In Which Pagan Witnessing Is Requested....

Great Debates
21

Wicca is a religious faith that often includes the practice of what is termed witchcraft. There are, however, practitioners of witchcraft in many other faiths, as well as atheist witches; witchcraft is a particular set of practices and approaches to certain perceived aspects of the world, or perhaps a mindset.

‘Wiccan’ is a term roughly equivalent to ‘Christian’ in how much information is conveyed in that descriptor; there are several broad denominations within Wicca, and various subgroups as well, several of which are somewhat mutually antagonistic, with a belief that others are discarding something utterly essential. (Common points of debate are whether the practice of witchcraft is necessary, whether or not a “real” Wiccan needs to have undergone initiation in an established denomination (and sometimes even which tradition/denomination), whether or not one must revere a goddess and a god in personal practice or tradition practice, whether all goddesses are manifestations of The Goddess and all gods manifestations of The God, and the actual significance and meaning of the Wiccan Rede.)

“Pagan”, on the other hand, is a term approximately as general as “monotheist” and arguably more so, given that monotheist specifies something specific about the structure of the religion involved.

My overall impression is that a large number of pagans feel that they were driven out of their birth-faiths, and carry over a lot of residual hostility both for Christianity and Christians (I haven’t encountered ex-otherthings who were the same sort of hostile). Personally, I have a hard time understanding it and find it sort of sad.

22

I’m not a Pagan, a Wiccan, a Witch, or anything like that. I’m not a Hindu either. In fact, I’m a monotheist because my metaphysical vision sees everything ultimately coming together into One (maybe you could call that monism, though).

I powerfully experience this ultimate Reality as Feminine. So you could call that Goddess. I do. In this sense, I’m a Goddess person, a solitary one. I do like to dialogue with other Goddess people of all types.

I started with the disclaimer that I’m not a Hindu because for me the Goddess comes through most powerfully as Shakti. However, Shaktism comes from the prehistoric indigenous tradition of India, and predates the Vedic Aryan invasion. The Aryans were part of the wave of patriarchal male supremacists who took over the Old Religion of the Goddess according to Marija Gimbutas. She focused her studies on Old Europe; I am attuned to the Shakti Goddess of India, who unlike the Goddess in Europe, was not totally submerged in patriarchal religion. The Vedic Aryan patriarchal religion is the “official” version of Hinduism, but is not the whole story. Modern Hindus often present themselves as the people whose scripture is the Bhagavad Gita, which is a Vaishnava text. The Vaishnava (Vishnu-worshiping) side of Hinduism is where most of the patriarchal power is concentrated. However, the ancient Goddess worship never went away, it just continued in villages especially in Dravidian South India and in Bengal, which has a Dravidian background to its population. So although Shaktism is one part of the complex mix known by the umbrella term “Hinduism,” I cannot identify with “Hindu” as a whole, since it public face tends to be dominated by the patriarchal Vaishnava, which I do not want anything to do with. These are the extremely violent Hindutva fundies who are trying to establish “Ram Rajya” (fundamentalist tyranny that would persecute or kill all non-Hindus and maybe start nuclear war with Pakistan), who assassinated Gandhi and have now taken over the government of India. The Ram Rajya extremists are extremely patriarchal and Vaishnava.

Shakti is the Divine Feminine as Ultimate Reality. The male gods are subservient to Her. Shaiva Hinduism is a bit closer to Shaktism, since Shiva’s wife is Shakti and their sacred sexual intercourse is what engenders all of existence. Shiva is the “erotic ascetic,” the prototype of Yogis. The difference is that Shaivas see Shiva as supreme and Shakti is his female sidekick, while for Shaktas like me, Shakti is the ultimate reality experienced as feminine.

Correlates of Shaktism in other religions include the Tao Te Ching, which speaks of the Tao as the feminine “Valley Spirit,” and Sufi Islam, which composes love poems imaging Allah as the beloved Woman. Sufis believe the ultimate reality of Allah is Feminine. In Judaism, there is a feminine dimension to God called Shekhinah.

I’m an ex-Catholic and I’m not going back to Christianity because of its heavy insistence on God being male. I do appreciate the veneration for Mary in Mediterranean Catholicism, but still that isn’t the same as Goddess.

My practice of Tantric Yoga thrives on the experience of Shakti as the Goddess.

