Andrew Watt

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Flavors of Shadow

by Andrew B. Watt

Like many people, I spent my quarantine time learning baking skills. Instead of focusing on sourdough bread, though, I learned a lot about tarts, cakes, and pastries. In the fall of 2020 I made apple and pear tarts, which involve slicing up the fruit and arraying them in fans within a pie crust. In the spring and early summer of 2021 I worked on lemon curd tarts, and then berry tarts — strawberry, blackberry, blueberry. No rhubarb though: I never could stand the stuff, myself.

And who can forget pumpkin spice? The mixture is usually a roughly equal blend of cinnamon, ginger, clove, nutmeg, and sometimes allspice. Today we think of it as a mix reserved for overpriced coffee drinks — but the combination owes a great deal to the ‘sweet mix’ used in royal desserts in the courts of Henry VIII and his daughters Mary and Elizabeth I of England. This may have had something to do with the spices’ putative magical properties, too: cinnamon for protection and purification, ginger as a prosperity charm and as a protective spice, clove for both sexual potency and mental clarity, and nutmeg for both prosperity and imagination. Allspice, too, promoted health and improved focus. We can imagine the royal chef telling King Henry, “this cake, it’s not bad for you — it contains healthy things too!”

Three years in, I’ve learned a lot about the craft of baking. But I’m starting to turn my attention to identifying which of these festive dishes belongs to what times of the year. Here in New England, autumn is a season of shadows and darkness. Pumpkin pies and mincemeat pies are seen as traditional for Thanksgiving and the Solstice-cluster of holidays. Sugar cookies and gingerbread are ancestral holdovers for many.

For Samhain this year, I found my attention turning to the idea of making a Pomegranate curd to fill a tart shell. The pomegranate, that maroon-colored fruit filled with yellow rind and jewel-like arils, each with a seed inside … Well. The fruit of Persephone, of the High Priestess card of the Tarot, that symbolizes secret knowledge and gnostic insight… it does not want to be curd or custard. It does not want to set at all into a soft, sugary tart filling. I’m sure it has to do with the pH balance of the juice, or the way the juice interacts with extra butter and sugar.

Following recipes online, I found that, with careful timing and attention to heat and chill at the right times in the cooking process, you can make pomegranate curd, and fill a pie shell. It’s this lovely maroon color, with swirls of darker purple, and it draws gasps and awe from the people who have a slice of the pie. It’s this sensual and dark flavor.

But the secret to getting pomegranate curd to set properly, and be the right color — is dried hibiscus flower. It turns out that to get the right flavor of darkness… you need to include the memory that spring will return.

Photo by Andrew Watt
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Public Rites, Private Work

Andrew B. Watt

In my first career as a schoolteacher with a speciality in world history, I was often tasked with making the deep past relevant to a modern audience. In my current, second career as an astrologer and artist, I find that this is still in a sense my real job — finding ways to make ancient insights and wisdom available to a modern readership. This is the first of what I hope will be a regular series.

When modern people engage with ritual in an Earth-centered spirituality, it may not be the case that they are explicitly pagan — that is, they may not worship a pantheon of pagan gods with names like Zeus and Aphrodite, Odin and Thor and Frigga. Some of them certainly do; some of them are quite open about it. Others may follow a Christian path, attending a local church in their home community on Sundays. Some may light Shabbat candles, keeping with Jewish family traditions of worship at home.

At Rites of Spring and other events connected with Earth-centered spirituality, though, they will often engage in public rituals in which no god or gods are mentioned by name by the presiding officers. There are things that are said at these rituals, of course — the names of the recently deceased may be read solemnly, or the names of newlywed couples may be announced with joy. There are things that are done at these rituals, too — attendees may dance around a fire to the sound of drumming; or they may erect a Maypole; or take a walk in the woods to connect with nature. Finally, there are things shown: a loud figure in startling garments and grotesque make-up may stand between two smoking torches, terrifying all who hear her; veiled figures may appear at a meal with everyone present, to chaperone a select few off on pre-arranged journeys.

