Looking for suggestions on interesting people to follow when it comes to discussions of religion, philosophy, law, politics, identity and the other big topics. Not interested in hate or rabid partisanship of any kind though please.
The more I look at the material about Pagan and Wiccan beliefs out there, the less sure I feel about using the label. There are aspects of my beliefs that have an undoubtedly pagan character to it. My spirituality is rooted in nature and an appreciation of it. I accept and embrace that there are aspects of nature that have a male and female character that can be extended by analogy to a God and Goddess. As I think, reflect and develop all of this into some usable system, the idea of ritual of some kind is probable.
But that’s where the similarities seem to end and one word best describes the rest:
MODERN
From day one of this path, I have known that this wouldn’t be an attempt at harnessing some historical or semi-historical system. I feel I cannot connect with or reinterpret the deities of other societies. For example, the old Norse, Celtic, Greek, and Egyptian pantheons (among many others) do not speak well to how I am living in a big city in North America. They had social structures and ways of life that are far from my existence. Their deities worked well for them because they fit with who they were.
Certain (mostly theistic) religions have handled this geographic and cultural divide better, and they tend to be the ones that displace (or otherwise remove) the original pagan views in the first place. Since I have been an agnostic/atheist for a good long time before going towards this path, it makes sense that theism isn’t so much my thing and not in the cards to return to. Going to digress here on this line of thought because I don’t want to turn this into a piece about theism.
So what else makes it modern? There is no claim to the past in terms of deities or practices - fine. There is an acceptance of what we currently know and will know about the structure and mechanics of the universe. It is crucial to me that my spirituality does not become the realm of “the God of the Unknown”. This was one of my favourite notions to poke at as an atheist because it put that God was in direct relation to humanity’s current level of knowledge about the universe. To put everything that we do not or cannot know as “The Divine” has the effect of making it smaller and less significant as we come to know more. Spirituality has to have its own special place independent of - and importantly not in contradiction with - other kinds of knowledge. I have long believed that spirituality’s role is to help reconcile our insignificance compared to Existence as a whole with the enormous power and significance we play in our immediate environment. It is an important human outlet for connecting, feeling, creating, expressing, and reflecting.
An argument that I’ve been aware and a fan of, but told in a refreshing way. Morality as we know it has always been our own creation - usually out of necessity. It has always belonged to us and has existed across the history of our species and across the range of religious beliefs.
This post is in part a reply to a very thoughtful reflection by someone I follow. I’m new to Tumblr and don’t really know how to do this properly so I’m just going to make the best of it.
One of the inevitable catches with writing a series of reflections on the nature of religion (and the religion of nature) is that a lot of the Big Questions come up. When I was an agnostic/atheist, questions about the nature and intentions of God did not require the most urgent of attention because God was either unknowable or nonexistent. Making the decision to finally pursue some form of spirituality has brought those questions front and center. I still do not know exactly what form it will take, and that is one of the most exciting and nerve wracking aspects of it all!
Spiritual Absolutes? Where Do Humans Fit? What is Our Purpose?
Having looked at a variety of possible paths over the years, I cannot see that a spiritual absolute as likely. It means a whole lot is left to perspective and that can be frightening or empowering. As people, we are indeed tiny specks in the universe and from a size standpoint totally insignificant compared to the planets and stars and galaxies out there. I think we are anything but insignificant though. People have an enormously complex range of capabilities and the Earth has seen the collective power of human ingenuity, creativity, artistry, spirituality, and learning. If humans have a purpose, it is to thrive, to act, to create, and to learn. I do not see a grander purpose than this.
Destiny and the Divine
I have been trying to sort out where I stand on fate and destiny and the role of the Divine (aka God) in the process. It is by far a tough issue to wrap one’s head around but again I have to take my best shot at it. I have believed for a long time that if a Divine with personal attributes exists, then they probably know about everything that is going to happen. It is difficult to imagine an all-powerful being of any kind without some knowledge of past, present, and future. I feel that our destinies may be written long ago but I do not feel that our everyday actions are dictated by the Divine. This is not to rule out some significant influence from the Divine in particular actions (spiritual experiences for example), but as a general rule our actions are our own. Having a destiny does not make the act of choosing our own actions any less important. Whether God knows or not is irrelevant to the fact that we are the ones choosing and acting, at least as far as we can be aware. We do not know what we will be doing in the future, as we cannot really predict all of the events and environments that will influence us.
This was a long one, and probably more philosophy than religion but I think I got some decent ground covered today.
Establishing the foundations for my personal form of New Paganism is one of the toughest intellectual and emotional processes I have voluntarily undertaken so far. Asking the question “where to begin?” comes with daunting expectations alongside it. It also comes with all sorts of important and complicated questions that need answers:
Does Existence consist of solely the material or the spiritual? Is there some combination of the two? If so, where does the balance between them lie? What is the role of the Divine in the daily workings of Existence and our lives? What is the Divine? Is it a deity with human attributes or is it something that transcends human characteristics altogether? Is the Divine a lawmaker or a guide? Where does ritual fit into all of this? Where does science and conventional knowledge fit into all of this?
The questions can be as endless as we want them to be and it takes some real self-discipline for me not to continue asking them. I keep bringing up my agnostic/atheist past because it has defined me so thoroughly for the last decade. Taking things on faith or because of some variation of “the divine said so” is incredibly hard for me to do. This is mostly because I am so used to living without ANY concept of the divine in my daily life. Religion was something that other people did and often had rather strongly negative connotations to it.
Even before I ridded myself of personal faith, the extent of intolerance, violence, willful ignorance and judgement that existed supposedly based on religious values was alarming. Religions are necessarily political – they tell about how things are from the cosmos down and how they should be. This is especially true about human behaviour and ethics, which is readily extended to politics. To borrow a classical truism, ethics is the morality and worth of the actions of the individual while politics is the morality and worth of the actions of the community. This necessary but complicated connection between faith and ethics/politics is likely going to be more difficult for me to come to terms with than any of the cosmology and ritual – I look forward to accepting and embracing those!
This is just the beginning of the Hunt for me, but if I can successfully navigate this particular river, the rest of the journey will be much easier. There are many more questions to ask and answer and I look forward to any help that can be given.
Well it has been a full month since I supposedly set the scene for all of this. Without so much as a single update since, I must admit that other things have been occupying the space between my ears. I was probably a great agnostic this past month but only by default. If you do not take any steps forward or backward (or even sideways) then you are exactly where you began in the first place.
There are a couple of things I want to touch on tonight but in different posts given how different they are. The first is a sketch of what I want and need this new form of paganism to be in spiritual and personal terms. Out of necessity, there will be some firm limits placed on this new paganism. My first instincts tell me to clarify where the border between spirituality and conventional knowledge lies (or at least where I feel it should be). I am not expecting to get this right on the first try, but I have to let my instincts guide me on this. Everything afterwards is my honest effort to turn those aspirations for this new paganism into reality.
I decided that the name had to change. This is far more a Hunt in the form of a search than it is a Dance. To stretch the metaphor, this is a Hunt for the venue, the music, and the type of dance itself. There cannot be any enjoyment and “Dancing” until these critical things are found first.
Wolvinov isn’t my real name, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The words that flow from me here will be as true as I can make them.
This place is about an important and complicated Dance leading to a new path. I do not know or presume to know where I will end up, but I hope you will share this with me.
There are a few things you can expect from me and this place. This won’t be your typical discussion of Wicca and Pagan ideas, not least because of where my path has been so far. I have spent the last decade as a fairly content agnostic and for all practical purposes an atheist.
Such a non-spiritual background included a strong dose of scepticism in the concepts of magic or other spiritual/supernatural ideas. I also have no history at all of leanings toward paganism or Wicca before consciously starting this Path - This Dance.
You can expect some trial and error here, and I hope some feedback and support will help me find my way.
- Wolvinov
