Hello, everyone!
I just wanted a safe place to talk about my path and journey. I've been lurking on the forum for a few days to make sure it is a safe space. Some years ago I registered on a neo-pagan forum and was ripped to shreds in my introduction post because I was dabbling in Celtic Reconstructionism and also associated with a Christian church, so that really put a bad taste in my mouth, and although the thread was closed down no one came to my defense.
So I'll explain the Christian part. Culturally speaking I am Episcopalian, but my interpretation of the theology is esoteric in the sense of searching for metaphorical meanings and correspondences "beneath" the "outer" doctrines. There is a sense in which I believe God is humanity writ large, especially as portrayed in the Bible in which Yahweh is depicted as having both a light and dark side to his nature.
One quote that was thrown at me on that forum was "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," (all in caps loc of course) which is true in a sense in that the Isrealites were not to worship any gods before Yahweh, but it doesn't mean that they didn't acknowledge other gods at one point in their history. It's just that Yahweh came first as the "god of gods."
Esoterically I interpret this commandment in light of the idea that God is a projection of our humanity: thou shalt have no other gods before thine own wellbeing. That doesn't mean we don't look out for the well being of other people or serve our gods. We are a social and religious species after all. To love others and own a moral compass is part of looking out for my own well being. I need others to thrive. And many of us need our religions and our gods in order to flourish.
One definition of neo-pagan I've heard is that a neo-pagan is someone who is not a Christian, a (religious) Jews, or a Muslim and who also self-identifies as a neo-pagan. I'm unsure how to identify when it comes to Christianity. As far as the Episcopal Church is concerned I am a Christian by virtue of my baptism, and nothing can change that. Now whether I am theologically a Christian is another matter. If we're going to go with traditional orthodox Nicene Christianity then I am not. On the other hand the Episcopal Church includes the likes of Katharine Jefferts Schori and John Spong as bishops, official custodians and defenders of the faith. Katharine was even our presiding bishop.
As far as I am concerned, though there are schisms and disputes within the Episcopal Church, the liberals won the day, and it is a community that includes people who are willing to worship in common with other members of the church as was made clear by Schori who tended to focus on divinity as Jesus' heroic mission and morality and claims that the creed is not merely a propositional checklist, and Spong goes even further.
Individual Episcopalians vary in the extreme in how they actually interpret the basic doctrines and rituals, and as far as I am concerned, who the community seeks to include is our business and not that of outsiders to dictate. There are non-theist Episcopalians and pagan Episcopalians and New Age and liberals, moderates, and conservatives and I'm sure more variations in between. Some focus on the Protestant aspect of the faith and some on the Catholic aspect, and in reality I think there is a very real sense in which Anglicanism is merely its own category beyond the Catholic and Protestant divide.
I apologize if this sounds like a rant -- it's not meant to be. I'm just trying to explain how I justify myself as a member of this community. Though I am identifying more as a cultural Episcopalian these days I have taken time to interpret the doctrines in a way that is fitting to me. I am a member at this time primarily for the community and communal ritual.
But it is not the only aspect of my path. I am coming to identify as a neo-pagan these days. I have constructed rites based on a mystical experience I had some eight years ago. I don't call them "Christopagan" for a few reasons, but some would put that label on it I suppose. They involve the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but they are esoteric in the sense I defined before. They are pantheistic in nature, and the persons of the Trinity could also be referred to as the All-Ama-Father, the Star, and Love, Love being not a mere emotion, but a philosophical concept I have developed influenced by Thelema, and Love is connected to my own concept of Will -- thus my username.
Parts of the Star Rite change day to day in a weekly cycle and from liturgical season to liturgical season, and there are some holy days as well with their own readings. Although the rites are pantheistic they accommodate relating to God in anthropomorphic forms as well as polytheistic practices.
I am agnostic about many things -- the precise nature of the gods, the afterlife, miracles, and so on. Nevertheless in practice I am a very religious and prayerful person. I would like to post other threads on my musings about the nature of the gods and other topics, but I will not include that here as the thread is getting long enough as it is.