23

I came to the Craft through a circuitous route. I rejected my Southern Baptist Sunday school around 7 or 8. My first deck of Tarot cards was the Peter Max Yellow Submarine deck, now worth a mint. (No idea where it went…) I was doing psychic readings by my early twenties. In my twenties I explored Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and then at 27 I embraced the Goddess. (Maybe I should say she caught up with me again at that point) It was only after that that I was able to reclaim my lost Christian roots through the Gnostics, which fits in perfectly with all of the preceding paths.

Tristan; you rock. BB

24

Witchcraft is also a spiritual path in and of itself, not merely a “practice.” Wicca is too “new agey” for me. (IMHO, I have nothing against Wiccans obviously.) I follow a more simple form of the Craft, I grow my own herbs, celebrate the Wheel and the Moons as a solitary, and practice simple earth magick. As I said earlier, it’s just a part of my life.
Being a Witch just suits me better, and “Wiccan” never seemed to define me.
I grew up Catholic, and went to 12 years of parochial school. I questioned everything, which drove the nuns ballistic. but I harbor no resentment towards the Church, I actually have alot of fond memories of growing up Boston Irish Catholic, and I consider Jesus and I pretty good buddies.

25

Thanks, Lilairen. As I was reading the quoted passage, I was reminded of a heated thread over on Pizza Parlor on whether baptism is essential for salvation, of the Southern Baptist teachings, of Catholicism and its claims, and the regular arguments around here on Jesus’s Summary of the Law and how important it is. “The more things change…” :wink:

Mothchunks, I got off to a bad start with you in other religion because I started refuting generalizations you made about Christian beliefs – and it helps to know that you’re ex-SBC. Suffice it to say that I’m about as far from their line of thinking as you are from what they think Witches believe and do. :slight_smile: I’m grateful you’re participating here.

And I do appreciate everyone who contributed to the clarification.

26

This is a fascinating thread.

27

With many pagans, that is the case. In my personal case, though, it isn’t. The one Christian church that I did join was quite nice, really. The members were good people, and the ministers were most excellent. And in fact, I didn’t stop going to that church because I changed my mind about Christianity. I stopped because my first husband and I separated and I moved away.

But I still had a lot of questions. And about six years ago, I met a woman who is a Wiccan. I’d heard of it, and being interested in religions, I asked her to tell me a bit about it, mostly to dispel any of the notions I had that I was pretty sure were wrong. And the more she spoke…the more things started falling in to place for me. It was like she simply helped me start untangling my inner religious knot. Not a sudden, violent conversion or anything.

I personally have nothing against Christianity, or any of the major monotheistic religions, for that matter. Nothing against atheism, either. But a polytheistic belief is simply what works, for me. Even when I identified as Christian, I was never quite comfortable with the concept of one-male-God-all-by-himself.

I’m still untangling the knot, though. Having small children, a full-time job outside my home, and a husband who–well, let’s just say he doesn’t exactly share my beliefs–have made it a bit difficult for me to study and practice the way I’d like to. I imagine someday I’ll actually be able to make sense when I try explain my personal beliefs, though.

Oh, and in case you ever wondered…no, my screenname has nothing to do with my beliefs. Seriously. :slight_smile:

28

Other major points of difference between Christians and Pagans are the concept of salvation or the inherent sinfulness of humanity and what happens in the afterlife.

Again, I can’t speak for all Pagans, but I believe the doctrine of the necessity of salvation and the inherent sinfulness of humanity is a flawed concept that is left over from a culture that is markedly different from our present one. Modern science and a better understanding of human nature disproves the idea that we’re all sinful and that it’s within our nature to be so.

Yes, humanity, both collectively and as individuals, can do some stupid things, but I see no evidence that those actions come from an inherent flaw within our natures.

I also don’t believe there’s a physical heaven or hell where we’re granted our heart’s desire or eternal torment (or simply isolation from God) because we didn’t cross our Ts and dot our Is, theologically.

I do believe the afterlife is a period of rest and reflection where we’re given a chance to relax from our labors and reflect on what we did right and what we did wrong in this lifetime. Afterwards, we come back again and learn a new lesson or re-learn an old one.

After so many lifetimes and so many lessons, we no longer re-incarnate because we no longer need physical bodies and we move onto another level of existence which is closer to the Gods, I believe.

Any of the Pagans care to weigh in on this?

29

That’s funny, speaking of this topic in connection with modern science, you just reminded me of when Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was on TV in 1980. He talked about the different parts of the human brain, and cited the so-called “reptile brain” as the locus of irrational aggression and violence.

