Ask a pagan

  • Thread starter Thread starter RiverStone
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Well Buckland was an initiated Wiccan and although he did break from tradition in some serious ways Wiccan concepts are still at the core. The main problem I would see with trad Wiccans accepting it is that it allows self initiation. As such each individual practitioner does not necisarily have an initiatory lineage to Gardner or even necisarily one at all.
There’s a good bit more than that.🙂 In a nutshell, Buckland intended Seax Wica to be a complete departure from BTW and it does not transmit the same thing, thus no lineage in it that goes beyond Buckland (whereas lineage in BTW back to Gardner). It’s not a priesthood like that of BTW, its concept of initiation is different and doesn’t convey the same thing as a BTW initiation. Plus, not only is initiation into Seax Wica optional but the religion maintains “self initiation” into it is feasible. Also, in order for Seax Wica to be Wicca, Buckland would have had to break his Gardnerian oaths, which he acknowledged he did not do (Seax Wica isn’t oathbound, the entirety of it openly published).
 
The nature aspect drew me To wicca for a time and I used Tyr and Skadi as my primary dietys but eventually I just moved into Germanic paganism as to worship them directly, as my distant ancestors, rather than through the frame work of Wicca.
Although theologically my heart’s with Jesus, the nature aspect of paganism has always drawn me like a moth to the flame. I also love the awareness you guys of the cycle of the year, the festivals attached to the seasons, and a real poetic way of looking at creation. There is a lot to be said for it.

In regard to ancestors, we’re the same (German) 👍
 
Pagan by defenition refers to people who follow non Abrahamic religions. However Neo-Paganism is what this thread is realy about. Neo-Paganism is a term which has very loose boundries and can be considered offensive but generally consists of two groups. Wiccans and other witches, and Reconstructionists who recreatate European and Near East paganism. Reconstructionists include Druids, Celtic pagans, Asatru/Norse/Germanic/Anglo Saxon pagans (heathens), Hellenismos (Greek pagans), Roman pagans, Khemetics (Egyptian pagans), Slavic pagans and others.

New Age is a large group of vastly different and unorthodox beliefs involving psycology, metaphysics, holistic medicine, and sometimes the occult. Burning Man is full of New Age folks, although they are not all hippies.

Wicca is a Neo-Pagan religion that involves witchcraft and dualistic worship of he God and Goddess. It was founded by Gerald Gardner in the 20th century, but is believed by some to be a continuation of a much older witch cult. Gardner drew from Occultism, cerimonial magic, Celtic Paganism, and Anglo Saxon paganism to create a nature base religion. Wiccans are a broad group ranging from staunch traditionalists who follow initiatory lineages back to Gardner to Eclectic solitary witches, many self initiated. The major structured traditions include Gardnerian, Alexandrian and Seax Wicca. Dianic Wiccans worship only he divine feminine. As a rule of thumb Wiccans usualy can’t agree on any aspect of hier religion, including who is Wiccan.

Spiritualism generally refers to working with spirits or similar concepts. Astral projection, Spirit guides, Shamanism, contacting the dead, and other similar practice are all forms of spiritualism.

I hope this helps. These terms cover a vast verity of beliefs and often the people they are used to define either resent the term or can’t agree who is one. If you want more specify information on a specific subject feal free to ask, because hear things are rather difficult to define lol
Interesting. I am just an orthodox Christian but my housemate I can’t pin. I know he used to attend a spiritualist “church” in south Texas and since coming to the tx/nm border and meeting me he has taken me to psychic seminars very costly with the admission, readings and chrystals etc.

I’m sorry, but to me it is all a bit silly. Sure chrystals are nice to see, but I don’t think they have any power, just rocks.

Now he tries to re-enforce his returned Catholicism with all kinds of new-age stuff. Just like recently he bought a book on curanderos. It just confuses me.
 
Interesting. I am just an orthodox Christian but my housemate I can’t pin. I know he used to attend a spiritualist “church” in south Texas and since coming to the tx/nm border and meeting me he has taken me to psychic seminars very costly with the admission, readings and chrystals etc.

I’m sorry, but to me it is all a bit silly. Sure chrystals are nice to see, but I don’t think they have any power, just rocks.

