Silent
Silent provides the tools for seekers to recognize their path and enables self-reliance for spiritual and magickal growth.
Seekers gain insight from his work and find their inner calm from his ability to listen and help others reflect.
The Heresy of Titles.
Silent • September 4, 2023
Why I Avoid Abrahamic Religious Titles.
The tl;dr video is at the bottom of the post :)
As a Pagan and eclectic Wiccan, I avoid the titles and trappings of Christian, Jewish, or Islamic clergy members. Accepting such titles denies religious identity and cultural norming for Pagans. While some of my colleagues wear Roman collars in green or other colors, I avoid them for the same reason. Some consider it a form of syncretism, but I feel it’s a form of assimilation.
Clergy Garb
In the Roman Catholic Church, wearing a Roman collar by priests is a traditional symbol of their ordination and commitment to their priestly duties. The color of the collar, usually black or white, does not hold any particular significance beyond being a uniform signifier of their role as a priest.
In other Christian denominations, such as Anglican and Lutheran, wearing a clerical collar is also familiar, but the color may vary from denomination to sect.
In other religions, such as Judaism and Islam, clerical garb may be less standardized and vary according to the specific tradition. The overall aim of these religious garbs is to create an outward symbol that reflects the religious duties and responsibilities of the wearer.
Ultimately, using clerical garb is a way for religious leaders to represent their pastoral role and commitment to their community visually. Pagans wear a range of dress. In Wiccan traditions, the most common signifier is a cord or cingulum. The number and colors of the cord represent degrees of initiation and specific meaning to a tradition. In Heketean traditions, three cords may represent a third degree with
- White as the stars (Above)
- Red as blood (the world we live in)
- Black as chthonic (the underworld)
We are not even scratching the surface of the discussion of clerical garb, but that’s not the intent.
Titles
Members of the clergy in various religions are often referred to by different titles depending on their role, tradition, or hierarchical position. While some religions have unique names for certain situations, others share titles. This is not uncommon since many religious traditions have historically influenced each other through intercultural exchange and adaptation. Reverend is the most common title accepted in the US and other Western countries. Reverend is an Episcopal title/designation as part of the church hierarchy.
In the United States, which has been deeply influenced by European culture and Christianity, the usage of Episcopal titles (Bishop, Reverend, Pastor, etc.) is widespread. Episcopal traditions emphasize clerical hierarchy and the various responsibilities of each clerical level.
The reason why Episcopal religious titles are sometimes used for non-Episcopal religious leaders is due to a few factors:
1. Cultural Linguistic Influence: The United States, as a predominantly Christian nation, has based most of its religious terminology on Christian traditions, making Christian terms universally understood to some extent. Episcopal titles may have become somewhat generic with time, being understood to indicate a role rather than strictly a position within the Episcopalian tradition.
2. Interfaith Dialogue: In interfaith dialogues or multireligious environments like the United States, it is considered normative to use religious titles that are universally understood. While the specific meanings of these titles differ across traditions, it makes the dialogue-less contentious and less likely to offend the dominant culture, in this case, Christianity.
3. Erasing Identity: Adopting titles and language to facilitate mutual understanding and communication is deeply troubling. It is a road fraught with the perils of erasing religious and cultural identity.
Nevertheless, it's important to note that respecting each religion's unique naming for their representatives is part of honoring and acknowledging the diverse and rich world in which we live. As Pagans, should we not offer ourselves the same accommodation?
So, what do you call yourself?
Without speaking for other traditions and Pagan practices, I will broadly say that we decide and put forward for ourselves. The demand and our acceptance of a need for commonality is the worst form of privilege. I wrote about some of my experiences in “Your Attempt to Syncretize Me.”
As a priest of Eris, She gives no titles, and we assume none. To Eris, we are simply Her priests. I use my birth (Lawrence) or craft (Silent) name in a faith-oriented situation.
If I adopt the traditions of my Sumerian religious practices, I would be Silent-en. It means Silent, who is a priest. Sumerian cuneiform is an agglutinative language like Finnish, Korean, or Turkish.
The Finnish word for house is “talo.”
| Word | Translation |
|---|---|
| Talo | House |
| Taloni | My house |
| Talossa | In the house |
| Talossani | In my house |
| Taloja | Houses |
| Taloissa | In the houses |
Agglutinative languages add suffixes to root words. It is possible to create thousands of permutations. Developing our titles allows us to develop our religious identity. Identity must be unique for us to continue developing. I believe it also aids in interfaith dialogue. Understanding and acknowledging unique religious titles in faith when engaging in interfaith dialogue helps ensure that dialogue is respectful, influential, and genuinely representative of the beliefs and traditions of each faith. Here are three reasons why this can be beneficial:
- Respect and Acknowledgement: Every faith has its unique vocabulary that underscores its nuances and beliefs. When these terms are used correctly by people outside the faith, it demonstrates a level of respect and acknowledgment towards the unique tenets of that faith. It helps build trust and establish a connection, often the first step towards fruitful dialogue and mutual understanding.
