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Spiritual Sources of our Current Troubles

Spiritual Sources of our Current Troubles

Last updated on: September 21, 2025 at 3:00 am by John Beckett

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Spiritual Sources of our Current Troubles 2025-09-20T14:25:48-06:00 John Beckett

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.

This week I’ve seen posts and comments – including some from people I know and respect – saying things like “this is normal – this is what a crumbling empire looks like” and “my people have been dealing with worse than this for decades.”

These comments may be true. They almost certainly are true. But that doesn’t mean they’re helpful to those of us who are struggling to understand what’s going on at a gut level, who are trying to find context that helps us figure out where we are, where we’re going, and how we can best respond.

How do we put “all this” into context? How do we orient ourselves in current events and trends? How do we figure out what it means for us as Pagans, witches, and other spiritual people who are inspired by the stories of our ancestors but who live here and now?

Factual reporting and relevant analysis are helpful. They’re more than helpful – they’re necessary. But secular news and political analysis will only take us so far.

We need to put current events into a Pagan and magical context.

It starts with Tower Time

Tower Time is still with us. And it will be with us for many, many more years. In retrospect, I’m not sure “Tower Time” was the best name for this era. The Tower in the Tarot generally indicates something that’s sudden and dramatic, but also relatively quick. But what are you going to do when The Tower keeps coming up in reading after reading? And it was the perfect metaphor to communicate the fact that institutions built on weak foundations were going to crumble. Are crumbling. Will continue to crumble.

There’s more than one tower and while some of them are down, there are more yet to fall. Tower Time is still with us, but there’s more to this story.

Not an apocalypse – but more steps backward

You’ve heard the phrase “two steps forward and one step back”? While that’s frustrating, two steps forward and one step back means you’re still moving forward in the long run. We’re living in an era of one step forward and two steps back. Sometimes it feels like it’s no steps forward and five steps back.

As I sit at the keyboard, I’m struggling to think of one significant step forward the United States has taken since the Obergefell decision in 2015. Of course there have been small victories and local victories. But big victories? I can’t think of one. There have been multiple steps backward – Dobbs is only the most obvious. And I see nothing coming in the near future, even after Trump is gone.

Message to the DNC: find something for people to vote for in 2026 and 2028. “Restoring sanity to government” worked in 2020 but it’s obvious that was a one-time thing.

Meanwhile, we know what they’re coming for next, because they’ve told us.

And climate change continues to accelerate.

The world isn’t ending. Civilization isn’t ending. But the United States – and the UK, and much of Europe – isn’t as good a place to live now as it was in 2015, and more importantly, it appears that things will to continue to decline.

I hope I’m wrong. I would love to be wrong.

I don’t think I am.

There’s more to what’s going on than the ordinary world

Politics only goes so far in helping us understand the world and our place in it.

The deepest questions of life have always fallen into the realm of religion, spirituality, and metaphysics. Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? And perhaps most importantly, how should we live given that we are here, now?

On one hand, we must take care not to fall into the trap of superstition, like those who blamed the Black Plague on witches, Jews, or ordinary people being insufficiently pious. Or like those in our supposedly enlightened times who blamed hurricanes on gay people.

On the other hand, I’m a polytheist, not an atheist. The Gods I worship, work for, and work with are not concepts or metaphors. They’re divine persons with whom we can form and maintain relationships. When they speak, I listen. I also listen when my ancestors, the land spirits, and the Fair Folk speak.

I’m hardly unique in that regard. Many – though far from all – Pagans participate in oracular traditions.

We heard the Morrigan say “get ready – a storm is coming” as early as 2010. Loki spoke demonstrably at Mystic South in 2022. This year’s Ritual of Resistance and Alliance was not an oracular ritual, but all four of the priests heard plenty from the deities we were representing as we prepared for the event.

And what we’re hearing now – what I’m hearing now – is that the disturbances going on in this world have corresponding disturbances in the Otherworld (I say “now” but the post I just linked to is from early 2023 – this isn’t a this-week thing).

