A Quick and Dirty Summation of the mup Pantheon

I was talking with my friend Kat the other day, and offered to show her my pantheon if she showed me hers. What resulted was, I think, a more useful and better little explanation of why each deity is present in mup and what their presence means than I have ever written or said, so I wanted to post it here.

One of the things I didn't include is that each deity feels like . . . well, either (a) they are some sort of representative or diplomat or gateway to their respective pantheons (Inanna to the dingirene, Tlazolteotl to the teteo, ملك طاووس to the Feri gods and the حەوت نهێنى, etc.) or (b) each has a bit of a retinue (Antinous and the Tetrad++ and others, ملك طاووس and Nimue, Inanna and Ninshubur (read from p. 49 in the link), et cetera)

The mup pantheon came together as I opened myself up to genderqueer entities, though a few just pushed their way in.

Antinous, for example, just showed up at PantheaCon 2007 (before the schism) and like Hadrianus Caesar I just had to be near him. As regards the original seed of mup (to grow a queer theylogy alongside masculine theologies and feminine thealogies), Antinous showed that he was working his angle on that (despite not being trans* himself) several years later, when he instigated the birth of the Tetrad++, a group of six non-cisgender deities I also work with, who were then birthed by means of my friend, sacerdos doctorque mustagogosque Antinoi P. Sufenas Virius Lupus. The myth of their birth is a beautifully and powerfully written and skillfully tranneled work by PSVL. It's titled All-Soul All-Body All-Love All-Power (All-Strife All-Acceptance), or PPPP(PP) for short.

अर्धनारीश्वर-with-अखिलन्देश्वरी pulls in one aspect of genderqueerness into the mup pantheon and also ties into a larger theme in the entire religion. To butcher an interpretation I have heard of गते गते पारगते पारसंगते बोधि स्वाहा: "First you transcend the duality of male and female, then you transcend the duality of duality and nonduality, then you transcend transcendence, than you are enlightened."  अखिलन्देश्वरी, Nevernotbrokengoddess, ties into a thread running through mup. With silliness being placed as mup's central altered state of consciousness and the fundamental quality from which magic springs (instead of Will), mup work can often be seen as light and shallow, but that silliness is married in a not-entirely-causal manner to a deep love and worship of he less-than-pleasant bits of this immanently-divine world.  अखिलन्देश्वरी is the one who tells us that we are most powerful in the moments of our greatest despair, pain, and brokenness

Azathoth has to do with some of the existentialism inherent in mup. The idea is that if you trace any and every causal chain back, you find it eventually loops back on itself. All things are caused by their effects. Therefore, the causa causans, the primum mobile, the center of everything, must be the Blind Idiot God, the Nuclear Chaos.

Ἔρις holds down the link between silliness and the unpleasant very strongly. Also, Mommy wouldn't let me not include her.

Ἑρμαφρόδιτος holds down the "both" element of genderqueerness, as well as surprisingly challenging a lot of unrecognized beliefs. They also, of course, have elements of their parents running through their magick.

Ἁρποκράτης/Hoor-paar-kraat is the New Aeon, the Revolution, the Crowned and Conquering Child whose formula of power (replacing that of Sacrifice, held by the Dying and Reborn King) is Play.  Both he and Antinous, of course, are pueri aeterni.

Inanna, of course, is Inanna, is sovereignty, is queen, is dignity and beauty and the Lady of Many Me. Genderqueers hold the magicks of many genders, and Inanna helps bring that in, along with a lot of third-gender/trans* magicks. She and her husband bring in the relationship between city and wild and so a lot of mup rewilding/anarcho-primitivism resides in the two of them. She's also kinky as fuck, Ninshubur's Domme and also turned on by Ereshkigal's meathook.

Inanna and the puer aeterni come together in the muppet's Black Heart of Innocence.

ملك طاووس, the Peacock Lord, is queer upon queer (two genderfluid twins acting as one, like two candles held so they have a single flame, which flame is ملك طاووس) and the height of the sacred sensual.

Pombagira, the Divine Whore, Gypsy Queen (matron of all outsiders, including trans* folk), Lady of the Seven Crossroads and of the Graveyard, is kind of an all-purpose deity in mup. if you want something, go to a trivia at midnight, play some Robert Johnson and wait for something weird to happen, which will tell you the price. Decide if you wanna pay and wait for another weird thing to happen: pay the price and make your request. Also, Maria Colomba is the one abused people turn to after they have left their situation of abuse to remember their beauty.

Tlazolteotl, "Shit Goddess", tells us that the disgusting and degrading and unpleasant is holy too. She contributes the idea of an ethics based on motion and the mup understanding of sacrifice.

Deep Reality is that which causes our experience; we can't talk meaningfully about it, but it seems to be one of the truest things I can say: "I seem to be experiencing things, and something is almost certainly causing it."

Lacuna . . . well, all I can tell you about Lacuna is what a lacuna is and that sometimes I don't say things, and those things are for Lacuna.

The saints of the name are parts of the soul, yours and not yours, one group for each name the muppet has. They live on the border of your Self and they are the agents of your magick, and they are also worthy of worship and cultus.

Finally, the Beast with Flowered Horns is the mup equivalent of salvation or nirvana or redemption or baraka -- what all this work is working towards and what we already are. The Beast is the muppet possessed by all the mup gods, standing in eir power, with the saints of eir name dancing and playing on eir skin. The Beast is the accidental, active, and mindful presence and participation in the experiencing of things. The Beast is a deity who is made up and the Beast explicitly charges us to make up our gods.

Accommodations and Accessibility

Can we talk about the difference between accommodation and accessibility for a moment?

