Pagan Spiritual Practice, A Polytheist Approach
Introduction to Pagan Spiritual Practice
Course 5, Module 0
By: John Beckett
The shirt I’m wearing says, “Religion is always in the room.” I got it earlier this year. It was a fundraiser for the Religion News Writers Association. It’s a reminder that even when we’re in secular spaces, the values encoded in our religion never leave us. They influence our thinking, and through our thinking they influence our actions.
But how do we make sure that the values that we’re embodying, the values that are influencing our thinking and our actions, are our Pagan and polytheistic values, and not the values of a religion we left behind, or the values of the mainstream society? It takes practice.
All religions have spiritual practices. If I ask you, “What do Buddhists do?” most of you are going to say, “Well, Buddhist meditate.” Now, Buddhists do a lot more than just meditate but certainly that’s their core spiritual practice. Muslims pray five times a day. I grew up Baptist. I was taught, “You need to be reading the Bible.” What do Pagans do? Well, we read and we meditate and we pray. We do it in our own way. And we have some spiritual practices that are unique to our traditions, but they take practice.
Now, I’ve been writing about spiritual practice for as long as I’ve been blogging. I’ve got a workshop on daily spiritual practice for Pagans that I’ve done at conventions and conferences and Pagan Pride days and retreats for 12 or 13 years. There are sections on spiritual practice and practice in both of my books. I thought I had said everything I needed to say about spiritual practice.
But in the post-class survey for the last online class, the most frequently requested subject for a future class was prayer, meditation, devotion, energy work – all the kinds of things that fall under pagan spiritual practice. What we’re going to cover in this class is certainly not the only way to do spiritual practice, but it’s the way I’ve been doing spiritual practice for 20 years. It’s been very helpful to me. It has given me a foundation for my spiritual work, my religious work, my magical work. It’s been an immense benefit to me over the last year and a half of disruption that we’ve experienced in our worlds. And so now I am happy to present the fifth online class from Under the Ancient Oaks, Pagan Spiritual Practice, a Polytheist Approach.
Goals For the Course
So, what are our goals for this course? What do we want to try to accomplish?
We want to understand the basics of spiritual practice. We want to explore a variety of spiritual practices. And we want to do that from a Pagan and polytheist perspective.
Mainly we want to build a helpful spiritual practice. We want to come out of this class with everyone understanding what you can do on a regular basis,that keeps you connected to those values that are so important to you.
Changes From Previous Courses
If you’ve taken one of my courses before, you know that they all look kind of alike. There’s going to be some changes in this class. The biggest change is there’s going to be more, shorter modules. The previous classes had been either six or seven modules. It’s going to be 11 modules to this course, plus this Module Zero. Most of the last few courses have been running 50 to 60 minutes per module. These ones I think are going to run more in the 20 to 30-minute range. Some of them may be a little longer. Some may be a little shorter. Mainly they’re going to be a lot shorter than the previous ones.
For something like this I think it’s helpful to take it in smaller bites. Take one thing and cover it in the video. Then go do the homework and start incorporating it into your practice and get comfortable with it, and then move on to the next thing Something like this I just think it will be easier if we take it in smaller bites
We’re going to use more video this time. Now, it’s still going to mainly be this, a PowerPoint-driven class. But I’m going to try to work in more video, particularly on the practices where I can demonstrate something, because so much of what I learned in my spiritual practice, I learned by watching other people. You don’t get that from a book. You only get it partially from listening to people talk about it. A video isn’t the same as being there in person, but it can help. So we’re going to try to use more video this time. I’m not sure exactly how much, but I’m planning on more.
There will be no homework reviews this time. For the first four classes, only about a quarter of the students have actually turned in homework. And out of those, for the vast majority of them, my review has been one or two lines that basically said, “Yeah, you got this. This is good.” I don’t know how helpful that is. I don’t know if it’s a good use of your time or my time.
There’s still going to be homework because you need to be putting this stuff into practice if it’s going to benefit you. But how do I evaluate your prayer? And even if your prayer is completely off in left field, how do I tell you that your prayer is not what it really needs to be without ticking you off so bad that you want to quit the class? I just don’t see that individual review is going to be helpful for this time.