While it has taken some time for my rites to take on a fully neo-pagan flavor (albeit imbued with Christian symbols, imagery, and Powers) I have dabbled in neo-paganism for about ten years. I was a part of a student led Pagan Student Alliance and celebrated some of the Sabbats with my friends. I was delighted to take part in a Kemetic Reconstructionist offering as well. But I did all these things as a guest mostly.
I was never particularly drawn to Wicca, neo-Wicca, or the usual Wheel of the Year, though I dabbled in that as well. For a long time now though I've been drawn to some form of polytheistic practice. To some extent I've been able to accommodate this by gravitating toward the Anglo-Catholic traditions within the Episcopal Church of venerating Mary and the other saints, and I was able to accommodate it even further in my personal rites (the Star Rite and the Marian Rite). But for some purposes of self and other-exploration I've found this incomplete. It's not that these things don't hold an important place in my spirituality -- they do. But pantheons of gods embody a richness that is hard to find anywhere else.
I have been specifically drawn to the Greek gods. I have been studying the mythology, and I find it absolutely fascinating. I've wanted to incorporate the Hellenic Powers in my worship. But how to do it? I don't feel drawn to a Reconstructionist calendar based on Athens, and as I said before I'm not attracted by the Wheel of the Year. I can follow a basic Hellenic Reconstructionist sacrificial rite or something close to it, and I find that perfectly fitting and useful and have been planning out how to do it and which hymns to use and so forth.
But what about the calendar? I am currently constructing my own calendar and seasons, something relevant to me and my culture and that will hopefully be a fitting context in which to worship the Hellenic powers. I will post what I've developed so far in another thread and my thoughts on the matter. I hope others more experienced than me in such matters can help me flesh out my ideas and calendar further! So with this next step on my journey I think it's official: in some way or another I belong to the neo-pagan community.
If you've read this far -- thank you! I really felt the need to write and share this.
Love&Will
I just wanted a safe place to talk about my path and journey. I've been lurking on the forum for a few days to make sure it is a safe space. Some years ago I registered on a neo-pagan forum and was ripped to shreds in my introduction post because I was dabbling in Celtic Reconstructionism and also associated with a Christian church, so that really put a bad taste in my mouth, and although the thread was closed down no one came to my defense.
So I'll explain the Christian part. Culturally speaking I am Episcopalian, but my interpretation of the theology is esoteric in the sense of searching for metaphorical meanings and correspondences "beneath" the "outer" doctrines. There is a sense in which I believe God is humanity writ large, especially as portrayed in the Bible in which Yahweh is depicted as having both a light and dark side to his nature.
One quote that was thrown at me on that forum was "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," (all in caps loc of course) which is true in a sense in that the Isrealites were not to worship any gods before Yahweh, but it doesn't mean that they didn't acknowledge other gods at one point in their history. It's just that Yahweh came first as the "god of gods."
Esoterically I interpret this commandment in light of the idea that God is a projection of our humanity: thou shalt have no other gods before thine own wellbeing. That doesn't mean we don't look out for the well being of other people or serve our gods. We are a social and religious species after all. To love others and own a moral compass is part of looking out for my own well being. I need others to thrive. And many of us need our religions and our gods in order to flourish.
One definition of neo-pagan I've heard is that a neo-pagan is someone who is not a Christian, a (religious) Jews, or a Muslim and who also self-identifies as a neo-pagan. I'm unsure how to identify when it comes to Christianity. As far as the Episcopal Church is concerned I am a Christian by virtue of my baptism, and nothing can change that. Now whether I am theologically a Christian is another matter. If we're going to go with traditional orthodox Nicene Christianity then I am not. On the other hand the Episcopal Church includes the likes of Katharine Jefferts Schori and John Spong as bishops, official custodians and defenders of the faith. Katharine was even our presiding bishop.