For days, weeks afterward, my friends who watched that went around saying “Yeah, it’s that damn reptile brain…” It was like an epiphany for them, as though the the Christian theological concept of Original Sin and Satan they’d been raised on had suddenly been replaced by a scientific explanation for everything that was wrong with humanity. As though they’d had the mental space already reserved for this explanation, and it suddenly clicked when they heard it. Much of post-Christian European thought looks like just such a readymade replacement by modern concepts that conveniently fit into the space of preconceived Christian concepts. Like Marxist teleology: the Kingdom of God is replaced by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, so it doesn’t take a big adjustment in the overall framework of your thinking. Just replace one idea by another that has the same shape.

But the whole other way of looking at it that you speak of, Freyr, does call for a new framework of thinking. That’s how Shaktism worked for me, for example: after your whole being has been thoroughly devastated incinerated by a mystical direct contact with the Divine, you can reassemble your way of thinking in wholly new ways, be open to really different modes of thought.

30

I’m sort of walking some of the same paths as Freyr and Persephone. I like the way Freyr puts it, as divinity is White Light, and we view it through the prism of humanity, which splits it into different colours or aspects.

I was raised Anglican/Episcopalian, and I still have my bible from Sunday School, and I think I have a fair-to-middlin’ Christian education. I consider myself to be a solitary pantheistic neopagan shaman. Or is it solitary shamanistic neopagan pantheist?

I found Christianity to be not for me. My experiences with it have meant a supression/denial of the divinity of the feminine (someday we should have a nice chat about the Cult of the Black Virgin, shall we?). Most of the sects I have experienced (Catholic, Southern Baptist, Anglican, and Episcopalian) do not recognize, mention, or even know about the Shekinah, the Christian divine femininity. In fact, just TRY to find relatively objective information on it. And yeah, I want a copy of the book The Hebrew Goddess. Badly, though I’m worried that objective scholarship may be drowned out by ‘radical feminism’ of the Andrea Dworkin kind.

I am woman, not less than man, nor greater than, but different. Both must exist in balance, for harmony to occur. Submit, my ass! There is no subservience in balance.

I also found that Christianity did not seem to have a place for some of the experiences I had. I felt Divinity in Hindu temples, in Moslem mosques, in Greek temples, and in certain places in the Great Outdoors. They were not temples to Evil, as much of Christianity would have it, but expression of different aspects of godhead. And aspects that many Christians find uncomfortable, to say the least. 'Specially the apsaras… :wink:

Sex can be a sacrament, there is an unalloyed raw power in it that can be used for good or evil. Or it can be just plain fun too. :slight_smile: But the power in it should not be treated lightly. Casual sex isn’t prohibited, but as Dan Savage says, first, Break No Hearts. Including your own.

I have experienced Coyote/Raven’s ideas of jokes :rolleyes:, and felt the drums singing in my blood. I’m mostly a follower of the Triple Goddess, though, as her aspects just suit me. I have been Maiden, I am Mother, and will be Crone. That is not to say I have not invoked other Names, but I return to her over and over. She is my source of strength and comfort. She’s our Mother, the one who loves us all and cries when we do wrong, and sorrows past tears when one turns to evil and is lost from Her. She doesn’t care what you call Her, or even if you call Her, but you are all Her children and she loves you. Sins and all. She will not lead you to your salvation, she does something much much harder - she leads you to finding it yourself. And it is YOUR salvation, not somebody else’s.

Sort of like Mother Carey in The Water Babies - “I don’t make things, child. I do something much more difficult - I make things make themselves.”

I do believe she intercedes as well. I have done much the same sort of thing as Persephone, and asked her to keep a particular eye on somebody, and relay prayers and healing thoughts. However, I’ve never asked for anything else, in case I might get it. Be careful what you ask for, you know. Very careful. :slight_smile: She sometimes has a nasty sense of humour, especially when you’re being selfish.

And the thing I like best about my personal faith is that it totally discourages the “neighbour’s keeper” bullshit. I do not presume I know the answer for anybody other than myself. It makes a dogma very difficult to develop and maintain. In fact, there is no “the answer” for anybody, because “the answer” changes depending on the question. Very Taoistic, in some ways.

Egad, this is long and only semi-coherent. But it does reflect my somewhat chaotic beliefs. They are in a constant state of flux, responding to various inputs according to what feels right. Don’t usually talk about them much, but since YOU asked, Poly, I’m inclined to try to put them into words.