So, what we’re going to do instead is video Q & A’s, not after every class but after certain classes. It’s going be an opportunity for you to submit a question, and then I will sit in front of the camera and answer them and if I need to do a demonstration, I’ll do a demonstration. I really don’t know what this is going to look like because I haven’t done it before, but I know some other teachers who do video Q and A’s, and it’s worked well for them. I think it’s worth trying out for this class.
Modules
Let’s get into the syllabus. Let’s get into what we’re going to cover. This is the syllabus module, the free introduction.
Module 1 is Polytheist Foundations. This is the concept of many gods who are worthy of our worship, and the concept of animism and the concept of ancestor veneration and of operative magic and all those things that go into making a Pagan and polytheist worldview. We’re going to cover all these. If you’ve taken my other classes, this will probably be review for you. I encourage you not to skip it, because I’ll be presenting the things that we need to cover for what’s coming up later in the class. But this is the foundation, and because we’re doing this, anybody can take this class.
Then we get into the details: Altars and Shrines and how they’re different and how you can build one, and what you can do with it.
Prayer – prayer is the core of my personal practice. It doesn’t have to be the core of your practice, but it may be. I’m going to suggest that it should be a part of your practice.
Meditation – our Buddhist friends teach mindfulness meditation and our Zen friends teach emptying the mind. This isn’t that. This is a different type of meditation. Certainly, the Buddhist meditation has value. But, it’s not what we do as Pagans. We do something slightly different. Or at least I do something slightly different.
Offerings – how we make offerings and why we make offerings and the benefits that come from it.
Reading and Study – whether this is the academic style study where you’re reading history and anthropology and religion, and also the devotional readings where you can read the hymns and poems, and works of praise that people have written to various deities.
Relationships With the Natural World – I’m a druid. I love nature. There is great value in following the sun throughout the course of a year, in following the moon throughout the course of a month and also throughout the course of the year, being in community with the spirits of the land where you live. If prayer is my number 1 spiritual practice, this is number 1A. It’s very important to me and I hope it will become important to you.
Grounding and Energy Work – So many times I see people talk about spiritual problems and especially magical problem they’re having, and somebody will say, “The first thing you need to do is ground and center! They’re like, “what does that mean?” It’s one of the things we assume that everybody knows how to do it, but everybody doesn’t know how to do it. There are different ways to do this. This is how I’ve learned how to do it, so it’s what I’m going to teach you.
Worship and Liturgy – why it’s important to honor our Gods and ancestors, and the ritual elements that go into forming and maintaining those relationships.
Building a Liturgical Calendar – Certainly we have the Eightfold Wheel of the Year. If you are most varieties of modern Pagan you either follow that or you’re at least familiar with it. It’s not the only way. Some traditions have their own calendars. The liturgical calendar is more than just the Wheel of the Year. We’re going to talk about what all can go on to your liturgical calendar.
And then the last module is Commitment, Persistence and Will – how we put together a spiritual practice and do it day after day, week after week, year after year, and how we build on that and the benefits that come from building on this.
Who should participate?
Well, the class is intended for Pagans and polytheists and witches and pretty much anybody who falls under the big tent of Paganism. But it’s also for anybody who’s interested in building a deeper spiritual practice, whatever your religious and spiritual persuasion may be.
There are no prerequisites. You don’t have to be a Pagan to take the class. You don’t have to be a polytheist. You don’t have to have taken any of the other classes. If this looks interesting to you, dive right in.
Course 5 is a Prerequisite for Course 6
However, this class is going to be a prerequisite for the next class. This class is Introduction to Spiritual Practice. The next one is going to be Intermediate Spiritual Practice. When I laid out this class, the list was way too long, even by shortening the modules. And there was a pretty clear line between the things I consider to be foundational and essential, and the deeper practices that may not interest everybody, but that if you are interested in it, you need a good foundation.
This builds that foundation. It also means that when we start Course 6, we don’t have to go back and do a foundational module or two or three, as I’ve done with some classes. So if you think you might want to take Intermediate Spiritual Practice, definitely take this class because it will be a prerequisite.
Class 6 will be early next year, probably late January, early February. We’ll see how things go.
Who should NOT Participate?
Who should not participate in this class? As always, anybody wanting to proselytize for anything is not welcome in this class. We’ve had Christians and all the classes. I expect that will be a Christian or two in this class. They participate respectfully and they are respectful of other other viewpoints and they are quite welcome in this class. But if you want to proselytize for fundamentalist Christianity or conservative Catholicism, or for aggressive atheism, go somewhere else. This isn’t for you.
If you’re expecting universal religion, you’re probably going to be disappointed in this class. This is a Pagan class presented from a polytheist perspective. Deep down, it’s not all the same. Now, if you believe that deep down it’s all the same, you’re still welcome to take the class, but you may be disappointed. You’re going to have to do your own translation from my Pagan polytheist perspective to yours.
Course Format
If you’ve taken classes with me before your is this will be familiar. We have weekly videos. Typically they’re released early on Thursday morning. They are on-demand. You watch the videos, do the exercises do the homework when you’re ready. There are so many teachers who teach classes that I would love to take, but they’re always at a time that doesn’t work for me. So, I’ve made my own classes on-demand. Take them when you want. The good news is that they’re here. You want to come back and review them in six months, your password will still work. Come in, go through the material again. If this is 2024/2025 and you’re just now finding this and you really want to take it all come on in. If it’s still here, you can still take the class.
There will be homework. Again, it’s practice. You’ve got to practice if you’re going to get anything with class. It’s not enough just to listen and try to absorb it, you’ve got to put it into practice. But, as previously noted, there will be no homework reviews this time.
There will be five video Q and A’s, and you’re encouraged to submit questions and we’ll see how that goes. We got to kind of make it up as we go. We’ll see how long they are, what form they take. But we’re going to do video Q and A’s this time.
Books You May Want
There are no required books. There is no required reading. I’m not going to say, here, read chapter one out of The Path of Paganism. But there are some books you may want, beginning with The Path of Paganism, my first book. If you haven’t taken any of my classes before, if you haven’t read the book, this would give you a good foundation for the kinds of things we’re going to be talking about that goes beyond what we’re going to cover in Module One.
The second book, Paganism in Depth, a Polytheist Approach covers some of this stuff in more detail. I thought about making this a textbook for this class but we already did Course One as the deeper dive into this book. And, that book came out in 2019. I wrote most of it in 2016/2017. I’ve learned some more things and so while that book is certainly still very good, I’ve got more stuff to talk about. So, not a textbook, but I do highly recommend it.
When we get to the section on devotional reading you may want one or more of the devotional anthologies. These just happened be four that I have from left to right, they are anthologies to Poseidon, to Hecate, to the Morrigan, and to the Horned God. There are many others. Do some Googling. If you’re a follower of a major…major deity, I don’t like that. If you’re a follower of one of the more popular deities, there is probably a devotional anthology for them. If there’s not, maybe you need to put one together. It’s not required but you may find this helpful when we get into the next section.
And then when we come to the grounding and energy work, particularly if you’re not done this before I highly, highly recommend, Mat Auryn’s Psychic Witch. I think every Pagan in the world has this book by now. The sales have been amazing. But, if you don’t have it, if you aren’t familiar with energy work, I strongly recommend it. It’s just the best introduction there is for it.
But again, none of them are required reading.
Private Facebook Group
There is a private Facebook group. It’s a secret group. Only members can find the group, see what’s in it and what they post. Don’t go looking for it. You can’t find it. If you sign up for the class and want to be part of the Facebook group, send me an email. Tell me what name you use on Facebook. I will send you an invitation.
It’s a good place to post questions – particularly if you didn’t like the answer I gave you or you want another opinion or it’s just something you want to talk about. It’s a good place to ask questions. There participants in this class and in this Facebook group who know just as much about this stuff as I do. So, there’s lots of resources that you can draw on if you have questions, conversations among classmates. It’s for all UTAO class participants. So the people from the first four classes are there. It’s not just for this class.
We also have a Discord server. Folks set that up back during the Operative Magic class. I don’t do much on Discord, but it’s there if you want to use it.
Participation of all of this is completely voluntary. If you don’t want to be on Facebook, if you don’t want to be on Discord, you’re not going to miss out anything critical by not being there.
Cost
I’m going to hold the cost the same as the other classes, $50 for the entire course. I’m going to put a lot more into this class than I did to the first four classes but I really want as many people to take this class as possible. I don’t promise I’m going to hold that cost going forward but for this one, it’s $50 for the class.
I prefer PayPal. The vast majority of you use PayPal. The two or three who don’t give me a credit card number that I run through PayPal because it’s the only credit card processor I have.
