Pop Culture Meditations

Last updated on: February 12, 2013 at 5:01 pm by Aine Llewellyn

Pop Culture Meditations 2013-02-12T17:01:55-07:00 Aine Llewellyn

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’m quite lucky in that most of my (online) religious community and friends are also geeky and heavily involved in fandom of some sort. Even while our religions and fandoms may not be the same, there has been a deep well of information and ideas to draw into my own practice. We have a tendency to toss out the random ideas – curses drawn from movies or television, correspondences made around cartoon characters, superheroes elevated to god-status (well, that’s hardly new) – and see where those ideas spin and weave. From Pandora and iPod music divination to blog ‘bibliomancy’, we’ve got whole new areas to explore for devotion (and magic).

This has been on the front of my mind as I begin restructuring my altars and deciding which practices to keep and which to cut, which serve and which I continue ‘just because’. (Though perhaps some people will find that ‘because reasons’ is a good enough…reason.) I already know which practices I’ll definitely be keeping, while some will have to be shelved while I think about why they’re necessary, and there are other practices I’d like to start.

Guardians of the Seasons by ~Ronobo

One of these is centered around characters from a variety of popular children’s movies – Rise of the Guardians, How to Train Your Dragon, Tangled, and Brave. Whatever it is about these movies and the specific combination of them that has certain section of the internet so enamored, I have no clue. As for why I personally love them, my best answer would be that animated movies have been and will likely always be my preference, and you can’t be in fandom for long without wondering, “Hey, what would happen if we shoved these characters into the same room/universe?” And then you add in some spiritually-minded folk, and you get…well.

Correspondences and debates over what characters could be connected to which seasons, mumblings and murmurings over what the characters would oversee if they were gods or demigods or spirits, and questions on what altars to them would look like. And then those questions go from theory to practice, and people start practicing together and talking about it, and then more fictional-focused practices start popping up because there is something infectious and inflaming about the stories our culture paints on the screen.

Weirded out yet?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about the pop culture and fictional influences that brush against my more religious practices, largely because it makes me uncomfortable to discuss very openly outside of my group of friends. It’s much easier to say, “Oh, I really like the stories,” or, “They inspire me to be more.” Those are both true statements. I’ve had discussions about what the stories mean to individual people and how they have re-awakened in a lot of us a strive to be more alive and in love (with life, with each other, with whatever!). Most Pagans will acknowledge that stories contain great power, and many times I’ve heard, “Myths are just stories, but stories have power.” So it really shouldn’t be nerve-wracking to talk about veneration of fictional characters. I suppose I could just use a bit more Gryffindor courage.

I started thinking about this sort of practice, though, when I began asking ‘why’. Why are people who worship made up gods told they’re ‘doing it wrong’? Why can’t I venerate a fictional character, especially one that’s going to be important to me anyway? Why shouldn’t I? Quite often, these characters feel closer to me than many gods, and I enjoy their stories more than most myths. Quite often, it has been their stories – read in libraries or hidden moments or with a flashlight when I should have been asleep – that kept me going when life was swinging at me. As I said in my last post, my prayer and adorations keep me stable and happy. And so does fandom and fiction and creativity.

I’ve never been one for boxes anyway.

Previous Post

February 9, 2013

Respite Is -

Next Post

February 14, 2013 Menstruation Ain't (Always) Female

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 July 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz