http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.ht
I have issues with the precision of his arguments about Murray and Gardner, but his smackdown of the New Agey side of the religion is quite spot-on.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
I have issues with the precision of his arguments about Murray and Gardner, but his smackdown of the New Agey side of the religion is quite spot-on.
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First off, no one gets to define what modern paganism can and can't include. Modern paganism--just like traditional paganism--is a hodgepodge of practices, stories, ideas, etc. But most importantly, modern paganism is people. Some of those people believe things I don't personally believe. I believe things that many of them don't believe. I don't get so say that they aren't pagan. They don't get to say that I'm not pagan.
Christianity is the only religion in the history of the world that defines itself primarily in terms of belief. Making belief central is very much not something we should incorporate into modern paganism.
As a co-coordinator of a monthly pagan social here, I often make snide comments about individuals who I perceive as flaky. But the truth is that the flaky stuff is not particularly New Age. Rather, it is specifically *pagan* flakiness. We need to address this not be dismissing it as *not pagan*, but by holding people to reasonable standards of evidence for anything other than their own experiences. And when they present personal experiences that I don't buy, I politely state that it doesn't relate to any of my experiences and refuse to discuss it further.
After all, Dion Fortune "remembered" being a priestess in Atlantis, and used those memories to shape The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic. And I'm not sure that Wicca would exist without The Sea Priestess. If it did exist, I rather suspect that it would be something other than it is.
As I said, I sympathize with his position, but I think he's proposing a cure that's worse than the disease.
Yes, you absolutely call bullshit on this kind of claim and its anti-social attending behavior. You also ask them to provide more substance for their claims--and usually tell them that they are not Wiccans. Note that the response to the calling of bullshit resulted in the time-honored refrain that you can't go around judging people's paths, and that we all have to be nicey-nice.
That is the essence of the article--that sense that because no one is calling bullshit, that the absurdity continues unabated. When limits are in place, it tends to not happen(save for when someone doesn't read the userinfo...again). Perhaps we would be more likely to be taken seriously if there was a demonstrated lack of countenance for the weird expirations of the unconscious that are suddenly religious conversion attempts.
I am not afraid to say that there is no legitimate path for the Drama Queen, and the problem is that we keep giving those chickens a place to come home, roost, and crap all over our stuff. And let's be very plain, most of this airy-fairy, unicorn and bunnies, White Light, is exactly about the 'special powers' phenomenon that deos' Shadow has also discussed. That was, last I checked, attention seeking behavior that we also should not be encouraging.
It should not be the place of the average pagan person to be expected, or have demanded of them, automatic acceptance of anything said by anyone at any time. Validating the Path of the Faddish Weenie is not the same thing as tolerating difference and diversity of the wide array of paths around. Nor does it mean that we accept the numerous strange ideas that famous pagans have had over the years, ranging from Gardner, to Sanders, to Fortune, to Fox, to Cabot. Our personal autonomy matters, and matters a great deal, which is why the expectation of automatic acceptance without question -is- the problem.
I call people on bullshit regularly. (There's one lad who doesn't seem to be able to make it through a single evening at Pagans Night Out without me calling him on bad historical information. Give him a few years, and I think there's hope for him.) But I don't do it by pretending to be the Pagan Pope who has the authority to decide what is and isn't pagan.
Actually, you are. Rather than dismiss non-pagan fluffy occult-flavored nonsense as such, you advocate granting it some kind of legitimacy under an umbrella of 'bad paganism'. I reject that idea, not only because it is a waste of time, but also because there is a difference between bad/sloppy paganism and people whose fantasy lives have become confused with religion.
Otherkin, anyone? Isn't there a small group of people doing something with Tarabithia in the wake of the movie? What about the post-Matrix stuff? None of these things are pagan, nor should they be labeled as 'bad paganism' simply because someone uses some keywords and casts a circle when they do it.
But I don't do it by pretending to be the Pagan Pope who has the authority to decide what is and isn't pagan.
Reiki isn't pagan. It isn't wicca. Does someone who has a Reiki attunement become a Wiccan? No, and it ain't being the Pagan Pope to say so.
It's not a matter of pretending--it's about knowing enough to say 'no'.
Considering pagan can me anything from a counrty dweller to any non-christian religion ect. We really can't define what paganism is since it allready has multiple definitions.
"The whole things sounds like "My invisible people are more real than your invisible people."
I don't think that's the argument here, again it's use of terms that's got people up in arms.
I also think that people are confusing fluffy bunnism with lack of information.
