal hierarchy demanded order and intentionally suppressed the celebrations, previously accessible to the ordinary person, where people regardless of class or identity would gather and celebrate. From the destruction of the Asherah poles dedicated to the goddess Asherah described in 2 Kings: 23 to the suppression of the May pole dance in Europe, we see a millennia-long effort to suppress the communal dance and the gathering around a tree of life. The cult of Dionysus, dominated by women engaging in mysterious rites, threatened the increasing male dominated control in Greece and they sought ways to increasingly boundary and license the behavior. Dionysus was better known as Bacchus in Roman times, and his name gives rise to the contemptuous phrase “bacchanalian” to indicate something that is excessively celebratory. And yet what is so deeply troubling about intense celebration? Saturnalia, the Feast of Fools, and other similar celebrations temporarily turned the societal order upside down through class role reversals, gender cross-dressing, elections of false-bishops, or the elevation of a lower-class individual to the “lord of misrule.” The festivals gave outlet to necessary merry-making and allowed people to explore other roles. Patriarchal rulers of church and state tried repeatedly to suppress such festivals seeing them as threats to their version of order. England, whose culture has left a dominating and pervasive echo across many lands, succeeded in suppressing the many unruly gatherings through the closing of the commons, ensuring that all land must be privately owned not communally accessed. (Beware of anyone seeking to clear people from public spaces, even for reasons that are seemingly in the service of public safety, because someday that “threat” to public safety could be you.)
So where do we find these celebrations now? After hundreds of years of suppressing community festivals they are now reduced to fairs with rows of booths selling things—the engagement reduced to a sale, or perhaps the witnessing of competitions. Communal engagement is largely missing. Renaissance fairs and conferences, better known as “cons,” offer a better example, where personal expression through cosplay turns the event into an interactive affair. Ehrenreich looks closely at sporting events with tailgating parties and lavish personal costuming. Written in 2006, she pointed to this celebration already fading. Late stage capitalism seizes on these popular events. They have become exorbitantly expensive. The costuming the fans had to initially create themselves, adding to the participatory experience, are now produced and simply purchased. Teams that were once the focus of regional pride, are traded away at the whim of the extremely wealthy owners. And yet sports fans, nonetheless cling to this celebratory outlet. Their temples are the sports field, court, or rink. They are worshipping physical prowess, collaboration, protection, aggression, adaptability and decisiveness—all values of the warrior.
Similarly popular, are the participatory (and highly expensive) music concerts for popular performers. To hear my friends talk of their experience at a recent Beyoncé concert, it sounded like they had just returned from worshipping at the altar of Beauty, Justice and Joy, with Beyoncé, the ultimate priestess, singing her understanding of the world into being, while those who watched were swept into the pageantry and held in the world she created for them.
In subtler ways we encounter shared embodied experiences in group exercise classes, community sports or dance, or knitting circles—but often these have tenuous ties to a larger, shared experience – either relying on individuals to make that connection for themselves, or depending on the skill of the facilitator, couch or instructor to make that connection. Most often they lack the structural elements to guide attendees into a sustained state of communal engagement.
I keep returning to the part of the quote above: “Dionysus in contrast did not ask his followers for their belief or faith, he called on them to apprehend him directly, to let him enter, in all his madness and glory, their bodies and their minds.” For me, that is what it means to be in the temple: the apprehension, or possession of the divine. When you are connected to a shared vision, larger than yourself, and feel it take hold of you in return—there is no need for faith. But it potentially requires more vulnerability, more humility, in that it asks for embodied participation. It calls for engagement with unfettered joy, and a release from judgement about what that joy should look like for yourself and others.
I too scroll through social media at times, and I especially delight in seeing videos online of people doing their thing—whatever that may be. I just saw one this week with a guy wearing pink and purple and dancing with a hot pink suitcase to the Pink Panther theme. I laughed and smiled, sure, but do you know who was having a truly joyful time? That guy. Who would be having an even better time? A group of us wearing pink and dancing around with rolling suitcases. Sound ridiculous? It should, but when did we forget that the ridiculous is holy, that silliness can be divine, and that pointless and nonsensical activities that have no other purpose than fun are what remind us why we are alive in this universe. If we aren’t dancing with our gods, what is the point?
I know we need more temples. Temples that are free and not reserved for those with resources and expendable income. These temples need not be built of stone, nor even be permanent. They do not need to be large: a temple could be the exact size of your living room. We must recognize the temples we have, and we need to show up to them, seeing them for what they are, why they matter, and what they provide us. I suspect we also need more shared gods–gods who can help us embody what we hold dear, gods that we worship not through taps and scrolls, but by gathering together in celebration.
For this new moon I invite reflection: Where are the meaningful temples in your life? What altars are you building up? Which gods will you have no choice but to believe in, because you have danced them into being?