my ways pt. 2

[kittychorus]

Please forgive me if I’m missing something and I’m not always the brightest and most observant person, but are you saying there is no absolute truth for a wiccan/pagan to follow?
I’ve been trying to follow posts and threads by the pagans on this forum to find a solid consistency and it seems that it’s only the view that one could do whatever he/she wants as long at it appears that it doesn’t cause any drastic damage (harm) to the greater society. Is this it?

Yes and no. Yes, there is no handout that says this is your absolute truth to go by. That does not mean there is no truth, but only that another person can’t be the one to hand it to you. You have to seek it from God yourself.

The do no harm does not just mean drastic harm. It means NO harm- to yourself and others. This is harder to follow than a first thought would show. The hard part is figuring out what is harmful. I often screw this up. Or find out later something I thought would be harmless did indeed hurt someone in some way. (As I am sure even the most devoute Christians with the best intentions find themselves sometimes.) But… I endeavor to always learn from my mistakes, and let God teach me even further lessons through them.

This lack of solidity has it’s beauty and pitfalls, I admit. But my reasons for following it is that i am uncertain that any religion has really got it down pat and I have set out to discover what God has to teach me through his creation- which is the only thing I know for sure that he wrote completely himself and people can’t screw it up.

Yes, if you ask 15 wiccan/pagans this questions you might get 15 answers. But that depends on the sincerity of their search and what God has seen fit to show them so far. I can challenge a thought or two here and there, but it is up to God to truly teach them.

To help you relate to this a little: The difference in knowledge is better in greek… I am a little shaky here so correct me if I am wrong… but gnosis is to know fully through experience and weeda is a knowledge of having been simply told- or book learning. I don’t know where the verse is, but I believe that there is one that states that the evidence of God is in his handiwork.

This is not as efficient a study as building on another’s previous studies- true. But, if you are uncertain of the previous hearts and minds- wouldn’t this be a good place to start?

 

[Rebecca_New]

Humanity is lost without the Gospels. That is why Christians try to convert-we love each other. The Roman Empire just faded away with all the pagan practices and gods. I do not want that to happen to us, that is why trying to reach others is so very important.

 

[KarenNC]

The Roman Empire just faded away with all the pagan practices and gods. I do not want that to happen to us, that is why trying to reach others is so very important.

The Roman Empire hardly just “faded away.” If you want to look at religion as the sole factor for the success or failure of the Empire (which is very far from the reality), then one has to admit that it is ironic that after 1000 years of existence and dominance under its “pagan practices and gods” that it fell only once it became officially Christian. By your reasoning, becoming officially Christian (and Catholic at that) should have caused a flowering of the Empire rather than the results we saw. By extension, any country that claims Christianity as its official religion should also blossom and stay powerful. History does not seem to bear this out.

nipissingu.ca/department/history/MUHLBERGER/orb/milex.htm

 

[pagan_soul]

4.wiccans (pagans for that matter) worship nature…wrong,wrong,wrong…what many pagans do is worship the dieties in nature, for we dont think gods and godesses are external, but internal of every blade of grass, every bug, everything that is alive…

When you say we…you refer to yourself and who else? Your coven?

My concern is that when you speak of Wicca you speak for an entire religion and I believe you’ve said you are only 15 years old. Some wiccans have be trained for years under people who have been trained for far more years and they still would preface comments like this with something like “in my opinion”. I’ve been a pagan for 20 years and I would never post what other pagans believe. Maybe I’m just erring on the side of caution though.

Gods and goddesses being internal or external and worshipping nature can vary widely within the umbrella term that is wicca. Also some people’s definition of the devil may include some of the gods some choose to worship, and so from a catholics perspective I could be a devil worshiper just like I’m a sinner. Its all about point of view.

By the way, I appreciate that you keep posting in these forums with a purpose to inform people of your beliefs. I also am rather impressed with the depth of your knowledge of wicca in someone so young.

 

[reborn_pagan]

4.wiccans (pagans for that matter) worship nature…wrong,wrong,wrong…what many pagans do is worship the dieties in nature, for we dont think gods and godesses are external, but internal of every blade of grass, every bug, everything that is alive…

When you say we…you refer to yourself and who else? Your coven?

