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amber_lux
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Around 1969 the idea that they were extraterrestrials became the dominant point of their theology. At some point it was connected to The Process Church of the Final Judgment.
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SGWessells
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An interesting issue. As someone who was a third degree initiate in a neo-Gardnerian eclectic coven (sorry for the technical jargon), who now leans toward the materialistic end of the atheist/agnostic spectrum, I would not consider my current philosophy any closer to “hard polytheism” than to Catholicism (which I have also been; I’m kind of a serial polytheist; I believe in all the gods, just not all at the same time
). The gods of most ancient pantheons were not supernatural, for one thing; they were very much part of the natural world, and came to exist (and in systems like Asatru, will one day cease to exist) within it.Why would an “ultimate reality” consisting of many self-existent beings (if such they are) be any less ultimate than an ultimate reality consisting of only one (dodging the tricky question of the Trinity)? If the gods are not self-existent, how did they come to be, and wouldn’t the cause of their being be the ultimate reality? Or is there an ultimate reality at all?
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xcatho1
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Really enjoying the back and forth on this thread. LOL! Thanks.
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mwok
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Shared hallucination? Is that even possible!? How do we know more than one person are sharing the exact same hallucination? Is that how you define reality? So if you rear-ended my car we would only be sharing an hallucination? I’m going to explain that to the police if I ever get ticketed!
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amber_lux
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Transpersonal Psychology uses that as one of the more common definitions. Especially when studying paranormal phenomena.
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SGWessells
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First of all, thank you, Loka, for being such a pleasant, patient, and unflappable source of knowledge about a subject many are unfamiliar with or don’t understand. Heil thu farir!
Second, that being said, the above quote focuses the problem that led to my departure from Paganism. It has to do with the nature of the gods. If all we know about them, aside from personal experiences, comes from the myths and lore told about them; if those sources tell us, for example, that Frigga is matronly and concerned with family while Freya is more concerned with natural fertility, then the myths define, in a sense, what those gods are. The problem I had was how the gods relate to the natural world, and the myths of other traditions. Specifically, the very nature and essence of YHVH is that he is the only god that exists, period. So if other gods exist, and are not demons or otherwise subordinate creations within the Judeo-Christian tradition, YHVH is in fact NOT the only god who exists. Thus he would lack the defining characteristic that makes him who he is rather than some other deity; in fact, he would not be YHVH at all, but someone else.
The same problem exists with other attributes of deities. For example, Odin, Vili, and Ve create the earth using the body of the slain giant Ymir. Other traditions have other myths. But if Odin is not the Fashioner of Midgard, who is he, then? And if he is, then Marduk or Nut or YHVH isn’t, in which case the problem is theirs, unless they are all metaphors, which is of course possible. But the problem isn’t which creation story corresponds to reality because, as science has shown, none of them do. The problem is this:
- We get our information about what gods do, specialize in, are interested in, mainly from myths.
- Gods are useful/attractive to us insofar as they can help us in those areas. No one prays to Aphrodite for strength in battle, for example.
- But all the stories conflict. Who’s in charge of what area? Are all the war gods interchangeable? If so, why specialize in only one pantheon? How do you know it’s the right one, if that question has any meaning? It all seems arbitrary, and thus cause and result (i.e. sacrifice/ritual followed by blessing) impossible to verify.
To summarize, until late antiquity, when the melting pot of the Roman Empire made Isis and Serapion a sort of mythic glue holding bits from various traditions together, all the mythic cycles of the various traditions stood alone; they did not recognize others, or the victorious one absorbed the others, as Odin tended to absorb Tyr and Bragi. Or the gods of other cultures were just our gods with the wrong names. What relation do any of these myths have to reality? You mentioned that if making an offering to Freya (I think) was followed by increase in prosperity, then she was probably pleased. But putting the whole coincidence issue aside, what is the connection between Freya and prosperity? How is it established? By the myths. But if the myths are unreliable, or nobody can say they have any connection to the laws of probability, economics, chance, or whatever governs your state of wealth, how do you know she had anything to do with it? Am I making any sense here?
