Apostasy: Terraforming Tradition as the Crow Flies

“I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti

Organized religion has often caused a bad taste in the mouths of self-proclaimed free-thinkers throughout history. Today we hear many people say they are “spiritual but not religious” with a certain smug tone—implying they’ve freed themselves from the mass dogma of whatever church they’ve long since diverged from. I certainly cannot fault anyone for this as I have been blazing my own trail of spiritual truth from a very young age, but I encourage reflection on the ways in which our unique connection (or lack thereof) to the mystic is shaped by patterns learned from the very traditions we hope to eschew. So many atheists with Christian backgrounds engage in the evangelical practice of sharing their perspective in relentlessly condescending ways. So many spiritualists organize themselves in ways learned from the churches they were raised in while continuing to bemoan those very churches as backward and oppressive. While, of course, we can build and improve upon these familiar patterns, engaging in them unconsciously often holds unintentional consequences both politically and personally.

Apostasy isn’t easy. I grew up in a rural community in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains. We attended a backwoods United Methodist church which, as far as backwoods religion goes, was not the worst. While I was not barraged every Sunday with hellfire, brimstone, speaking in tongues, or snake handling, our church services were characterized by oppressive silence both literally and philosophically. Alienation and gossip were the means by which order was enforced. All are condemned to whatever degree one cannot conform. While Hell wasn’t necessarily a hot topic at the pulpit, at a certain young age we were taught about eternal damnation for all those who are not saved. Since we aren’t baptized at birth in this tradition, I was overcome with fear. At a young age I repented of my sins at the altar, the church laid hands on me, and I was baptized in a creek. I was warned to be careful of the leeches on the rocks, which was kind of funny considering I was there to be “washed in the blood” of none other than Jesus Christ himself. They dunked me in that cold freshwater stream, and everyone praised the Lord, but I felt nothing.

I fondly remember my first steps toward abandoning the mantle of Christianity. I recall a friend expressing to me that she did not believe in God, and I had to make peace with the fact that she would go to Hell for this. Rather, I made peace with the fact that she would not go to Hell as she was clearly a wonderful person. Soon after I discovered a book called the Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff and found myself enamored with the Taoism as described therein. Emerging from Christianity into an ancient Chinese philosophy, I soon acquired an English translation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and began to call myself a Taoist. This shift in my thinking was liberating but also isolated me in my Bible Belt hometown and backwoods Methodist church. In pursuit of apostasy, I had cut myself off from the community afforded by conformity and became desperate for fellowship.

Upon encountering other American Taoists in the wild after leaving my hometown, I noticed a pattern: they were white, they were male, and they were intellectually small. I found this deeply concerning and began to reflect on my spiritual identity as a white colonizer consuming an eastern tradition I first learned of from a book by yet another American white man. Eventually, I identified myself as a materialist, honoring the ways in which I’d been educated and empowered by my study of Taoism while simultaneously acknowledging my lack of cultural context in my attempt to practice as a Taoist.

Moving forward in time, my atheism became anti-theism, and I became more and more closed off spiritually while also more and more lonely as a spiritual person. As much as I buried my head in the ground, I never left the spiritual plane of Appalachian folk religion. Finally, my heart was opened as I found fellowship in Ypsilanti among fellow apostates of Christianity seeking answers elsewhere. Suddenly, spirituality felt accessible and safe, no longer riddled with the torments of being a non-believer in the Bible Belt and full of encouragement toward a unique exploration of the mystic. However, I also began to observe patterns similar to the trappings of western consumption of eastern thought. This led me to dig into the history of the New Age.

My research took me past the 1960s and past the Golden Dawn into the bizarre drama of the Theosophical Society. Herein I saw the most brazen and crass iteration of Christian Apostasy in Eastern Clothing in the form of organized religion. Not only did the society seek to commodify and cater a buffet of eastern traditions to the pseudo-intellectual colonizer, but also form an international network in hopes of garnering political influence against the tide of Christianity. While one might applaud them for striking out against the oppressive regime of Christian influence, it is unignorable how clearly they follow the model of organized religion—right down to the draconian pursuit of power.

The true tipping of the ship came from their choice to fulfill the bizarre prophecy of Helena Blavatsky, an apostate of Russian Orthodoxy, regarding a World Teacher. This messianic figure would, according to Blavatsky, bring an end to dogma and usher in the next stage of human evolution. In some ways, this sounds lovely! In other ways, this sounds like the coming of the Antichrist from the Book of Revelation. Regardless, after Blavatsky’s death, the leaders of the society chose to groom a fourteen-year-old Indian boy with special needs to become said World Teacher. This boy’s name was Jiddu Krishnamurti. They formed an organization around him called the Order of the Star in the East to herald his coming as the World Teacher, and for a decade he followed their agenda before declaring “truth is a pathless land” and dissolving the Order. “The coming had gone wrong,” claimed the man who discovered Krishnamurdi. The messiah had become an apostate!