This formula, of Things Said, Things Done, and Things Shown, is very ancient — we know that this was the standard formula of the secret Mysteries of Eleusis in Greece. Candidates for the initiation process underwent a purification rite in mid-March, and then in mid-September of the following year, they all went into the initiation hall at dusk to spend the night in complete darkness. Nothing was said of what occurred in this hall on penalty of death. The Mystai, as the initiates were called, were only able to say, “Well… Things were said, and things were done, and things were shown.”

The ten days prior the Autumnal Equinox are about when these September Mysteries were celebrated — a season that begins this year on September 12. It’s a good time to reflect on one of the essential parts of the EarthSpirit Community’s traditions — that in our public rites, things are said, done and shown — but the meaning of these things is rarely defined for us as members. It remains the private task of the individual and their trusted family and friends, to sort out how what’s said, done, and shown, affects our personal lives — ethically, morally, intellectually, emotionally.

Proserpina with Ceres and Triptolemus
Proserpina with Ceres and Triptolemus, Ancient Greek, circa 330 BCE, Eleusis Archaeological Museum

Many community members call that highly personal and private process, Work—first reflecting on how the public parts of the ritual resonate deeply within us; and second, figuring out how to turn those internal meanings into outward behaviors and actions. Work is an active intellectual, emotional, and creative process. No two members of the community do their Work in quite the same way, either — but you can observe their Work in what they say, what they do, and what they show.

Under Stars,
Andrew B. Watt
Astrologer & Artist
http://andrewbwatt.com/

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It Looks A Lot Like Justice

By Andrew Watt
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Written on November 8, 2018

The Parliament of the World’s Religions closed yesterday. We go home today. It’s curious and apropos that today the planet Jupiter enters into Sagittarius, astrologically:  wisdom and knowledge integrating with power and authority. When coherence and responsibility blend, the results look a lot like justice. The results look a lot like mercy and peace.

I heard from several aficionados of these Parliaments that “this time wasn’t as good as Salt Lake City (Utah, USA)” or “it wasn’t as intense as my experience in Melbourne (Australia).” For my part, as a first-timer, I was astonished by the range of diversity, nuance and complexity on display within the various theological and spiritual traditions — and the ways in which these vast and subtle traditions resolved to a few core principles again and again:

Develop a right relationship with the spirit world.
Develop a right relationship with nature.
Develop a right relationship with other human beings.
Develop a a right relationship with self.
Develop and iterate traditional practices that cultivate these relationships.

Now— it must be admitted, those relationships look VERY DIFFERENT based on whether your tradition began in a desert or a forest or a mountaintop or a city. Those

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Our EarthSpirit delegation (photo by Moira Ashleigh)

relationships look different when they’ve been cultivated for fifty years, five hundred years, five thousand years, fifty thousand years. Those relationships look different if you’ve always been persecuted, never been persecuted, or suffered both extremes. Those relationships look different based on the portability and replicability and practicality of your traditions and the ideas it carries.

But the successful religious systems still look like justice. The successful ones still look like mercy. The successful ones still look like mutual respect and kindness for all the realms of being.

It can’t possibly be an accident.

Every conference attendee I spoke with couldn’t deny how powerfully we were affected by the conversations, the presentations, the constant reminders embedded in both our own traditions and those of others, to practice hospitality and welcome, to share with strangers, to communicate in trust and in good faith, to hope for a better world.

It doesn’t mean we’re not ruled by fear at times. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have genuine conflict as individual people or as nations over resources, over access to necessary goods and services, or challenges with bad actors of various kinds. And, of course, we are all experiencing some of the most radical shifts in our relationships with nature, that our species has experienced in quite a long, long, long time.

But after talking with Buddhists, Indigenous elders, Sikhs, Jews, Christians, and other pagans and heathens — I end my own Parliament experience with recognition and insight and renewed sense of purpose that love, justice, and mercy live very close to the center of all of the Earth’s great wisdom traditions. and that love, justice, and mercy look a lot like long-term survival.