I raised these issues some years ago on a Pagan message board and nobody else seemed to think it was much of a problem, but I couldn’t make sense of it any more. Does the question of the specific nature and metaphysical reality of the gods matter at all to Pagans these days? Or do you still just go on having fun and doing rituals without bothering much about questions that probably can’t be answered anyway? I’m curious, and do not intend to be critical. Thanks.
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SGWessells
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This could conceivably apply to Yahweh as well, especially in his OT stage. But it doesn’t explain why austerities are considered so holy in religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, or why sacrifice was so universal a feature of religions. Nobody wants to slit the throat of their prize heifer, but they do it to honor their gods, to win divine favor, and so on. All religions, even Christianity, feature a reward and punishment system. If that is evidence for projection, it fits your religion as well as any.
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SGWessells
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Do any pagans offer money? I understand the objection to sacrificing animals (unethical, unsanitary), but wouldn’t burning a fiver in a candle be an acceptable equivalent to killing a lamb? (Adjusted for price and inflation). Yet I’ve never heard of any covens practicing that form of offering.
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Weedlewom
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Well, let me toss my pointed hat into the ring,
I was raised a Methodist, but became Catholic when I was 21 and two years later was a member of a community of cloistered, contemplative nuns, where I remained for five years. I stayed in the Catholic Church for about two years after leaving the monastery (and yes, communities of contemplative nuns live in monasteries, not convents) before leaving the Catholic Church. My reasons for leaving were varied, but chief among them were the attitudes toward the ordination of women as well as the obstinance about not allowing a married clergy (something not even an issue until, I believe, the 11th century or so).
A couple years after leaving the Church I became Pagan and within a short while I was following a Celtic path within the framework of a neo-Gardnerian eclectic Wiccan coven.
My ideas about Deity are complex. My Patroness is the Celtic Goddess, Brighid, who is also known as Brigid and may be familiaar to some in her transmorgrified form as the Irish Saint Brigit.
I believe the gods and goddesses of Paganism are real, but I believe they are emanations, if you will, from an ultimate Source of the Divine which is essentially unknowable. I have studied Kabbalah in the context of the Western Mystery Tradition, so a lot of my ideas about the Divine are informed by that study.
I will happily field any questions people have about my spiritual peregrinations.
I was raised a Methodist, but became Catholic when I was 21 and two years later was a member of a community of cloistered, contemplative nuns, where I remained for five years. I stayed in the Catholic Church for about two years after leaving the monastery (and yes, communities of contemplative nuns live in monasteries, not convents) before leaving the Catholic Church. My reasons for leaving were varied, but chief among them were the attitudes toward the ordination of women as well as the obstinance about not allowing a married clergy (something not even an issue until, I believe, the 11th century or so).
A couple years after leaving the Church I became Pagan and within a short while I was following a Celtic path within the framework of a neo-Gardnerian eclectic Wiccan coven.
My ideas about Deity are complex. My Patroness is the Celtic Goddess, Brighid, who is also known as Brigid and may be familiaar to some in her transmorgrified form as the Irish Saint Brigit.
I believe the gods and goddesses of Paganism are real, but I believe they are emanations, if you will, from an ultimate Source of the Divine which is essentially unknowable. I have studied Kabbalah in the context of the Western Mystery Tradition, so a lot of my ideas about the Divine are informed by that study.
I will happily field any questions people have about my spiritual peregrinations.
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PRmerger
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Firstly, welcome to the CAFs, Weedlewom.
Secondly, thank you for sharing your faith journey with us. Very interesting!
So now to my question: is there any part of your theology, as you understand it currently, that you don’t like? That is, is there any part of what you believe God (or the Source of the Divine) has revealed that you wish weren’t true, but you obey because, well, it’s from God and not from you?