Now he tries to re-enforce his returned Catholicism with all kinds of new-age stuff. Just like recently he bought a book on curanderos. It just confuses me.
New age is such an outrageously broad category that includes so much seamingly unrelated stuff, much of which isn’t religion in and of itself. And some of the folks can be a bit… Out there, as well.

I’m not really a believer in christal healing or that sort of stuff, though I wouldn’t say it difinitively dosnt exist. I do however believe there are “psychics” in the sense of people born with gifts or more attuned to unseen things. There are a lot of fakes out there but in my oppinion there are some people who truly are able to connect with this stuff easier than most, even if they don’t realize it.
 
How do you know if your Paganism is consistent with the old traditions?
 
How do you know if your Paganism is consistent with the old traditions?
Some people don’t believe it’s necisary to be entirely accurate, seeing as all religions evolve over time. However, reconstructionists generally use existing written sources and archeological information.
 
How do you know if your Paganism is consistent with the old traditions?
I did see a DC documentary about paganism where they were praying butt naked around a fire…Why do they pray like that? I do not recall reading about such practice in antiquity but only in some very specific feasts, orgies dedicated to some god.
 
I did see a DC documentary about paganism where they were praying butt naked around a fire…Why do they pray like that? I do not recall reading about such practice in antiquity but only in some very specific feasts, orgies dedicated to some god.
It’s a practice associated with Witchcraft, called Skyclad. Most pagans don’t do it. Some Wiccan covens do it as well as other witch groups. Sense Wicca is, to be realistic, a new religion I dont think it says much on thier minds if it is historical. They believe it brings them closer to nature.

Also, Orgies? REALY? Your lack of knowledge on the subject matter here continues to show.
 
… They believe it brings them closer to nature.

Also, Orgies? REALY? Your lack of knowledge on the subject matter here continues to show.
Interesting belief; naked to be closer to the nature; i can be as close as it can get with cotton made underware 🙂 ;maybe exciting sexual feelings…that would work up to say 40 ? and that would be a very animalic thing, sex with no meaning.

One example of orgies are Romans Saturnalies, when anybody was allowed to do anything in the streets…

All you have to do is google and find plenty of information:

ex ;Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough.
bartleby.com/196/145.html

The account is preserved in a narrative of the martyrdom of St. Dasius, which was unearthed from a Greek manuscript in the Paris library, and published by Professor Franz Cumont of Ghent. Two briefer descriptions of the event and of the custom are contained in manuscripts at Milan and Berlin; one of them had already seen the light in an obscure volume printed at Urbino in 1727, but its importance for the history of the Roman religion, both ancient and modern, appears to have been overlooked until Professor Cumont drew the attention of scholars to all three narratives by publishing them together some years ago. According to these narratives, which have all the appearance of being authentic, and of which the longest is probably based on official documents, the Roman soldiers at Durostorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the following manner. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated. In the year A.D. 303 the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dasius, but he refused to play the part of the heathen god and soil his last days by debauchery. The threats and arguments of his commanding officer Bassus failed to shake his constancy, and accordingly he was beheaded, as the Christian martyrologist records with minute accuracy, at Durostorum by the soldier John on Friday the twentieth day of November, being the twenty-fourth day of the moon, at the fourth hour.
3 Since this narrative was published by Professor Cumont, its historical character, which had been doubted or denied, has received strong confirmation from an interesting discovery. In the crypt of the cathedral which crowns the promontory of Ancona there is preserved, among other remarkable antiquities, a white marble sarcophagus bearing a Greek inscription, in characters of the age of Justinian, to the following effect: “Here lies the holy martyr Dasius, brought from Durostorum.” The sarcophagus was transferred to the crypt of the cathedral in 1848 from the church of San Pellegrino, under the high altar of which, as we learn from a Latin inscription let into the masonry, the martyr’s bones still repose with those of two other saints. How long the sarcophagus was deposited in the church of San Pellegrino, we do not know; but it is recorded to have been there in the year 1650. We may suppose that the saint’s relics were transferred for safety to Ancona at some time in the troubled centuries which followed his martyrdom, when Moesia was occupied and ravaged by successive hordes of barbarian invaders. At all events it appears certain from the independent and mutually confirmatory evidence of the martyrology and the monuments that Dasius was no mythical saint, but a real man, who suffered death for his faith at Durostorum in one of the early centuries of the Christian era. Finding the narrative of the nameless martyrologist thus established as to the principal fact recorded, namely, the martyrdom of St. Dasius, we may reasonably accept his testimony as to the manner and cause of the martyrdom, all the more because his narrative is precise, circumstantial, and entirely free from the miraculous element. Accordingly I conclude that the account which he gives of the celebration of the Saturnalia among the Roman soldiers is trustworthy.
4 This account sets in a new and lurid light the office of the King of the Saturnalia, the ancient Lord of Misrule, who presided over the winter revels at Rome in the time of Horace and Tacitus. It seems to prove that his business had not always been that of a mere harlequin or merry-andrew …
 