As far as I am concerned, though there are schisms and disputes within the Episcopal Church, the liberals won the day, and it is a community that includes people who are willing to worship in common with other members of the church as was made clear by Schori who tended to focus on divinity as Jesus' heroic mission and morality and claims that the creed is not merely a propositional checklist, and Spong goes even further.
Individual Episcopalians vary in the extreme in how they actually interpret the basic doctrines and rituals, and as far as I am concerned, who the community seeks to include is our business and not that of outsiders to dictate. There are non-theist Episcopalians and pagan Episcopalians and New Age and liberals, moderates, and conservatives and I'm sure more variations in between. Some focus on the Protestant aspect of the faith and some on the Catholic aspect, and in reality I think there is a very real sense in which Anglicanism is merely its own category beyond the Catholic and Protestant divide.
I apologize if this sounds like a rant -- it's not meant to be. I'm just trying to explain how I justify myself as a member of this community. Though I am identifying more as a cultural Episcopalian these days I have taken time to interpret the doctrines in a way that is fitting to me. I am a member at this time primarily for the community and communal ritual.
But it is not the only aspect of my path. I am coming to identify as a neo-pagan these days. I have constructed rites based on a mystical experience I had some eight years ago. I don't call them "Christopagan" for a few reasons, but some would put that label on it I suppose. They involve the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but they are esoteric in the sense I defined before. They are pantheistic in nature, and the persons of the Trinity could also be referred to as the All-Ama-Father, the Star, and Love, Love being not a mere emotion, but a philosophical concept I have developed influenced by Thelema, and Love is connected to my own concept of Will -- thus my username.
Parts of the Star Rite change day to day in a weekly cycle and from liturgical season to liturgical season, and there are some holy days as well with their own readings. Although the rites are pantheistic they accommodate relating to God in anthropomorphic forms as well as polytheistic practices.
I am agnostic about many things -- the precise nature of the gods, the afterlife, miracles, and so on. Nevertheless in practice I am a very religious and prayerful person. I would like to post other threads on my musings about the nature of the gods and other topics, but I will not include that here as the thread is getting long enough as it is.
While it has taken some time for my rites to take on a fully neo-pagan flavor (albeit imbued with Christian symbols, imagery, and Powers) I have dabbled in neo-paganism for about ten years. I was a part of a student led Pagan Student Alliance and celebrated some of the Sabbats with my friends. I was delighted to take part in a Kemetic Reconstructionist offering as well. But I did all these things as a guest mostly.
I was never particularly drawn to Wicca, neo-Wicca, or the usual Wheel of the Year, though I dabbled in that as well. For a long time now though I've been drawn to some form of polytheistic practice. To some extent I've been able to accommodate this by gravitating toward the Anglo-Catholic traditions within the Episcopal Church of venerating Mary and the other saints, and I was able to accommodate it even further in my personal rites (the Star Rite and the Marian Rite). But for some purposes of self and other-exploration I've found this incomplete. It's not that these things don't hold an important place in my spirituality -- they do. But pantheons of gods embody a richness that is hard to find anywhere else.
I have been specifically drawn to the Greek gods. I have been studying the mythology, and I find it absolutely fascinating. I've wanted to incorporate the Hellenic Powers in my worship. But how to do it? I don't feel drawn to a Reconstructionist calendar based on Athens, and as I said before I'm not attracted by the Wheel of the Year. I can follow a basic Hellenic Reconstructionist sacrificial rite or something close to it, and I find that perfectly fitting and useful and have been planning out how to do it and which hymns to use and so forth.
But what about the calendar? I am currently constructing my own calendar and seasons, something relevant to me and my culture and that will hopefully be a fitting context in which to worship the Hellenic powers. I will post what I've developed so far in another thread and my thoughts on the matter. I hope others more experienced than me in such matters can help me flesh out my ideas and calendar further! So with this next step on my journey I think it's official: in some way or another I belong to the neo-pagan community.
If you've read this far -- thank you! I really felt the need to write and share this.
Love&Will
Comment