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SGWessells
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Ever ask yourself that question? It sounds odd at first to wonder whether an omniscient, eternal, all-powerful being could be a projection of humanity, which is none of these things, but think about it. How many times does YHVH defend his rather prickly honor in the OT, as if such a being would care,or insist on his people breaking all the idols and having no other gods than him, or say “that they may know that I am the LORD”? Sounds like the projection of a minority tribe of monotheists surrounded by polytheists who are always trying to take their land or invite them to worship Baal. For better or worse, Christians have inherited this god, inflated by Greek philosophy, exalted by being merged with the Neoplatonic One, and elaborated over the centuries by many theologians. Not entirely but partly a projection, with a lot of other things mixed in.
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PRmerger
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Indeed, I do.
And I think I answered it here.
I think it’s quite clear, vis a vis the examples I gave, that the Catholic God is not a god that one has designed to make Jones worship Jones.
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SGWessells
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They often did in the old days. Origen was not the first man to emasculate himself
for religious reasons; the cult of Cybele was so notorious for it that the Empire banned it (presumably because it cut down on the number of potential soldiers). Modern pagan deities leave such decisions up to individuals as a rule. (That particular option is thankfully neglected ).I notice on this thread that the Catholics seem obsessed with objective truth and objective morality, which is not surprising. But a lot of very good people can lead very useful, happy, and helpful lives without either. Perhaps that is a good thing for us to consider, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us.
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PRmerger
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Could you please elaborate? What moral imperative was given for Origen to emasculate himself?They often did in the old days. Origen was not the first man to emasculate himself
(And it would be helpful if you cited your source(s). Thanks.)
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SGWessells
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Presumably, since we aren’t born knowing, it’s the deity’s job to let us know, or do without. If they are gods, they should have no problem doing this. But there’s no bible or rule book in paganism; pagans neither need nor want one, and get along fine without them. You folks who depend on such guidance and can’t imagine how anyone can get by without it just have to stretch your imagination a bit and stop trying to make them come up with a holy book or pagan commandments. It ain’t gonna happen. I was pagan for 12 years; I know.
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SGWessells
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The limitations are culturally implicit and understood by members of that culture. Everybody in Western cultures (broadly speaking) knows, for example, that “consenting adults” does not include father and daughter or sister and brother; they don’t have to be told. Married people have presumably made a vow to be faithful to each other, unless they specify otherwise, which eliminates in advance any possibility of licit consent outside of the marriage.
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PRmerger
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Right. And this is exactly why it turns out that these pagan gods never seem to demand anything of their worshippers that the worshippers themselves wouldn’t demand. It’s because the voice of the gods whispering to them is none other than…guess who.
(Refer back to Jones worshipping Jones.)
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PRmerger
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Fair enough. So “2 consenting adults” means
-not father/daughter
-not sister or brother
-not married people who have made vows to be faithful.
But does it also include a married couple that made vows to be faithful, but now one member decides he wants to change that?
And are you sure that everyone in Western culture who agrees to this “2 consenting adults” criterion will give a thumbs up to a 18 year old teenager having sex with a paying 57 year old man?
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SGWessells
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Reading Hesiod’s Theogony or Homer as literal truth is as absurd as reading Genesis as an astronomy or biology textbook. In fact, a lot of ancient pagans rejected the classical gods for these same reasons, and found satisfaction in the mystery cults instead.
Morality doesn’t have to be dictated by a god to be binding or rational. It needs only basic common sense, empathy, and the golden rule common to all faith traditions.
As for smashing babies against walls, read Psalm 137:9, if you can see it with that log in your eye.
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SGWessells
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Not entirely. The medieval church took it for granted that church and state were, and ought to be, united, so that heresy was regarded as a form of treason, to be punished accordingly. The papacy claimed jurisdiction over all the kingdoms of the earth, and forced King John of England to hand over the country as a Papal fief in 1215 by imposing an interdict. The church couldn’t get away with that nowadays.
Not until the New World was discovered in 1492 did the doctrine of salvation for those in other religions develop. Torture was an acceptable method of interrogation, as long as it was not extreme. If Jan Hus or Giordano Bruno were alive today, they would have gone on the talk show/book tour media circus instead of being burned at the stake. Maybe those are not considered foundational beliefs, but to dissenters, they are pretty important differences.
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