- Specificity and Clarity: Unique religious titles often designate specific roles, ranks, responsibilities, or theological positions within a faith. Using these titles, you can communicate more effectively and clearly when discussing these specific roles or beliefs. This can help prevent misunderstandings and promote more meaningful and precise conversations.
- Acknowledging Diversity: Different faiths may have similar roles but use different titles or have similar titles that signify different roles. Recognizing and using these unique titles emphasizes the diversity and complexity of different religious traditions. This enhances the ability to appreciate the richness of each faith, promoting tolerance and fostering deeper understanding in the interfaith dialogue.
Understanding and using the unique titles within various faiths can be an integral tool for promoting respect, enhancing clarity, and acknowledging the rich diversity of religious traditions in interfaith dialogue.
What do you think? Is this an unnecessary can [read: diet] of worms or an affirmation of cultural norming and religious identity?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This week the day and night stand equal for a moment — then the dark begins to win, and so does the question of what you actually belong to.
The FDA is spending an afternoon on the future of psychedelic medicine — the harder question, what to do with what you saw, isn't on the agenda.
New research on AI companionship raises an old, unglamorous question about which voices deserve our trust. Back in early August, researchers at Stanford published something quietly damning. They studied more than a thousand adults who talk to AI companions on Character.AI, and, for a smaller group, actually read the conversations themselves — nearly half a million messages, donated for analysis. The people who leaned on the chatbot hardest, who disclosed the most, who called it a friend or a partner, were not the ones who felt better. They were the ones with the smallest circles of people in their actual lives, and the ones most likely to end up feeling worse. This week, a psychotherapist put the finding more bluntly than any journal abstract would allow, telling a reporter that human beings cannot have a genuine relationship with an AI. Not won't. Can't. I want to sit with that word "can't," because it is doing more theological work than its author probably intended. The Oldest Kind of Listening Every tradition I have spent real time inside — Pagan, Heathen, the Judaism I grew up in before I grew out of it — assumes that some voices deserve more trust than others, and that telling them apart is a skill, not a given. The Hávamál, that blunt old Norse book of household counsel, spends stanza after stanza warning against handing someone your whole mind before you have tested them: watch how a person behaves under some strain, it counsels, before you decide what their friendship is worth. That isn't cynicism. It's discernment — the discipline of asking what a voice actually is before you let it tell you who you are. An AI companion never fails that test, because it was never built to be tested. It has no bad day to reveal it. It does not get tired of you, contradict you out of its own need, or risk anything by staying. That isn't intimacy. It's a smooth surface with nothing underneath to discover — comfort without the friction that would ever prove it real. What the Study Actually Found, and Didn't To be fair to the research, it did not find that AI companionship is worthless, or that everyone who uses one is in trouble. It found something narrower and more useful: the people most likely to be harmed were already isolated, already leaning hardest, already treating the chatbot as a substitute rather than a supplement. The researchers themselves reached for a food metaphor — the comparison one summary used was "social junk food." It satisfies a real hunger, briefly, in a way that can make the deeper hunger harder to notice. That distinction matters, and it isn't mine to blur into something tidier. This is not a clinical finding about any one person's mental health, and if you're using an AI companion and wondering whether you're in trouble, that's a conversation for a therapist, not a blog post. What I can speak to is the older question sitting underneath the study — not whether the voice is helpful, but whether you have quietly stopped asking. The Uncomfortable Question So here is the question, and I am not going to answer it for you: what have you been listening to lately because it was easier than listening to something that might actually disagree with you? It doesn't have to be a chatbot. It can be a version of a friend you've stopped really talking to, a teacher whose books you've read but whose challenge you've never let land, a version of God who conveniently wants exactly what you already wanted. The AI companion is only the newest and most efficient shape this problem has ever taken. It is easier to notice in a machine because the machine is honest about what it's doing. The rest of us have gotten very good at hiding it. A Practice Pick one voice you've been trusting easily lately — a person, a habit, an app, a feed you check first thing. Ask it plainly: when was the last time you told me something I didn't want to hear? If you can't answer, sit with that. Don't rush to fix it tonight. Just notice, honestly, which of your voices have never once cost you anything to listen to. Hekate keeps her post at the crossroads for a reason no myth fully explains. She doesn't walk the road for you, and she doesn't tell you which fork to take. She just holds the torch up so you can see there's more than one way to go, and so the choosing happens in the light instead of the dark, where the easiest voice always sounds like the right one. That's the whole of it. Not an answer. A little more light at the fork, and the old, unglamorous work of choosing while you can still see. Closing Reflection Name one voice you've been trusting easily — a person, a habit, an app. Ask it plainly: when did you last tell me something I didn't want to hear? Whatever the answer, don't rush to fix it tonight. Just notice, honestly, which of your voices have never once cost you anything to listen to.