Something has come up twice in the past week in VERY disparate contexts. For those people who may be reading this whose mouths spoke or fingers typed the comments to which I am responding; please know that this isn't about you. I respect you and I respect what you have done and are doing around these issues. I am somewhat venting and somewhat explaining my interpretations, views, and stances on this.

That thing which has occurred twice is that, when discussing the presence of ASL interpreters at an event (two dramatically different) events, I have heard comments or questions to the effect that interpreters will be required only if it is known in advance that D/deaf people will be attending.

Lez be fairy queer about this: that statement is accurate to the ADA and at least semi-reasonable for the lack of perfectly reliable predictive psychic powers among the populace. But lez also be fairy queer about this other thing: we don't only install the ramps when we know someone with a mobility issue will be coming to the event and then remove them afterwards.

The difference is that of accommodation v. accessibility. It is also the difference between friendship (individual and interpersonal) and hospitality (social and landscape-oriented). At a panel I attended at one of these events, Elena Rose and Dee Shull reframed the issue of gender inclusivity in a powerful way: that of hospitality. Considering that this was a pagan event -- and hospitality ranges from vital to central in many, if not most, paganisms -- this was an important reframe.

Accommodation, which might be renamed friendship, is when someone tells you that they need something, and you provide it. It is occasionally what we offer to people with sense disabilities -- D/deaf or blind people, for instance. Certainly, a lot of anti-bigotry work within and without oneself consists of this -- for example, not responding with "Not all men" when a woman or feminine/femme person is asking you for emotional support around the microaggressions they face everyday. Accommodation is terribly, truly, and deeply important, do not get me wrong.

However, it is important to remember that systemic problems (such as ableism) cannot be solved by individual solutions. That is where accessibility comes in. Accessibility is a state of being wherein the people of the oppressor class take on the work that has historically been the burden of the oppressed: to find ways for them to have access and safety. This is what is generally offered to people with mechanical disabilities -- mobility or fatigue issues, for example. We build the ramps and the resting spots at the proper distance and we generally make our spaces easier for them to navigate whether or not we know they will be there.

Note that neither accommodation nor accerssibility is often offered to people with cognitive or behavioral divergences.

Hospitality is what will end bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination, exactly BECAUSE it is landscape-oriented and passive on the part of the oppressed group. When D/deaf people have the safety of knowing that they will have access to what is being presented, without having to invest any energy or spend any spoons in doing or achieving that, only then will their level of interaction be at their decision, rather than ours as hearing people.

A lot of people seem to think that we should accomplish accommodations before we accomplish accessibility. It's certainly the principle the ADA was based upon. And it is true that accommodations require smaller actions, require less work on our part, then accessibility. Haven't we been told over and over that there is value in doing the easy part first so that we have the ability to focus when we tackle the hard stuff? If everyone is providing accommodations, then won't that be effectively the same as achieving accessibility? But if one is not hospitable, if one does not create a welcoming atmosphere around them and in their space, they will never be close enough to people to become friends with them. Three out of four white people in this country don't have any black friends. I assure you that most of those people have no intention of excluding black people from their social networks -- in fact, many of them will tell you that they wish they had black friends! -- but they have not put the effort into creating an environment where black people feel welcome in their lives. Accessibility, thus, breeds accommodations rather than the other way around.

The presence of ASL interpreters at an event is as non-negotiable to me as the presence of ramps and elevators in a building, regardless of what the ADA says. I am aware that it can be expensive, but the alternative is telling D/deaf people that they are not welcome here, and that is far more expensive in my accounting.

A first note re: PantyCon

You know, frankly, I'm surprised that it's a surprise to so many white people that this entry was taken to be racist. I first learned about this when Jamie announced it at the Bringing Race to the Table panel, but I wasn't looking at her. I was looking at Crystal and Xochitl Lopez-Ramirez​'s faces. That told me all I needed to know. When I saw the text later, I saw exactly why it was so hurtful. Let me list the reasons:

• Ironically enough, ironic racism turns out to still be racism and without even a punchline, the microaggressions themselves become the punchline. This ends up belittling the everyday lived and painful experience of people of color -- which isn't even ironic racism, it is just plain unadorned racism! 
• Now, compare to the Cultural Appropriation joke-panel which has appeared in the PantyCon as long as I can remember. That one is obviously and clearly an exaggeration. Though I have seen people pop up espousing such views, explicitly endorsing cultural appropriation as a spiritual path (and somehow manage to have just barely enough respect for them for other reasons to not name them here), even my friends of color express shock and surprise at seeing their comments -- they are beyond the pale. However, the statements in the Ignoring Racism panel are things people say in all earnesty, seriousness, and sincerity ALL THE TIME. Hell, Monday of Con, 5 white people in the Staff Lounge attacked me as a supposed "racist" (news flash: "racism against whites" is a nonsensical concept) because I told one of them she was lying when she said she wasn't "going to do anything involving racism for like the next 20 months." That's not a joke, that's not satire, that's not humor. And neither was the PantyCon
• It's triggering and only racism says it's okay to trigger Pagans of Color like that. 

I know I said I knew exactly, but that is almost certainly a lie -- I'm not a person of color, so I almost certainly missed something (and probably multiple of them!)

To PantyCon:
#sorrynotsorry but good intentions don't matter now. Having a person of color on your staff doesn't matter now. Saying, "But CoG started it" doesn't matter now. Pointing out that CoG needs to face their bullshit, while true, not only doesn't matter now, it is not mutually exclusive with you dealing with your bullshit.

Signed,
Frustrated White Pagan