Interesting belief; naked to be closer to the nature; i can be as close as it can get with cotton made underware 🙂 ;maybe exciting sexual feelings…that would work up to say 40 ? and that would be a very animalic thing, sex with no meaning.

One example of orgies are Romans Saturnalies, when anybody was allowed to do anything in the streets…

All you have to do is google and find plenty of information:

ex ;Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough.
bartleby.com/196/145.html

The account is preserved in a narrative of the martyrdom of St. Dasius, which was unearthed from a Greek manuscript in the Paris library, and published by Professor Franz Cumont of Ghent. Two briefer descriptions of the event and of the custom are contained in manuscripts at Milan and Berlin; one of them had already seen the light in an obscure volume printed at Urbino in 1727, but its importance for the history of the Roman religion, both ancient and modern, appears to have been overlooked until Professor Cumont drew the attention of scholars to all three narratives by publishing them together some years ago. According to these narratives, which have all the appearance of being authentic, and of which the longest is probably based on official documents, the Roman soldiers at Durostorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the following manner. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated. In the year A.D. 303 the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dasius, but he refused to play the part of the heathen god and soil his last days by debauchery. The threats and arguments of his commanding officer Bassus failed to shake his constancy, and accordingly he was beheaded, as the Christian martyrologist records with minute accuracy, at Durostorum by the soldier John on Friday the twentieth day of November, being the twenty-fourth day of the moon, at the fourth hour.
3 Since this narrative was published by Professor Cumont, its historical character, which had been doubted or denied, has received strong confirmation from an interesting discovery. In the crypt of the cathedral which crowns the promontory of Ancona there is preserved, among other remarkable antiquities, a white marble sarcophagus bearing a Greek inscription, in characters of the age of Justinian, to the following effect: “Here lies the holy martyr Dasius, brought from Durostorum.” The sarcophagus was transferred to the crypt of the cathedral in 1848 from the church of San Pellegrino, under the high altar of which, as we learn from a Latin inscription let into the masonry, the martyr’s bones still repose with those of two other saints. How long the sarcophagus was deposited in the church of San Pellegrino, we do not know; but it is recorded to have been there in the year 1650. We may suppose that the saint’s relics were transferred for safety to Ancona at some time in the troubled centuries which followed his martyrdom, when Moesia was occupied and ravaged by successive hordes of barbarian invaders. At all events it appears certain from the independent and mutually confirmatory evidence of the martyrology and the monuments that Dasius was no mythical saint, but a real man, who suffered death for his faith at Durostorum in one of the early centuries of the Christian era. Finding the narrative of the nameless martyrologist thus established as to the principal fact recorded, namely, the martyrdom of St. Dasius, we may reasonably accept his testimony as to the manner and cause of the martyrdom, all the more because his narrative is precise, circumstantial, and entirely free from the miraculous element. Accordingly I conclude that the account which he gives of the celebration of the Saturnalia among the Roman soldiers is trustworthy.
4 This account sets in a new and lurid light the office of the King of the Saturnalia, the ancient Lord of Misrule, who presided over the winter revels at Rome in the time of Horace and Tacitus. It seems to prove that his business had not always been that of a mere harlequin or merry-andrew …
Interesting account yes, but that dosnt constitute an orgy, which is many people having sex simultaneously. The tradition of dressing up in the person of a diety has existed throughout history and is even practiced by christians who sometimes reenact the last supper. Giving a person serious social le-way before they are sacrificed is also pretty common throughout history. I know of no modern pagan group which participates in Human sacrifices. Satanists do but they are not Pagans but submit to the Judeo-Christian world view. Certain Wiccan groups as well as some other witches do engage in ritual sex acts but between a high priest and high priestess. Many replace this with a symbolic act involving a dagger and chalice. The only sources I’ve ever seen claiming that moder pagans have orgies at religious services are Christian ones.
 
