On October 28, 1886, Pres. Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty. Over a hundred years later, she is one of the best-known icons of our national mythology.

Any alien archaeologist looking at America would conclude that the statue of Liberty is an image of the goddess of our land.  Certainly to the immigrants peering through the mists of New York harbor for the first glimpse of their promised land she was a powerful image of freedom. The celebrations in New York City during her centennial and the attention paid to reopening her after 911 show  how important such symbols can be..

In 1776 our Founding Fathers dared to declare that everyone has a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We are still trying to understand and manifest that ideal. Lady Liberty is only one of the images that embody the beliefs on which this country was founded.  All eras have their issues, but today our country is torn by divisions that we have not seen since the early days of our republic. in this moment, when even the Constitution is questioned, it is easy to wonder if, after two hundred and fifty years, our democracy can endure.

The symbols that inspire us express our identity as Americans. They are the basis of what sociologist Robert N. Bellah identified as the American “civil religion”, a concept first proposed by Jean Jacques Rousseau as a way to gain the unifying and inspiring benefits of spiritual belief without the hazards of organized religion. In a secular nation, the civil religion can be practiced by adherents of any faith or none, although as we have seen in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, in an authoritarian state such a cult can become toxic. Current concerns over the naming of sports teams demonstrate both the role symbols play in supporting community solidarity and why we need to understand their implications. Bellah viewed the central tradition of the American civil religion “…not as a form of national self-worship but as the subordination of the nation to ethical principles that transcend it, in terms of which it should be judged.” (Bellah, 1991) 

Consciously or instinctively feeling the need for symbols to embody and practices to honor their ideals, the first citizens of this country enthusiastically set about creating icons, heroes and holidays. This book explores the origin and nature of some of them, and offers ways to connect with them and manifest their power.

Like the symbols of traditional religions, the icons of a civil religion can be corrupted to become tools of hate and fear. I believe that true patriotism includes the responsibility to understand and preserve the principles upon which the nation was founded, and to encourage evolution towards the betterment of the nation and humankind.

To quote Bellah once more,

Although matters of personal religious belief, worship, and association are considered to be strictly private affairs, there are, at the same time, certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share. These have played a crucial role in the development of American institutions and still provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere. This public religious dimension is expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that I am calling American civil religion. The inauguration of a president is an important ceremonial event in this religion. It reaffirms, among other things, the religious legitimation of the highest political authority.(Bellah, 1991)

The writings of the Founding Fathers are Theist in that they assume the existence of a Creative Force which is active and benevolent, but they do not identify it with any specific deity. Referred to as “Providence”, “Heaven”, or “Nature’s God”, that Power appears, like “the Force” in the Star Wars universe, with a bare minimum of personification. Most people find it hard to relate to an abstraction. Inevitably, Spirit gets broken down into aspects that are given a face and form. In the United States, to embody our ideals we have figures such as Lady Liberty and Columbia, a succession of heroes from George Washington to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and the Flag.

Adherence to our civil religion is formalized by taking the Pledge of Allegiance. Its basic principles were derived from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and have been developed and elaborated by leaders and reformers ever since. If our foundational documents are its scriptures, the rituals of this “religion” are the customs that have grown up around our national holidays and formal ceremonies like the inauguration, in which our leaders  conduct the business of the government.

Though the English language shapes the way we think about government, we owe the compulsion to represent concepts through images to the Classical tradition. An idea in someone’s head is personified and given physical form in an image. That image, shared and publicized, becomes a symbol, taking on additional meanings from the contexts in which it appears, which in turn affect the way in which it is perceived.

Most of the time, Americans enjoy the trappings of our civil religion without giving them much thought. In wartime, figures like Lady Liberty and Columbia have been invoked with considerable success to raise both funds and morale.  Slogans like “Uncle Sam Wants You!” focus enthusiasm.  Images are the language of the unconscious. Politicians can use them to sway voters. Advertisers use them to make a sale. Used often and with intent, images can achieve what amounts to an independent reality.