It can’t possibly be an accident.
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Weaving a Fabric of Inclusion

by Andrew Watt
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One of the items on display here at A Parliament of the World’s Religions is Esther Bryan’s Quilt of Belonging. Consisting of 263 hexagonal frames for 263 embroidered and textile blocks, the quilt is a kind of self-portrait of Canada at the dawning of the Christian Era’s second millennium: there is one block for each of Canada’s First Nations, and one block for each nation of the wider world whose immigrants have come to Canada. It took six and a half years to create. Members of each immigrant group and First Nation worked on the block representing their community, some only agreeing after long periods of negotiation and gradual or grudging trust-building. One nation, San Marino, is represented by only one person in all of Canada, while other blocks represent thousands of people and their descendants. One two-year-old sewed a couple of stitches, while a 92-year-old had to be helped to hold the embroidery needle between trembling fingers. Just outside the display area, several massive crates with giant foam rollers inside hold the Quilt on its travels around Canada — which have already taken it enough miles to go from Earth to the Moon five times. Listening to Ms. Bryan talk about the creation of the quilt left me with the impression that the Quilt of Belonging is not simply a quilt: it is a treasure-house of stories.

The Quilt is currently on display on the first floor of the North Building. It’s nearly impossible to take in all at once — the ribbon of color that forms the upper edge creates a rainbow of extraordinary intensity. Yet as one approaches, the appearance of continuum dissolves into a formula of precise strips of color all down the length of the hall. Beneath

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Photo by Miriam Klamkin

these ribbons of hue in harmonious order are the Nations. The eye catches on San Marino, and then on the Tlinglit First Nation. One has to go and seek out countries of one’s own national origin: perhaps Great Britain, perhaps France. The Diné come into view, and then perhaps Thailand. Malayasia and Tonga and Cuba appear. The Labradorans and the Dakota and the Haida.

It’s the opposite of erasure.

And then something curious happens. You stop seeing the names of countries, and you start looking at the artistry, at the needlework, at the overarching structure of the quilt. You start to see the heavy tassels of yarn along the bottom. You start seeing how the fabric pulls against the stitch-work here and there. You begin to imagine women and men sitting with Esther Bryan in kitchens and living rooms, all across Canada, as she gently but deliberately earned their trust, came into their communities, and helped them stitch a quilt block. This pull here was a stab through the textile by an untrained hand; that one over there is a daughter guiding her mother’s hands that are starting to lose a battle with arthritis; these interwoven threads were stained by the tears of a refugee remembering their homeland. You start to see those big crates carrying the quilt on the back of a cargo skid pulled by a ski-doo across the ice for a display in the far north, or hauled onto a ferry for a showing on Prince Edward Island. You imagine careful hands unrolling it from its crate for the first time, and staring in wonder at a picture of their homeland for the first time.

And then you, the viewer, start to cry.

You become one with the stories that you see, hear, and imagine in the great quilt before you. You, in a sudden moment, find yourself drawn into the story of Canada, even as a visitor, you find yourself wrapped in all the tales of wonder and heartbreak and hope and tragedy and dignity that are caught up in this quilt, tangled together in its threads and in its fabric.

You are in the presence of a relic. A medicine, in a sense. An object that has been made holy by the hands that have made it, and the stories that have been woven into it, and

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Photo by Miriam Klamkin

the community that has chosen to honor it. An emblem of Canada — not its government, not its national presence on an international stage — but of its people and its common life.

So many rooms and spaces at the Parliament are barren and devoid of symbolism. It’s a conference center, of course — part of the very nature of the spaces within it is that they are non-descript and easily shifted from one purpose to another and another. At the same time, though, the Quilt of Belonging shows a portrait of grace: a nation of nations, a country of countries, at peace with itself and with its neighbors.

And simply by viewing the quilt with your other eyes, you feel the potential for welcome and trust, the gracious hospitality, and the growing strength, of this year’s host nation for the Parliament.
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EarthSpirit is at A Parliament of the World’s Religions this week in Toronto!  You can find more updates here and on our Facebook page.  