All you have to do is google and find plenty of information:

ex ;Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough.
You have to be careful referencing Frazer. Some of his ideas about pagans of long ago have been proven questionable at best, completely wrong at worst.
 
How did you guys decide to become pagans? Why don’t you follow the 2000 years tradition and want to get to the one of the stone age? What are you going to achieve while is obvious that in no way can that be everlasting life? Jesus is life and everlasting life can be only in holiness with Him and his saints; other than that is the everlasting death which is the Hell where ends up anybody who doesn’t like to live the life as Jesus created it; your gods might be already there…
 
How did you guys decide to become pagans? Why don’t you follow the 2000 years tradition and want to get to the one of the stone age? What are you going to achieve while is obvious that in no way can that be everlasting life? Jesus is life and everlasting life can be only in holiness with Him and his saints; other than that is the everlasting death which is the Hell where ends up anybody who doesn’t like to live the life as Jesus created it; your gods might be already there…
It is everlasting. Even after Ragnarok we will still exist in Hel (Not Hell, Hel). Other pagans often believe in reincarnation. Death is certainly not the end.

And my ancestors have only been Christian for about 1000 years, which is only a small portion of time when compaired to the age of religion as a whole dating back to the first Animistic ideas.
 
I
And my ancestors have only been Christian for about 1000 years, which is only a small portion of time when compaired to the age of religion as a whole dating back to the first Animistic ideas.
In regard to animism, what if the evolutionary theory of religion is wrong, and primitive monotheism – related specifically to a singular benign being – is correct? If that’s the case then we go back far enough and find our ancestors were, if not Christian, at least something close to it long before there was any idea of multiple gods or spirit-filled nature. :hmmm:
 
You have to be careful referencing Frazer. Some of his ideas about pagans of long ago have been proven questionable at best, completely wrong at worst.
He’s entertaining, though. I’m rereading the Golden Bough right now and highly recommend it. Also it’s available free on the Kindle, if you can deal with the typos. 😃

Anyway, thanks for dropping by to answer questions! I have nothing else useful to add so I’ll just go back to lurking. :cool:
 
Among pagan religions is no dictate to either malign or convert others or pretend one religion is superior to another. That’s why pagan religions, as diverse at they are, tend to co-exist just fine not only with each other but with other religions as well. Which differs from what often happens among Christian denominations when adherents take turns at denouncing each other because each considers their religion “right” and others as “wrong”.
OK, I just said I was going to go back to lurking, but I do want to address this comment you made earlier in the thread.

I have known quite a few pagans and I can tell you this is not exactly correct. “Pagan” is an umbrella term covering a wide range of beliefs and groups, and some of them most definitely to NOT “coexist just fine with each other or other religions”.

For example, Satanists really look down Wiccans (one comment I just found from this Satanist’s site* describes them as “lovey-dovey-faeries-and-lollipops Wiccans”). (*warning, some profanity here!).

There are umpteen Wiccan and Pagan websites accusing Christians of all sorts of persecutions, past and present, real and imagined.

And yes, vice versa.

What I’m trying to say is that Paganism is not really all that different from Christianity as far as tolerance of other beliefs. They may say they’re different but come on - Pagans and Christians have one thing in common: they’re comprised of HUMANS! 👍
 
…Paganism is not really all that different from Christianity as far as tolerance of other beliefs. They may say they’re different but come on - Pagans and Christians have one thing in common: they’re comprised of HUMANS! 👍
Amen to that. :yup:

Along those lines, I have to say that over the years the one thing that’s really struck me as I’ve read up more and more on neo-paganism, is that as a religion it has infighting and sectarianism to almost the same degree as Christianity (or any other faith for that matter). As you said, it’s just a human thing :slapfight:

Oh, and about the Kindle: is there anything better than the sheer volume of books in the public domain that are available on it? No, nothing is better… Except peanut butter and chocolate.
 
As someone who flirted with paganism as a teen, I would ask a few questions:

First, do you believe that your pagan religion is the continuity of something ancient and pre-Christian, or is it something ‘New Age’ that really isn’t much older than the 20th century?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top