Honoring the Elements: The Pagan Roots of Religion

[SedesDomi]

“My family is Jewish,” he said to me.

“My family is Protestant,” she added.

“But we’re pagan,” he continued, “and we want our wedding to have some pagan element.”

“Only we want it to be subtle,” she said. “We don’t want our families to feel uncomfortable.”

“That’s simple,” I answered. “We’ll honor the elements.” It’s a feature of most contemporary pagan rituals. “We all have to breathe. We all need light and warmth. We all stand on the earth that feeds and shelters us. We all need water to stay alive, whatever else we believe or don’t believe.”
…
Whatever our religious beliefs, we know that we are made of the same elements as this planet. The sea is in our blood, the air is our breath, are bones are crystalline, the sun’s fire (in whatever form) warms us and fuels. Climate change, in which we play a role, has shifted the balance of the elements. Whether or not human agency is clear in every instance, we can’t help but be aware of elemental upheaval: tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, the devastating flooding in Pakistan, fires in the Western United States. We have put diverse ecologies at risk as we compulsively drill for what is in effect ancient sunlight. A huge glacier just broke away from Greenland, and the seas are rising.

Instead of regarding the elements as our enemies, something to harness, subdue, exploit or escape, maybe it is time to start honoring them again, restoring them, learning from them, aligning with them, recognizing that all life, not just our own, is sustained by the elements, of one substance with them. Maybe we all are pagan, urban and rural dwellers on this earth.

 

[fermat]

The earth, like our lives, are gifts from God and should be treated with care. Understanding our impact on the planet is important. We should strive to do what we can to reduce our impact on the planet, regardless of how you feeling about ‘global warming’ or other theories.

Anything can be paganized if you want it to be. If you raise something in your life that is not God to the level of a god in your eyes, it is now pagan.

 

[bkayw]

From conversations with pagans, I’ve found that they are all for honoring the planet and animals, and crystals, etc., yet they are also more than willing to kill developing human beings in the womb.

 

[JHow]

SedesDomi: What is the source you are quoting from? A book? Website? A previous post?

 

[SedesDomi]

SedesDomi: What is the source you are quoting from? A book? Website? A previous post?

Click on the link in the first sentence.

 

[JHow]

Click on the link in the first sentence.

Got it. Didn’t notice the link. I can read, but I am not observant, I guess. Re the article:

Yeah, that’s great, until the volcano gods demand sacrifice!

 

[lynnvinc]

I teach mythology (among other things), and it seems quite natural that the ancients would have thought of various aspects of nature in anthropomorphic terms as spirits or gods. The Chinese, for instance thought the sun was a fire bird. And that makes sense – it’s hot and it flies across the sky. Animals, even rocks, had human-like spirits and motives.

As an anthropologist I like to tell my students that the original religions were a combination of religion, science, ethics, philosophy, culture, and way of life. Now all those things are separate (religion meriting one hour on Sunday for most church-goers). However, considering how ancient peoples were struggling to figure things out, and live in harmony with each other and their environment, they didn’t do such a bad job.

We have gone from an anthropomorphic view (thinking of nature & gods in terms of humans) to the modern mechanistic view (thinking of humans and all else as machines), and have overdone it.

What is interesting to me as a Christian is that the Christo-Judeo-Islamic God was thought of as beyond nature, beyond male/female or any other anthropomorphic view we might have. He is neither Earth Mother, nor Sky Daddy. And yet God is closer to us and more personal than a dear friend in his revelations and contact with us & within us. “Totally other” (as Buber and JPII said), but closer than close.

Science as we know it today arose out of our Christian/Catholic tradition, and I’m thinking, this was facilitated by our non-anthropomorphic view of God. We could conceive of the universe as operating according to laws of nature, rather than whims of an anthropomorphic god – laws of nature ordained by God for the Christo-Judeo-Islamic believers.

We don’t necessarily have to get into pagan thinking to experience the awe, wonder, splender, gratitude, connectedness, and closeness of God and his creation (which he pronounced “good”). Great saints throughout history have been able to do this. We are actually all called to union with God even in this life to the extent that we can. And St. John of the Cross tells us that to accomplish this we need to detach ourselves from all that is not God - nada, nada, nada. This does not mean destroying nature, but rather not possessing or striving to possess it. “If you want all, possess nothing.”

We really should rethink our modern ethos, our destruction of creation, and our self-imposed alienation from nature. That is abnormal and harmful not only for pagans, but also for Christians.