On Being Pagan
Updated: Apr 17, 2025
PAGAN
noun
- (in historical contexts) one of a people or community observing a polytheistic religion, as the ancient Romans and Greeks.
- a member of a religious, spiritual, or cultural community based on the worship of nature or the earth; a neopagan.
(Source: dictionary.com)
I am a Pagan, as per the second definition above; however, I don’t worship nature or the earth as such. It’s accurate to say that I don’t worship anything; self-subjugation is not in my nature. I do believe in the existence of an immanence in the cosmos; a meta-awareness which we all simultaneously contribute to and derive from. I call it That Which Is Divine. I don’t believe it is conscious; I don’t believe it is cognizant, and I sure as hell don’t blame it for this mess in which we live. I consider it to be the source of that which we call ‘race memory’, and of instinct and intuition about people and situations… and I try to walk through the world in constant awareness of it. In the execution of that awareness, I am what is called a ‘solitary practitioner’; my relationship with That Which Is Divine is my business, and mine alone. Demanding that others hew to my belief crosses the border from belief to religion – and religion, no matter how well-intentioned – is altogether too prone to become the embodiment of evil.
The relationship between That Which Is Divine and humanity should be that of equal partnership, the execution of which is a conscious state of mind.
Boiled down to stark reality: That Which is Divine is an expression (or embodiment, take your pick) of the highest ideal of societal behavior. It is a goal that we are meant to, ever so slowly, strive to achieve in our physical world.
It’s an ongoing journey, the direction and implementation of which changes as we, its executors, change. There are no set rules; even the guidelines and mechanisms constantly change as technology and social conventions change.
In the implementation of this change, and the eventual achievement of this ideal, traditional, persistent, organized religion is a catastrophic, self-defeating limitation; because organized religion strives to obliterate one existential fact:
As an extension of ourselves – an ideal, remember – That Which Is Divine (a god by any other name) is changing as rapidly as the world and we are.
Paganism is a term heavily laden with misinformation in some circles, and to people who operate in those circles, I would particularly like to say: Thank you for the attention!
Superstitious goobers like you are far better advertising than anything we can come up with ourselves. The only problem is that our newcomers are invariably disappointed when they meet up with us. Ritual-wise, we’re not nearly as entertaining as they’ve been led to expect.
Which honestly makes us wonder: what do you get up to in those basements of yours?
… Can we come?
Drop yer $0.02... you know you want to!
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