Our social and political disruptions are part of something even bigger than they appear.

The Otherworld is getting closer to the this world

I have polytheist friends who say the Gods are united in their divinity. I respect their opinion, and I respect the logic behind it. But both the stories of our ancestors and our own first-hand experiences say otherwise. The Gods are always virtuous, but virtues are sometimes in conflict.

And no one (that I know, anyway) claims that the many other-than-divine spirits are either united or always virtuous.

When our ecstatic and oracular experiences tell us that there is conflict in the Otherworld (or between the many Otherworlds, if you prefer) we have no reason to insist that cannot be.

Both lore and our own experience says that the Otherworld and this world sometimes intersect. My experience – and the experience of many others who see the world in a similar fashion – is that the Otherworld is especially close to the ordinary world right now.

Choose your metaphor: the Veil is shredded, the mists are thin, the worlds are intersecting. What matters is that it is easier to move between this world and the world of the Gods and ancestors than it’s been in many centuries. Perhaps several millennia.

What happens in the Otherworld impacts this world, and vice versa.

Some people just want to watch the world burn

Politically, I am frustrated with those who see the same problems I see, but who take a ho-hum or even an accelerationist approach. They want to burn it all down in the vague hope that something better will rise in its place.

But there are also those who want to burn it all down just to burn it all down.

Morgan Daimler talks of “the Basdán, the unhael, [who] are continuing to gnaw away at the edges of everything.” I see their presence in recent events.

It is my belief, my UPG (unverified personal gnosis), that the Gods (or at least the Gods I follow closely) are fighting against these forces. Will they win?

The Egyptian tradition says that Ra fights Apep every night. So far, Ra is winning.

But the fight continues.

The antagonists’ view

The Christian Nationalists who are causing so much trouble in this country often speak of “spiritual warfare.” They’re not wrong. They just have a very different – and from my perspective, very inaccurate – view of the battlefield.

This is not a battle between “good” and “evil” – it’s not that simple. Our current obsession with blue vs. red whitewashes the fact that both teams are composed of many different factions, most of whom have different foundational assumptions and different end goals. Today’s ally may be tomorrow’s enemy – something Catholics should keep in mind when they ally themselves so closely with fundamentalist Protestants.

As Professor Ronald Hutton said about the conversion of Britain from their native religions to Christianity, “the more aggressive, determined and monopolistic religion had the edge over its rivals, simply because it cared more about winning, and demanded absolute victory.”

Pagans have no desire for dominion over all. We are happy to live and let live with those who will do the same.

Those who demand our conversion or submission must be vigorously opposed, in this world and between the worlds.

Our place in “all this”

We live in the ordinary world, and so our first priority must be caring for the ordinary world and all the many persons who share it with us. We must take care of ourselves, take care of each other, and do our best to build a better world here and now.

But there is a spiritual component to our current unpleasantness.

And that spiritual component is impacting and influencing events and people in this world.

I cannot tell you exactly what we should do and how we should do it. I do not have that level of wisdom and knowledge… and I distrust those who say they do.

I can tell you that ignoring what’s going on is unlikely to be an advantageous course of action.

Stay close to your Gods. Pray and make offerings, but also meditate – listen. What are they saying? What are they asking you to do? What are they advising you to do?

Stay close to your ancestors, the spirits of the land where you are, and the other spiritual persons in your life. What are they telling you? How can you help them? How can they help you?

Stay close to your friends and allies in this world. Individually we’re easy to run over. Together we’re much stronger. Plus life is more fun with others, even if it is more complicated.

Choose, or someone else will choose for you

The world is changing, and irreversibly so.

The social, political, and spiritual progress many of us took for granted has stopped and is going backwards. Can we change the course of events?

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

We are part of a wider conflict, in this world, in the Otherworld, and between the worlds. You may not wish to fight – I certainly don’t – but that won’t keep the conflict from coming to you. Or for you.

The world is changing, and irreversibly so.

Choose how you will respond.

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