Point the second: I am a neopagan. I primarily work with animal totems and other denizens of Nature, and have been doing so since the mid-1990s, and my patron deity until a couple of years ago was Artemis. But, as
And that's where we get into the invisible people argument. No one can empirically prove that older myths are "more real" than newer ones. Just because we can point to the creator of a piece of pop culture today doesn't mean that there's no power in the creation. Somewhere way back when there were people writing myths, and we don't know for 100% sure whether they did it for entertainment, something else, or both. Additionally, unless someone can objectively prove the existence of any invisible being, ultimately it does come down to faith, belief, and subjective personal experiences.
If you want to keep beings other than the Lord and Lady out of Wicca, that's fine. But neopaganism isn't only what the author says it is.
If pagan group A invokes Odin and its a lame and pathetic ritual that is more bad method acting rather than invocation... then its full of fail.
If pagan group B invokes Saint Nick and its a powerful and moving ritual with a strong representation of the archetype and people get something out of the experience... then its full of win.
Everything else, from the name of the God to the chalice and pentacle are simply props.
Other than that, I agree with your point completely.
Honey, believe that we can call upon thoughts, feelings, and personality of others into our lives through will and willingness. So, yes I do believe that Santa Claus is real and can manifest across the world, for we can all BE Santa if we are willing to channel love and take joy in the happiness of others.
Damm yes, fluff bunnies annoy me, but not nearly so much as someone trying to make out that they can define everything for everyone...even modern science has the good grace to accept that there are questions that we don't *currently* have the tools to ask let alone answer.
Now, post about how upg and objective reality are two different critters.....
I think setting one's filter is key- I also think that trying to state what is or is not pagan is epic fail...to such a degree that it put me back on the pro-santa side of the issue...
For that matter, why is the acceptance of the UPG of others morally mandatory at all? In all the time that I've been doing this, I've encountered person after person whose expectation was that tolerance and validation was automatic, and that Wicca is universally welcoming. In fact, as we saw last week, some people are are desperate for that tolerance and validation that they'll insult a whole community in an attempt to get the responses they desperately crave. Does the UPG of someone who cannot even define their practice or beliefs past pre-101 levels even count? That depends strictly on the UPG, of course, but look at the average little moondripper who floats in and flounces on the way out--those ain't UPGs in my book.
But more important, if some god shows up and delivers a message to a single person to not smoke, how does that message apply to anyone else--and why the hell are they then blathering about such a personal visitation on the internet??! When did that become my, or anyone else's business?
Or better, how many people claim to have had some powerful relationship with a god or spirit, simply because they saw a glimpse of it? The argument comes back to the absurd level of over-sharing that goes with these affairs, and why we should be willing to set tougher personal limits for what passes the filter.
There's a lot of stuff full of FAIL that gets a pass. Should it, simply because people are too chickenshit to say no to it?
Neo-Paganism is any earth-centric religion that attempts to either reconstruct or generally honor the folk traditions, beliefs, and practices of pre-Christianized Europe.
Granted, he's young, so he probably doesn't remember when neo-paganism wasn't "earth-centric" but I certainly do. When I entered the Craft, the focus was the Moon, not the Earth. I also remember when Wicca was a fertility religion, not a nature religion.
My point here is that that the "definition" of neo-paganism is an inherently moving target.
What's more, he has rejected anything that comes from Egypt or Asia Minor (which is where the Orphic Hymns are from). He's also rejected the possibility of our learning anything from any Afro-diasporic tradition, let alone the rest of the world.
By his excessively narrow definition, most of my pagan practice isn't pagan. And I've probably been doing much of it since before he was born.
Let me be blunt and point out that there is no possible definition of modern paganism that most pagans would agree on. Currently, we put up with descriptions of paganism because they are understood to be approximations for ease of communication. As soon as we begin excommunicating pagans for not meeting standards, we will discover that *most* pagans will violate any prescriptive definition in some way.
For a specifically Wiccan example, we would have to remove Kipling from the BoS, since we are forbidden to use literature as a source.
And that also eliminates all of the personages from the Mabinogion, as well. That's a large chunk of my personal deities, there! Plus, my initiatory lineage is Edmund Buczynski's Welsh Trad; does that get eliminated because of contamination from the Mabinogion? Does the entire initiatory lineage, including the Blue Star and Maidenhill lines, simply disappear in a puff of logic?
Let's ignore straw men arguments about Reiki and Wicca (since Reiki has never claimed to be part of neo-paganism--it's best classed with the Japanese NRMs). Let's take a hard look at the logical consequences of what you and he are proposing. You are proposing destroying paganism is the name of defending it.
[I feel like channeling Josh Geller at this point.]