I was astonished by this story, seeing reflections both in my own journey as someone indoctrinated from a young age into religious tradition and in the culture of the New Age around me. A contradiction became clearer than ever: the mysticism of the individual and the desire for fellowship. Organizations formed out of a need for spiritual community holistically forming money-making agendas that rival the mega-churches of Joel Olsteen alongside lone practitioners so lost in their own world of mysticism they could not connect with community at all. These are of course extreme examples of the negative as this contradiction is naturally resolved through diverse communities of unique practitioners finding common ground and supporting one another’s journey. I have found the latter to be the majority by and large in Ypsilanti.

This still leaves the question of how we navigate apostasy as colonizers when eastern thought seems so ripe for the picking. Even when we leave the East alone, many apostates become drawn to appropriating other traditions closer to the imperial core, such as the very cultures we are actively colonizing as settlers. Many closed practices fall prey to tourism from white people and others become misrepresented and misunderstood as they are stolen and commodified for consumption. This raises the question: where do we turn when the traditions we are raised in no longer suit us? What templates can we follow without stepping on the toes of people who are already disenfranchised?

First of all, cultural appropriation is far from the only interaction we can have with traditions and philosophies outside of our own culture. We can appreciate, honor, and learn from all sorts of cultures through the course of our lives and may be better for it, as long as we avoid claiming them as our own. Most importantly, we should not be exploiting these cultures for profit.

Second, we can take a chapter from Krishnamurti’s book and embrace choiceless awareness. So much of our desire to hodge-podge colonized traditions into a fusion restaurant of enlightenment comes from the lack of identity facing the apostate, particularly Christians of European descent. Rather than focusing on constructing an identity outside of our own cultural traditions, questioning the need for identity and thereby dissolving the functions that lead us to choose can reduce conflict. If we don’t choose to represent ourselves as one thing or another, we further embrace the ever-changing shapeless nature of truth. The less we think we know, the better!

Lastly, in my own experience I have found deep serenity in lifting my head from the sand and facing the spiritual tradition I was raised in. Thus began a process of terraforming Appalachian folk religion as a spiritual plane to make a home for myself as a unique individual. While not fully embracing choiceless awareness, which Krishnamurti himself said is impossible, I have ceased to choose truths outside of what forms holistically between mystic and myself. Therein I find a great deal of creative agency and personal power.

Terraforming with aspirations of choicelessness does not necessarily result in a perfect spiritual perspective. Try as we might, wrestling with the toxic patterns of our spiritual upbringing as well as the various biases resulting from our proxy to white supremacy is a lifelong process. Within my own white Protestant background, there is a deep well of misogyny, antisemitism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and more that must be addressed as part of the ongoing process of finding my home within this culture. I do not believe Protestantism or even white people to be unique in these patterns of bigotry, but this is the path of truth relevant to me. This is part of why taking on aspects, or even the entirety of other traditions, without continuously doing the work of uprooting these biases can result in ignorant, irreverent, and exploitative relationships to the very spiritual knowledge we seek to learn from.

On the positive, I have experienced a great deal of spiritual growth through terraforming my spiritual plane. I have recalled what first drew me toward Taoism which was the feeling that God is not a creator or the personification of the infinite but a river flowing. Similar to but not the same as the Tao, I call this concept the Big River, and I am grateful for Lao Tzu’s insights allowing me to better understand my own relationship to the mystic. I have dived deeply into the folk magic of Appalachia learning to use the Bible as a spell book and perform divination with playing cards. I have undertaken intense ritual work to establish myself as Mother Behemoth, a veritable shapeshifting experiment that’s allowed me to push back on the spiritual warfare that’s plagued my psyche since birth. I have used this power to make God and the Devil my familiars, and every day I take new steps toward enlightenment on my own terms.

Fellowship remains a riddle unsolved, but I have found such an incredible community that loves me just as I am. Many of us are apostates, and not just of the white settler variety, for which I am very grateful. Every unique perspective brings us closer to spiritual truth. We may not make a great deal of money in the way we organize ourselves, but we’ve created a vast and colorful cosmos between one another that holds many paths. I am so grateful for apostasy, so thankful for the art of terraforming without choice, and so thankful for Jiddu Krishnamurti boldly standing against the indoctrination of his youth. His wisdom is in my eyes a golden source of inspiration for the New Age. After all, he never actually denied being the World Teacher.

Audrey Rosanna Gabrielle Hall is a dirt witch from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains raised on a cattle farm and baptized in a creek. She studies cartomancy as well as Appalachian folk magic. For readings and services in witchcraft, she is Madame Brute, the Bull Woman of Ypsilanti. She performs bestial chant rituals as Mother Behemoth. You can contact her about readings and/or rituals at brunhildabrute@gmail.com.

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