Pagan Idolatry – How To Do It And Why You Should

I prostrate myself before you, O Ganeshvara,
Your icon is a hallowed charm
That assures fulfillment of all desire.
With the fanning of your broad ears,
you scatter away all obstacles,
As though they were weightless as cotton.

We performed pagan rites involving sex and magick under her serene gaze

My first pagan altar was a simple bedside affair, presided over by the postcard of a somewhat generic goddess whom I took to be Ostara. I was nearly 40, deliberately learning a new skill after 17 years of Christian fundamentalism, and it struck me that altars had relatively few necessary/sufficient components, to wit:

1) An image of the Divine—you can’t practice idolatry without an idol.
2) A defined area, over which the image presides.
3) Some tokens of the things or changes desired.
4) Offerings to the Divine.

The actual subject of veneration is your choice and there are few rules. Basically, find a pantheon that appeals to you. It might be as elaborate and time-honored as the Hindu cosmology, or as up to date and ephemeral as the Power Puff girls. Just make sure the being chosen speaks to you in some way, or at least gives you a little frisson of naughtiness.

Images and idols aren’t mysterious: they’re among the earliest artifacts of humankind, and have an honorable place in our cultural evolution. Again (and always), you make the rules; if you’re a Star Wars fan, for example, you might like to bow to a bust of Darth Vader—kinky! The idol’s form is not too important—sculpture, painting, photos, clay figures, etc. all seem to ‘work’—though of course it is hard to resist the idea that fancier, more elaborate images invoke the god more effectively. And so, idols have been the focus of considerable skill and capital over the years, from gilt messiahs to 100-foot Buddhas.

Your idol need not be over-elaborate. The basic principle is that it should seem fitting to you, the idolater. As I have said, the idol I venerated after abandoning Christ was a simple postcard image, not even graven, of a goddess… and yet I attribute great and powerful change in my life to ‘Her’. Certainly she kicked Jehovah’s ass when it came to delivering the goods.

Likewise, your defined area can certainly be an entire building, or a dedicated room, but it is more likely to be a shelf or window ledge or some other little niche and this is fine. When it comes to idols, ‘don’t spoil the darlings’ I always say. But it is important that the area be circumscribed in space and consigned to the god. You don’t want to be setting coffee down in the god’s precinct, and here’s why: what you are creating is sacred space, a sort of threshold between this plane and the Immateria, and such a space cannot exist unless it is defined and contained; otherwise, material reality might be corrupted… and there are rules against that. And since the definition or boundary of the space is important, it follows that emphasizing the boundary will enhance the positive results you are seeking. So be clear, at least in your mind. The altar should be this shelf or this tabletop or, perhaps, the area surrounded by this chalk line or piece of string. In the terminology of Hakim Bey, definer of temporary autonomous zones (TAZs), you are creating a ‘zone’, an area that is ‘autonomous’ in that ordinary rules don’t apply. The effect is real, so have fun—and be alert.

Never forget that the altar is all about you. An altar (or entire religion, for that matter) that exists solely to placate some ineffable being without addressing the desires of his, her, or its supplicants is not only sad, but perverse—gods and goddesses exist to serve Man, and not vice-versa. So place, on your altar, tokens of your desire. For example, if you would like a new car of a particular model to come into your life, you might find the the same model ‘matchbox’ car to use as a token, or if you desire a nicer home you could place a Monopoly house. In my case, since the end of my time as a believer corresponded roughly with the end of my first marriage, I was after a new relationship. So I found a postcard—hey, they’re cheap—of a couple kissing exuberantly at an outdoor café. The picture captured the essence of the strong, happy love I was looking for, and several weeks after placing it I met the Farm Girl, who eventually became my second wife. Not only was she an exuberant kisser, not only did she slightly resemble the woman depicted, but she had one more interesting characteristic related to the postcard…

Some weeks after meeting the Farm Girl, I took a closer look at the postcard as I removed it from the altar (it had served its purpose) and noticed, for the first time, that there was a dog in the picture, under the café table, on a leash being held by the woman; it seemed like more than coincidence that the Farm Girl was a dog owner. So can you blame me if I now scrutinize my tokens a little more carefully? Because honestly?—the dog was a pain in the ass.

And of course you must please the god or goddess with offerings because otherwise, what’s in it for them? But don’t go overboard; we are talking, after all, about divine beings… surely they can provide for themselves adequately. It really is the thought that counts here… so put some thought into it. Don’t, for example, offer alcohol to Ganesha: he prefers candy. For Ostara, since she is associated with Spring—the word ‘Easter’ is derived from her name—flowers always seemed appropriate, and once I planted a tree and left the receipt for the tree on her altar. In effect you are bribing the incorporeal intelligence of your choice, but since the bribe is symbolic the absolute value of the bribe is unimportant. What matters is the appropriateness of the offering, its taste and style—as one classic manual of idolatry says, “Whatever has a defect, you shall not offer, for it will not be accepted for you.” – Leviticus 22:20.

