What the Hell is Paganism?!

A number of friends and family have been asking me what Paganism is really about.  So, going through my notes for our final exam tonight, I came across one of the entries in my notes on what Paganism is and how it's defined, so I'm going to try and give a breakdown of it so that these friends and family members can have a look and then ask me about it.

First off, I need to clarify the title of this post:  It's just an expletive.  In Paganism, we don't believe in Heaven nor Hell in the "traditional" sense.  Yes, we have a version of the afterlife that we call the Summerlands, or Elphame, or any of a variety of other names.  We see it as a stopping point between one life and the next, not a permanent home to the Soul once the body has died.  Hell is what you experience on Earth, during your lifetime, either by your own thoughts or actions or those of others.  Innate sin and ultimate evil?  These concepts are as alien to a Pagan as what emotion is to a grain of sand, or in modern terms, a computer.  Sin is what is used by the leaders of other faiths to strike fear into the hearts of their followers (and this is, I hope) the only bit of religious lambasting I will do in this post.

Paganism is defined as a positive, nature-based based Spirituality (or religion, or set of religions), usually polytheistic, in which we work towards brotherly love and understanding between people and the world around us.  Honestly, in general terms, we have no qualms with other religions, despite what individual members of the Pagan community might say.  It's very much like the Native American Spirituality in that we try to maintain or rebuild the connections Man has with Nature and the World around us.  We understand that religion as we know it developed out of the Animistic faith of the Caveman, in that natural phenomena we assigned a Spirit or Deity, and that these Animistic Deities developed and "evolved" until there was one main God or Goddess of Nature. Yes, in polytheism there are multiple Gods or Goddessses, but even polytheists recognise that they are all part of The One, Primeval Deity, Universal Deity, however you want to name it.

Let me explain.  In the "Mists of Avalon" film and book Viviane and Morgaine both say, "All Goddesses are one Goddess and all Gods are one God and both are One."  Look at the facets of a diamond.  The diamond as a whole represents Deity, The One, etc, while the facets of the stone represent the names and faces we ascribe to Deity to understand the truth and nature of the Divine.  No, there is NO way in this lifetime that any one person can understand the whole nature of the Divine - but we try, through the use of names and faces.  I know, it sounds a bit roundabout, but this is the best way I have of explaining this, and before my teacher put it into words for me, this is how I saw Deity anyway.  That said, we don't pray to statues and images for guidance or help - that's a fallacy created by our opponents and persecutors - but rather to what that image or statue REPRESENTS.

Am I making sense here?

I don't pray to my statue of Athena for help and guidance or wisdom, but to the Face of Deity that she represents, that spark of the Divine within me and my direct connection to Deity.  I pray to that aspect of Deity that I understand for guidance, help or wisdom.  No matter how you break it down, I'm still praying to Deity.

Now, magick.  Yes, I know, the media has (once again) been filled with stories of Satanism and Satanic cult activities, and since 1985 it's been that kind of propaganda filling people's heads, but magick as practised by many Pagans and Wiccans has nothing to do with Satan.  Once again, this is an alien concept to Pagans.  It started with the early Church saying that whatever wasn't in the Bible had to be demonic, and it's sadly a piece of thinking that's stuck in the minds of the general public for the last few hundred years.  We use magick actively in our connection to the Divine to bring about the changes we want in our lives.  The best way I've ever heard it described is as "praying with props".  And yes, we do pray, even if it isn't always in the way's people will recognise.  We don't need to stop and be silent to pray.  We go about our daily activities and speak to God/Goddess/The One constantly, keeping up the relationship between the spark of Divinity inside us and the source of that spark.

Ah, yes:  These reports and fears of "black magick" people so badly like to go on about should never bring Paganism to mind.  Pagans, including Wiccans, wouldn't practice "black" magick.  In general we aren't too fond of the sight of blood, and since we're working towards a deeper connection between Man and Nature, what would be the point of destroying and hurting Life?  Seriously.  These little kiddies who "practice" black "arts" only do it because of a sense of supposed glamour, a sense of breaking the rules and for the thrill of things.  Dumb-asses.  [Thrice around the Circle's bound...]  Real black magick is used exclusively for destruction and pain and the causing of nightmare "realities."  Most Pagans can't even stand to see a child crying in a photo, so NO WAY could we deliberately cause harm.

That said, we do protect ourselves and others.  It would be stupid not to, since there is still so much fear and propaganda associated with Paganism and Witches.  It'll take a long while before people get over their own narrow-mindedness and the things poured into their ears by society and religious institutions' members and actually start asking their own questions and thinking for themselves.  There's a reason I don't like mutton:  it reminds me way too much of people!

Gosh, I hope I've managed to get my message across, guys.  Really, don't go and read up on the internet and only stick to the sites don't know what they're talking about (which an entire group of my friends have done!)  Come to me directly and speak to me and ask me questions.  How can you really learn if you aren't going to speak to someone who's actually in the thick of things?

WAKE UP!!

It's been a while once again, hasn't it?

Faithful readers, new readers, come-and-gone readers:

Hello.

It's been a while, and for once I can't really blame it on being too busy.  Well, not all the time.  In fact, since my work period ended with Smart Planters in October, I've mostly been home, cleaning up house as I go along, watching TV (couch potatoing), finishing my assignments for class (one of which I completely couldn't do at all - numerous reasons) and generally waiting for my "turn" at the PC.

Yes, you read that right.  My PC's monitor connection on the back of the box has been non-functional, but since the network cable's always been those last two metres too short to connect me to the World Wide Web, it hasn't bothered me until now.  So, yes the thing switches on, but there's no power from the box to the monitor.  I can't even put any porn on my PC!  depressing!

In conversation today a few things came up, and one of those was diseases.  It's a totally random thing to switch over to, but I felt I had to post about it.  We tend to take for granted that our partners are safe (Goddes be thanked J is!) and have complete confidence that it can't happen to us.  Well, too many of us, anyway.  But it can, and it does.  K and I had it in conversation today and two very good friends of mine have both gotten hurt because of something happening - a third friend was raped and almost picked it up as well.  I know, "disease" and "picked up" are not very nice ways of putting it, but it's weighing so heavily on my mind I can't pull together the brain power to put it nicely.  It's made life difficult for so many people out there that I don't think we can actually keep up with the actual number.  And I'm not the only one with friends who've been hurt through picking something up - we all have at least one friend with something they don't share with the rest of the world.  I feel we can get over our own fear and closed-mindedness to offer at the very least some kind of support.  I will not lie, I can't get myself to help at a shelter, and my reasons are simple:  I don't have a strong enough heart for it.  It really is as simple as that.  I see the people who work with the elderly and with the bruised and battered animals brought into the animal shelters - there's so little care left in their hearts that they come across as incredibly hard-handed, and I never want to become like that.

UGH!!

Of that topic.  I'll talk about it some more another time.