The Canadian Way
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The Canadian Way

by Andrew Watt
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At my second day of A Parliament of the World’s Religions, the thing that keeps striking me is the “Canadian Way”. That’s the name I’m giving to a practice, which I have found striking and emotionally powerful, of acknowledging and recognizing the First Nations of the region around Toronto as the keepers of the land.  These tribes include the Mississaugas, the New Credit Tribes, and the Six Nations.  I’ve not caught all the names or subtleties of the relationships between the tribes, I know.  But I know that they are here, their chiefs saw us at the Parliament’s opening session on the first day, that they knew we were coming, and that they have extended a formal welcome to the Parliament and a kind of formal permission to conduct our business here. (In a kindly, funny but also serious fashion, we were told in no uncertain terms to go home when we were done.)

Talking with a few Canadians today, I learned that this is becoming more and more common at all sorts of Canadian official events: graduations and conferences, government meetings, matriculation ceremonies, and higher-level religious events like church synods.  Canada appears to be making a serious commitment to recognize and acknowledge the place and position of what it calls the First Nations within the fabric of Canadian life.  My new Canadian friends admitted that it feels more like “talking the talk” and not enough like “walking the walk” — but that Indigenous Peoples are much more active in the political and social fabric of the nation today than they were twenty and forty years ago in their own childhoods.

And so, the Canadian Way: to be welcomed to traditional lands by traditional First Nations custodians, to be given permission to settle and perform ceremony, and to participate in the life of the nation as the First to speak.  To Be First.

The formal opening session of the Parliament was preceded by several hours of Indigenous Ceremony in the park outside the Convention Center: dancing, smudging done by members of the Toronto tribes, welcomes from the chiefs of several of the tribes, drumming and singing in the traditional styles and in the traditional costumes of the

Indigenous dancer

photo by Moira Ashleigh

Mississaugas, the Cree, the New Credit Tribes, the Six Nations.  A few hours later, at the formal opening of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the chiefs spoke again.  No rousing strains of “O Canada!” filled the hall.  Instead, with the raising of Indigenous eagle feathers and staffs, the singing was one of one of the local tribe’s national anthems, and another song in a First Nations language to thank veterans. During the opening speeches, a minister of the government of Canada thanked the Mississaugas and the New Credit Tribes and the Six Nations. So did the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.  So did a city councillor of the government of the city of Toronto.  No one stumbled over unfamiliar names.  No one tried a couple of times and gave up.  The tribes were mentioned in the same order each time (which I’ve endeavored without notes to repeat, but apologize if I’ve gotten in wrong).  There is clearly an effort underway within the Canadian government to restore a sense of traditional custodianship of the land to the First Nations, at all levels of government.

That’s extraordinary in itself.

But then… it happened in some of the sessions and workshops I attended during the day.  A presenter thanked the First Nations tribes of the Toronto area, and named them the same way the government officials had.  Then she got around to thanking the Parliament for inviting her to speak.  A ritual event in another space included a formal acknowledgement that the ceremony was taking place on Mississaugas land.

Later in the day, I asked a Canadian if they knew what First Nations land they were on. “Mississaugas,” came the answer, followed immediately by surprise. They didn’t know, quite, how long they had known that information, or how they’d come by it.

And yet, in an extraordinary way, the Canadian Way is beginning to undo the effects of centuries of deliberate erasure of the First Nations:  by inviting them to speak First, by inviting them into the role of the traditional custodians, all across Canada people are waking up to the idea that they are on someone’s land, that they are in someone’s land: that Canada is more than one country, and the country has a deeper and longer history than just the French and English, Confederation and a couple of World Wars.

The Canadian Way may bring about a deeper understanding of their nation’s cultural heritage, a heritage that extends at least twenty thousand years into the past…. and into a present where the First Nations always speak First, in words of welcome and of permission. There’s a power in that; and I hope that it brings the many peoples of Canada a few long and graceful strides toward reconciliation. At the same time, I feel the challenge and the opportunity in the Canadian Way that all of these visitors from around the globe must see and hear, and I hope that many of them — and we ourselves — can take the steps and begin the conversations that begin to put Indigenous voices as First Voices.
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EarthSpirit is at A Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto this week!  Keep an eye here and on our Facebook page for more updates on our interfaith experiences.