In short—and as in so many things, damn it—you have to care; in all their guises, gods are said to read hearts and if your offering is halfhearted you can expect far less than half effort from the Divine.

Letting Go and Moving On
During our brief time together, the Farm Girl and I elevated our worship of Ostara considerably. The farm we bought together was named for Her, we publicly venerated Her at the large solstice parties we threw, and Her altar expanded from the simple bedside affair to a dedicated table presided over by an exquisite and eerily lovely print of the Goddess that occasionally winked at me. We performed pagan rites involving sex and magick under her serene gaze, enjoying ourselves tremendously and, not incidentally, experiencing staggering rushes of synchronistic blessings on our affairs. And this is all as it should be: if your circumstances improve, and if you feel your god has had a hand in the improvement, it only makes sense that the god’s circumstances and rites should also improve.

Still, when my marriage to the Farm Girl collapsed I was happy enough to divorce Ostara as well; the two seemed a set. I drifted godless for a while, making my way in the world with no patron whatsoever, until a series of chance encounters led me to Ganesha, the god of obstacles both removed and imposed. His cheerful, elephantine countenance, His placid potbelly, and the elaborate symbology available to His worshippers make for quite a change from Ostara, PBUH. The essentials, however, are the same. For an idol I have a small sculpted head brought to me from Lhasa by an adventurous friend. His altar space is a former phone nook in the entryway of my apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. The tokens of desire I place are idiosyncratic, but meaningful to me and, apparently, to Him. I offer candies purchased for the purpose from an Indian grocer in my neighborhood. I was advised on this matter by the Indian family who operates my parking garage: the Ganesh altar they keep is considerably more ornate than my own, but they encourage my efforts and are genial fellow devotees. They have given me, for example, the correct incense to burn before the Great Lord.

I pray to the idol, and occasionally prostrate my self before it—it’s kind of fun, and I enjoy the act’s vaguely sexual undercurrents. And yes, Ganesha has been effective in my life. Under His auspices my business improved, travel opportunities came into my life, He oversaw my move to San Francisco, provided transient but satisfying romantic encounters and, when the time came for me to meet the Diva, PBUH, dispelled seemingly insurmountable obstacles to our courtship with a single, trumpeting blast from His mighty trunk. He is, in other words, the Shit.

How Serious Am I?
So how serious am I about all this? Quite serious, in that I do believe my heathen idolatry is at least partially responsible for various and sundry good things in my life, and serious in that I do feel that prayers and requests made to Ostara and Ganesha have been ‘answered’. But when it comes to my explanation for the tangible effects observed, the mechanism that explains the power I am tapping into… maybe not so serious.

Consider this possible continuum of faith: on one end, the ‘low faith’ end, we posit that the practice of idolatry is merely a technology that tames the unconscious, a trick that focuses latent intellectual powers on issues that bedevil us. On the ‘high faith’ end of the continuum we posit that the gods and goddesses, in all their divine glory, actually exist on some plane, actually monitor the few or many altars devoted to them, and decide, based on the quality of devotion, who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, who gets gifts and who gets lice. In this view, it’s all up to the incorporeal intelligence being supplicated, and we are servant to their awful whim.

The low faith end, it should be noted, is not especially controversial. That focusing techniques like visualization, goal setting, and affirmation are effective is believed by much of humanity, and there is ample scientific and anecdotal evidence to support the idea. Basically, the prayers and ritual of idolatry are viewed as another method of harnessing the variety of mental processes that are not under conscious control. The high faith end, I suppose, is a little controversial… except that billions of humans have believed some version of it for thousands of years.

When asked where my beliefs fall on this continuum, I used to hedge a bit and natter on about an intermediate view involving Jungian archetypes, mass thought forms, genetic memory, belief systems, synchronicities, and on and on, ad nauseum. But more recently I’ve realized that the continuum is not a line, it’s a circle, and the two extremes I propose are not opposites… they’re identical.

In other words if, as Alan Moore says, “The one place gods undoubtedly exist is in human minds,” then it’s possible that all our sacrifice and devotion, all our prayer and ritual, all our religion, are but ways to tame the gods between our ears, the vast unconscious forces that shape and sustain us and upon which we are borne as fleas are borne on elephants.

In other other words, those of ceremonial magician Lon Milo Duquette, ‘Yes, it is all in your head… but you have no idea how big your head is!’

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Tagged as: belief systems, magick, philosophy, religion, weird beliefs