31

Freyr- I almost disagree… I do believe in reincarnation, although I don’t think it’s a universal. I also firmly believe that when I die, if I have lived and died well, I may be given a reward.

I don’t belive in universal morality. I don’t necessarily belive in the concept of “sin”. I feel that things that are wrong are up to the individual. Example: I have no problems against killing people, and if I could get away with it, have a list. Some people think that’s wrong, and I am a bad person.

But I also do volunteer work (or used to… real life has kicked me in the groin), and try my best to raise my children right, so am I still a bad person?

The ethics that I believe in, and the ones that the Powers That Be guide me towards, tell me no. And in my opinion, that’s all that really matters.

32

Solitheist panpaganistic neoshamantary? Shamapagan neopan solitheistary? :wink: Y’know I’m just funnin’ ya!

Like you, I also don’t ask for much else, for the same reasons you state. I’ll ask for things such as strength and guidance, but never will I ask Her to give me material things. I’ve certainly asked Her to help me clear my head out a bit so that I may solve my own problems, too. The way I see it, Goddess helps those who help themselves. :slight_smile:

33

Not to add anything useful this time, but just to note that I’m reading every post and learning a great deal about how people think and feel, and very appreciative of your willingness to share.

And, after that little exchange:

I need to note that Sister Coyote once made a masterful post in a Christianity thread on the Seven Deadly Sins (explained clearly, from her IIRC Lutheran upbringing), which led me to, after a bit of negotiation between us as to the wording, christen her as “the world’s leading agnostic neo-shamanic neo-pagan moral theologian!” ;j

34

Can an ex-pagan join the fun?

I’m a confirmed member of a Presbyterian church. The Easter morning on which I was confirmed, the day before my seventh-grade Spring Break began, was when I started scratching little sores all over my body. I left the confirmation service to go home and spend a miserable week with the Chicken Pox. I always assumed that was God saying, “Sorry, buddy – I’m not for you!” I became atheist soon thereafter.

When I was fifteen, I was walking alone downtown one night, and thought to myself, “I should be a druid!” It took me several months of research and letter-writing before I’d gotten in touch with Ar nDraiocht Fein, a national scholarly druidic association. One of its members, Phillip Moon, introduced me to local pagans.

I’ve attended probably a dozen pagan celebrations (including, memorably, a Mabon ritual held by Starhawk’s coven in San Francisco). The groups have been very eclectic.

But sometime during college, I became less and less interested in Paganism, and by the time I moved back to North Carolina, I’d started trying on the label of atheist again. By now, it fits comfortably.

When I was Pagan, however, my beliefs weren’t so different from what they are now: it’s just the emphasis was different. You know how, when you read a book, you suspend disbelief? In that case, you know that the characters aren’t real, but in order to get the full meaning and joy from the book, you set aside that knowledge.

When I was Pagan, I told people that I’d pocketed my disbelief. Of all the questions I could ask about the Gods, whether they existed was the least interesting. Indeed, to ask that question was to diminish them for me.

I practiced magic, focusing on healing magic. Diancecht and Athena were the two on whom I called most often. I would design rituals and carry them out. A housemate of mine developed a high fever but could not afford to go to the hospital, so I created a small doll of her, consecrated it to Athena, and submerged it in ice water; her fever broke within the hour. That sort of thing. (To forestall skeptics: in retrospect, I make no claim that the two events were related. At the time, I accepted that they were).

I asked favors. Angus Og is an Irish love God, a youth who is surrounded by songbirds, and when I needed romantic confidence, I would perform rituals to call his attention down on me.

I meditated. If I was confused about something, I’d go walking in the woods late at night until I found a good spot, then I’d lie down and meditate until I could “travel” deep into the earth, where I’d speak with a beautiful, dengerous, unnamed woman who would be there; and through her answers, I’d develop clarity.

When I was in high school, I “bound” someone. Clay approached me during horticulture class and held a spade up to my throat, leeringly telling me how easy it’d be to slit my throat. Next day I whispered the words of a binding ritual at him from across the room, drawing a knot in the air. Soon thereafter he heard rumors that I worshipped the horned god, and never bothered me again.

I miss some aspects of being Pagan. I miss the belief; I miss the ritual. But it no longer holds the same power, the same passion, for me that once it held, and the last few times that I participated in Pagan activities, I felt sad and embarrassed.