As British occultist Dion Fortune put it,

A thought-form built up by continual visualizing and concentration, and concerning which a strong emotion is felt, becomes charged with that emotion and is capable of an independent existence outside the consciousness of its creator….  Exactly the same process…takes place when a number of people concentrate with emotion on a single object.  They make an artificial Elemental, vast and potent in proportion to the size of the crowd and the intensity of its feelings…. To build up a group mind of any endurance some method of ensuring continuity of attention and feeling is essential.  Whenever such continuity of attention and feeling has been brought about, a group mind, or group Elemental, is formed which with the passage of time develops an individuality of its own,  and ceases to be dependent for its existence upon the attention and emotion of the crowd that gave it birth….

When this process has been repeated regularly over considerable periods, the images that have been built up remain on the astral in exactly the same way that a habit-track is formed in the mind by the repeated performance of the same action.  In this form the natural force remains permanently concentrated. Consequently subsequent worshippers need be at no great pains to formulate the simulacrum; they have only to think of the god and they feel his power. (Fortune, 1962, 19)

We have seen how a meme or a movement can sweep the nation. In the fall of 2019 it took less than a week for the phrase “OK Boomer” to become the hot topic online. Whether the discussion created light or just heat remains to be seen. In the midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020, the murder of George Floyd sparked protests all over the world, re-energizing the Black Lives Matter Movement and inspiring police reforms unimaginable before.

Memes can appear as words or images. Most seem to occur spontaneously, but they can be intentionally energized. Their meaning can evolve. Human cultures need symbols, and the more people are inspired by an image the more powerful it becomes. The reservoir of energy in the symbols created by earlier Americans is a resource we should not waste. Rather than throwing out the symbols of the past, we need to update their interpretation. If many minds start imaging a more positive understanding of their meaning, we can restore our national soul. The purpose of this book is to provide context and history for the symbols associated with our civil religion and to suggest ways we can work with them to heal our national soul.

Thoughts matter. Positive thinking may not shift the course of a hurricane, but when many minds hold the same vision, they can change the way people react to the threat. Humans think in images and words. Tradition teaches that “The symbol is nothing, the reality is all”, but symbols can shape our perception of that reality. It has also been said that evil can only conquer when good people do nothing. If we don’t like the way things are going, we need to organize, protest, vote—and use the power of our minds and spirits to shape perception. The symbols that express our American identity are a priceless resource. Working together we can use those symbols to reclaim and re-energize the ideals that express our nation’s soul whether we follow an old religion, a new one, or no religion at al.

The purpose of this site is to

  • understand the lives and honor the efforts of those who began and continued the fight to make the ideals expressed in our founding documents a reality;
  •  reclaim the symbols that represent our nation’s founding ideals,and activate them in the public consciousness through affirmation, visualization and ritual;
  • observe our national holidays as celebrations of the principles on which this country was founded;

Site Map

NB: If something on the map below is not a link, that’s because it’s not ready yet!

Spirits and Symbols

  • Introduction 
  • The Mighty Dead— Heroes
  • American goddesses:
    • Lady Liberty – Lady of Light
    • Columbia – Lady of the Land
    • Minerva and Guadalupe – Gifts of the Old World and the New
  • The Flag

Holidays and Rituals 

  • Calendar 
  • The Reason for Ritual
  • Setting Sacred Space
  • Honoring our Heroes
  • Invoking the Founding Fathers to Protect Religious Liberty
  • A Ritual for the Ladies of the Land
    • A Ritual for Lady Liberty
    • A Ritual for Minerva
    • A Ritual for Our Lady of Guadalupe
  • Political Rituals
    • A Pagan Ritual for Election Season
    • Workings to protect the Certification of the Election
    • Election Eve Liberty Rite
    • Workings for Election Day
    • A Ritual for Inauguration Day
  • The Wheel of the Year –  Federal Holidays
    • Martin Luther King Jr. Day
    • Presidents’ Day
    • Memorial Day
    • Juneteenth
    • Independence Day
    • Labor Day
    • Veterans’ Day

Resources

  • The Founding Fathers (biographies and images)
  • Songs (music and words)
  • Map of Washington D.C.
  • Photo gallery
  • A Washington pilgrimage
  • Reviews:
    • The Separation of Church and State
    • The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
    • The Book of the Founding Fathers
    • Founding Mothers
  • Links
  • Forum