My concern is that when you speak of Wicca you speak for an entire religion and I believe you’ve said you are only 15 years old. Some wiccans have be trained for years under people who have been trained for far more years and they still would preface comments like this with something like “in my opinion”. I’ve been a pagan for 20 years and I would never post what other pagans believe. Maybe I’m just erring on the side of caution though.

Gods and goddesses being internal or external and worshipping nature can vary widely within the umbrella term that is wicca. Also some people’s definition of the devil may include some of the gods some choose to worship, and so from a catholics perspective I could be a devil worshiper just like I’m a sinner. Its all about point of view.

By the way, I appreciate that you keep posting in these forums with a purpose to inform people of your beliefs. I also am rather impressed with the depth of your knowledge of wicca in someone so young.

Yes i know I’m sorry that I kept saying “we” i know that every pagan is like a snow flake…

I was just upset about something I heard about Paganism and I got mad and felt like i should do something about it…

but i got caught up in the heat of the moment and it clouded my mind for a couple of hours.

 

[mc366]

reborn_pagan,

Do you know where your quote-

“an ye harm none, do what thou will”

which you use on your posts comes from?

It is a much used quote taken from the writings of Alexter Crowley, a very influential man devoted to the worship of Satan. He lived in the early to mid 1900’s, wrote books on Satanic rituals, and had a master plan to bring society under the power of Satan’s rule. Much of the “vision” he had for the degradation of societal morality has taken place and he would be pleased. In one quotes from his writings, he says “I hope to commit every sin there is before I die”.

This and so much more information on him can be found on a DVD set called THEY SOLD THEIR SOULS FOR ROCK AND ROLL.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

The Roman Empire hardly just “faded away.” If you want to look at religion as the sole factor for the success or failure of the Empire (which is very far from the reality), then one has to admit that it is ironic that after 1000 years of existence and dominance under its “pagan practices and gods” that it fell only once it became officially Christian. By your reasoning, becoming officially Christian (and Catholic at that) should have caused a flowering of the Empire rather than the results we saw. By extension, any country that claims Christianity as its official religion should also blossom and stay powerful. History does not seem to bear this out.

Hi Karen: Well, actually the Roman Empire did pretty much fail. But nobody says that religion was the sole factor for its success or failure; certainly it was a cause but so were many other things.

But just because a group or people might embrace a religion does not automatically assure that group’s ‘survival’ as a group at any given time. (Look at the early Christian martyrs. . .individually they all died in those early centuries but they were the impetus for other people’s survival as Christians in ensuing centuries.) Look at what happened to the Japanese Christians who went ‘underground’ for nearly 250 years. Many died but Christianity still survived, unknown to the ‘authorities’, until it was ‘safe’ for the Christians to come forth.

Christianity is not something which we attach to our identities thus: I am a ROMAN Christian, I am a Republican or Democratic or American Christian, a female Christian, male Christian, black, white, etc. . . Christian is our identity; the other things we are individually are ‘extras’. Our Christianity isn’t something we trot out for a Sunday Mass or a St. Patty’s parade and then tuck in while we go about our business as white bankers in Canada, black teachers in Zaire, Hispanic police in Costa Rica, etc.

And in actual fact, what we did get was not only individual ‘flowering’ (the martyrs, the early Church fathers, the great mystics and the founders of orders, the loving fathers and mothers who raised loving faithful children over the next 1000 some years and were the majority of Christians), we also had societal flowering–the rise of the Teutonic tribes into the Guildspeople of the early Middle Ages; the flowering of Gallic culture; the great legal minds of the Christian Saxons, the poetry of the Celtic religious and the great work of the scribes; etc. The Renaissance was Catholic in all senses. The Reformation was in a sense the antithesis of that renaissance.

Finally, the countries that are Catholic and have remained so do tend to ‘flower’ but not necessarily the way one would expect. Ireland for example was a very poor country for much of its history–but what have the people of Ireland given us? So very much. Other once Catholic countries like France are suffering until the people renew their faith. Not because ‘being Catholic’ will make the government ‘win’ but because being Catholic is right. Outside forces might cause difficulties, might even ‘break a country’ (like England) temporarily; it might even seem that the Protestants ‘make the country better’ for a time. . .but one has to consider the big picture. And we are nowhere near doing that because Protestantism has really not been around all that long and we don’t know God’s plans and how He will take evil and make it good.