Perhaps some day I’ll return to a Pagan path. But for now, it’s not mine.

Daniel

35

Wait a minute. You mean to tell me there really is a deity named “Og”?

36

Yep.
Neat, huh? :wink:

37

I have previewed the thread and thought I"d throw in my two cents FWIW.
I,too,was raised in a fairly vanilla Christian church…Lutheran to be exact. Lutherans, as a lot of people know (or don’t know), baptize infants. My mother, a lapsted Southern Baptist, joined the church because she picked it out of a phone book. No kidding.One night after she and my dad split up, she felt like she needed some religious guidance and turned to the ‘churches’ section of the yellow pages, closed her eyes and put her finger down. It landed on a Lutheran church and she’s been going there ever since. I don’t think that Lutherans (or any Christians for that matter) are doing the wrong thing. I just decided in HS that Christianity wasn’t for me. I felt like I had no choice in what I chose to believe because I was forced to be baptized (hey I was only 3 mos old…what’s a baby to do?Poop on the minister?:))and forced to be confirmed (when I bucked at confirmation, my mother threatened to have me put in a mental hospital). I was not comfortable with the Christian God. I felt (and still feel) that he is not the cutesie, white-bearded, ever-forgiving, ever-loving grandpa they paint him to be. For awhile I was lost, going to church but not believing a single word. Then when I was a senior in HS I discovered paganism and wicca. Though I call myself a wiccan, I guess I"m really more of a polytheistic pagan. I have discovered several guides as well as a goddess who help me out when I am in most desperate need. I have a personal relationship with Isis,the goddess of all things both feminine and feline as well as my spirit guides, Unacornis the unicorn and Path the panther(mountain lion).All of these have helped guide my life since I began to have an intimate relationship with them,although looking back I realize now that Unacornis was there all along and I didn’t know it. Looking back at my childhood,I can always remember seeing a bright,white light during the darkest of my days and that light, as it turns out,was Unacornis,watching over me.
** Freyr**–you’re answer was so beautiful it brought me to tears.You are so good at explaining this kind of thing.Thank you for sharing.:slight_smile:

IDBB

38

Well, I came to Wicca from atheism. Strict materialist, hard rationalist, semi-Vulcan, Carl-Sagan-quoting atheism. Much earlier (until about the age of 12), the conservative fundamentalist contingent of my neighbourhood had managed to instill a fear of God at his most wrathful, without any actual belief, if that makes sense. I think I understood the concept as that I had a third scary parent who was always watching. My academic interest in Christianity later came about while trying to understand homophobia, and counsel kids from conservative Christian homes.

I was introduced to Wicca when I was living with my sister. It made more sense to me than anything else. It just clicked. There’s a belief among some Wiccans that a person is always a Wiccan, and just has to find their way to the path. I don’t know if that’s always true, but it certainly was in my case.

For me, Wicca centres almost entirely on the personal relationship with gods and goddesses. What I believe is primarily a mixture of polytheism and animism. For now, I’m simply reaching in the direction of my feelings and instincts – I haven’t worked out a full “thealogy” of what I believe. That is, I haven’t brought my intuitive understanding of things down to the matrix of reason. I find myself drawn to certain dieties at certain points in my life. Right now, the draw has been most strong to Athena and Apollo.

As for life after death, I feel I’ll be coming back here. I sense some truth in the old stories of the Summerland – a sort of Eden where the soul grows young before returning to this world. I suspect this is metaphor for something indescribable.

And as for magick, I practice very little. I’ve always thought of Wicca as more of a religion than the practice of magick, and most of what I do practice is more like meditation – focusing the mind, etc. It’s not that I don’t believe in these things exactly (although I still have a strong skeptical streak). They’ve just never been the main focus of the faith for me.

39

That’s how I felt for a long time,Hamish and how I discovered Isis. I had always had cats around me, whether as pets or strays that hung out at my house and I was always attracted to them even though I couldn’t figure out why. Same with unicorns. As a child I had posters and all sorts of pictures of unicorns of every size,shape,color and form all over my room. I liked unicorns…really REALLY liked them though as a child I couldn’t figure out why. Later, after I discovered Wicca and began to meditate I learned the reason why, that being my connection to Isis and my two guides Path and Unacornis.:slight_smile:
BB.

IDBB

40

And in what has to be a case of One for the Good Guys, he’s a love god. I propose we combat the obnoxious SDMB catch phrase about him with

:wink: