Imagining Pagan saints
After making a throwaway comment yesterday about not aspiring to be a Pagan saint, I started wondering what such a being would look like. It almost sounds like an oxymoron. Sainthood is so tied up with the idea of Christianity. Other religions have terms for enlightened spirits who either come amongst us by choice to help us lesser mortals along, or those who attain special status. In Shinto, a highly spiritual person might become a Kami after death, for example. There are also individuals – Ghandi specifically springs to mind, whose spiritual qualities transcend the specific religion and are widely recognised.
As far as I know, there isn’t a Pagan word that covers this. If you know otherwise, please, please do post a comment. If you want to offer a brand new word, don’t hesitate. It may be that we are missing a thing and need to make it up. It’s not just a case of looking round the other faiths and feeling envious of their saints, gurus and masters. Recognition and parise should be part of what we do, but how do you praise what you don’t have a word for? I don’t like borrowing from other world religions to fill in the gaps.
My second, almost inevitable thought was to ask, if we had such a title, such recognition of enlightened, and deeply spiritually involved status, who would merit it? We’ve had, and have, some interesting figures amongst our leaders, but I can’t think of any one person I look at and think yes, this is the person I want to emulate. My pagan elder ideal would be fighting injustice, working for peace, would show compassion in everything they did, would share wisdom freely, abhor politics in the small sense, live close to nature, eschew commercial material distractions whilst embracing the good things in life, would be erudite, inspiring and walk their talk. I can think of a lot of people who are clearly working to be many, if not all of those things. If you want to name someone as being a shining example, by these, or your own measures, please do leave a comment.
Saints, Gurus, Kami, Messiahs, Prophets – they are not run of the mill. Pretty much by definition. Much of what underpins Paganism is equitable – we are all able to be our own priests should we choose. We could all write our own sacred book. We can craft our own prayers and rituals, make our own path. But we do have hierarchy, we have archdruids, high priests and various other titles. I’m not fond of titles, but the kind I’m talking about becomes ridiculous if self proclaimed. Recognition is a whole other issue. But what if we took that essentially Pagan notion of equal access back to the idea of people who transcend, why could we not all aspire to be whatever the Pagan equivalent of a saint is?
Once upon a time a lot of people where writing sacred books, speaking as prophets, performing miracles and becoming saints. We moved away from that as we moved out of the medieval era. Arguably, the essence of many Pagan paths is precisely the kind of magic and vision that made the saints and prophets of old. It’s hard to imagine how something like that could really become part of mainstream culture again, without going back to the crazier superstitions that we’ve also moved away from. Can we be both rationally enlightened, and visionary? I think we can.
