19 PAGANISM

The text in italics is an excerpt from the book “Twilight of the Celtic Gods” (David Clarke/Andy Roberts, Blanford, ISBN 0-7137-2522-2). They are the testimony of an anonymous person from the region of Yorkshire, UK, describing the pagan customs there, still practiced when he was a young boy.

I come from an old tradition, a very old tradition if the learning passed down through our families is to be believed, a way of understanding the world which transcends, yet encompasses the mundanity of much of life. It’s really a way of looking at the universe which includes human beings as a fundamental part of the whole process. Notice that I say tradition rather than religion, because I suppose that’s what it is. We don’t really worship, in essence because we ourselves are part of the very thing we would have to worship, and so instead we revere, and stand in awe of, the powers that create and sustain us and the world …

Paganism sees the deity as immanent, while religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam have a transcendent deity. Indeed, according to Christian theology the only transcendent, almighty God, who cannot be approached or seen in essence or being, becomes only immanent in Jesus or through the Church. Islam also sees Allah as transcendent, separated from creation. In both religions the deity is male, hence paternalistic and mysogenic.

They’re both based on belief. Without belief, the Bible, the Gospels and the Koran are nothing more than a collection of pseudo-historical stories, from an exoteric point of view that is. But since both Christianity and Islam claim that their holy books are dealing with historical facts, they exclude an esoteric interpretation. Both are also highly proselytic, often using force and violence, while Paganism isn’t. Belief isn’t necessary in Paganism, because ‘We don’t really worship, in essence because we ourselves are part of the very thing we would have to worship’. The presence of the deity is a tangible fact.

Paganism is also holistic because it sees humans and nature as an integrated part of the deity. In Christianity and Islam, nature is some sort of playground for mankind. They have to respect it as God’s creation, but they’re the masters. Many of our environmental problems are indirectly caused by this Christian notion that God gave this earth to humans for their use and specifically directed humans to exercise dominion over the earth and all of its life forms. What we in the West have inherited from the great philosophers and  theologians of the past is a split in our reality that alienates us from ourselves and our environment. We are convinced that we are self-contained entities, living in little boxes, divided from the rest of the universe.

Paganism acknowledges the spiritual value of nature and the oneness, the interdependency of everything. Our ancestors rarely made representations of their deities. The whole universe was the deity. Often they marked special places, where the life giving forces were strongly felt, with a carved stone, not always recognizable as such to outsiders. A simple stone, marked with a V, symbolizing the vulva, represented the mother deity for example. After the Roman occupation and Christianisation, statues became more common.