A limited number of scholarships are available. If you are having financial difficulties, just ask for a scholarship. I want people to take the class. Our economic situation is a lot better than it was this time last year, but the recovery has not been even. And, you know, people just have ups and downs in life. So if you’re in a bad place, ask for scholarship.
The more paid registrations and sponsorships I get, the more scholarships I can offer. For the last class, the participants were extremely generous. Several people said, I’d like to sponsor another student. Or in some cases, I’d like to sponsor two or three students. A couple of you said, you know, I can’t sponsor a whole student but I’d like to sponsor a half of one. Anything that you can contribute towards sponsorship helps me accept more scholarships and increases the number of people who can participate in the class.
The deadline for scholarship application is September 4. I don’t need the details. You don’t have to justify your need. You just have to say, I need a scholarship, and I will put your application on file.
Our Schedule
August 24 is the day that Module Zero, what you’re watching now is released. Registration opens, so go ahead and start registering now. Scholarship applications are accepted.
September 4 is the deadline for scholarship applications so midnight my time. Actually it’s whatever time I wake up the next morning. That’s the deadline application for scholarships.
By September 6, I will notify all the applicants whether we’re able to fund your scholarship or not.
Thursday, September 9, is when Module One becomes available – typically released early on Thursday mornings. There will be an email that goes out to saying, hey, it’s now ready. Go watch it.
We will continue on a weekly cadence for 11 weeks, the last module released on November 18. That’s the Thursday before Thanksgiving, the following Thursday. (If you want to know why we’re starting on September 9, I backed into that date because I wanted to finish before Thanksgiving. So if I put Module 11 on November 18 and then back up 11 weeks, we start on September 9.)
Sometime after that, in early December, we’ll do the post class survey, so you can give me your feedback about what went well, what went not so well, what you’d like to see in future classes.
Questions
If you have any questions, whether they are questions that are have right now, when you’re trying to decide if you want to sign up for the class or not, or if you’re into the class and something comes up along the way, ask and I’ll do my best to answer.
Response format will vary. I’m hoping to put as many of them in the video Q & A as I can. For something deeply personal, certainly I’ll answer by email. I may suggest that you put it in the Facebook group, particularly if it’s something kind of out of my area of expertise. Throw it out on the Facebook group, see what everybody else has to say. Lots of smart people in this class. And you know if it’s a deep question I may turn it into a blog post. I’m always looking for writing prompts and if your question is something that could be general generally applicable, it may show up on the blog.
I’m always available to answer class-related questions so again if you’re taking this class in 2024, and obviously you’re too late to get in on the video Q & A’s, if the class is still up and I’m still around, and I expect to be, then ask the question and I’ll do my best to answer.
I don’t do casual conversation. Don’t send me articles and say – hey, read this and tell me what you think. Do not send me videos and tell me to watch them. If you send me a video, I can almost guarantee you that I won’t watch it. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t like to do things like that. And so I don’t. So don’t do casual conversation, but if you have a question that relates to the class and the material, by all means ask and I will do my best to answer.
Signing Up
If you’ve taken classes with me before, you know what you’re doing now. The easiest way is simply to send me an email, John@undertheancientoaks.com and say, John, I want to take the spiritual practice class, and we’ll go from there. You can use the contact form. Really, if you’re watching this, it’s easier for you and for me if you just do a straight email. But if you want to use the contact form, I’m not going to turn you down.
When you do that, I’ll send you a PayPal invoice. When it’s done, I’ll register you for the class. If you’ve taken classes with me before, all I have to do is just extend your authorization to the new class. If you haven’t taken classes with me before, you’ll get a WordPress email telling you to go change your password. And once you do that, you will be set.
Expect a 24-hour turnaround. Now, if you catch me when I’m on my computer and I’m not busy with anything, you may get a five-minute turnaround. But, don’t expect that. Expect that we can get things turned around in about a day. Travelling, it may take a little longer. I don’t plan on traveling any during the main signup period but again, if this is 2024, you may catch me on vacation. So it could be longer, but particularly for this first run, expect 24 hours.
And that’s it. I am really looking forward to this class. This is the core of my Paganism. Paganism isn’t something that we believe, it’s something we do. And this is what we do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and so on. This is the foundation for my religion, for my spirituality, for my magic. And I am excited to show you what it is that I do and in a depth that I haven’t done before. So, go sign up for the class, and we will get started on September 9.