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cybermuleTagged by 0ct0pus. Pure nosiness on his part, I reckon, but a good chance to stitch together some recent musings.
After many years of uncheerful atheism followed by cheerful agnosticism, I've kind of settled on a multi-pronged approach to spirituality over the past year or so. Mostly by not thinking about it so much. I'd kind of drifted into a three-pronged approach - an idealism centred around my physical wellbeing (well looked after by practising yoga), a mental path (sympathetic rationalism i.e. we should be rational, but hey - I can understand it if you're not) and a sort of wobbly concept of social-spritual needs and, very loosely, "gods/belief systems". It's all a bit loose and wobbly, but to be honest I like it that way. People who arent's a bit hazy on these subjects tend to scare me.
So the spiritual needs then break down to two levels for me - personal and social. I have a need on a personal level to rejuvenate my soul and to "worship" something. In my case, it's NATURE. Always the natural world has been a source of wonder, beauty, strength and inspiration to me. Aside from my own needs, I recognise the need to connect socially to give some sort of meaningful, creative shared experience, especially since the onset of motherhood. I think this is the source of most organised religion, to be honest - the need to share some warm and fuzzies and some common ideals and purpose with the people around you.
And that's pretty much where the paganism comes in for me. I'm strongly inspired by the natural cycles of the year - they have meaning for me, and I think some meaning for all of us. I grew up with May Day celebrations and Harvest Home. So that aspect of paganism works for me.
The rest of the hummungus grab-bag that it seems to entail? I really don't know. Despite my rationality, I still believ in the paranormal. NOt magic, exactly, so much as a cheerful fuzziness around the edges of life. Or maybe at times a cheerless fuzziness. It wouldn't be fair if it were always cheerful, but as everything needs to be balanced somewhere along the line, there should be unfairness too. I guess the unfairness is probably that the fairness isn't spread equally. Some poeple seem to have a lot more fairness in their lives than others. Maybe they do "magic" or have "magic" to influence that. As someone who has never thrown an opening 6 in ludo, I can defintiely vouch for uneven spreading of the statistical butter.
So I don't believe in magic in the generally touted Wiccan sort of sense.More that there's enough fuzzy indeterminacy in our world to allow strange and improbable things to happen.
Does that particular non-belief allow me to be a pagan? Certainly not in some circles where paganism is a carefully (read: rigidly IMO) organised belief system in itself, almost certainly involving magic. Then in other cricles it's so damn loose and fluffy that there's no point calling it a belief system at all. Calling something a religion implies some sort of discipline IMO. If I could just shake up all the bits and bobs from various religions that I fancied, this job would have taken me until I was about 14.
The dictionary definition would be interesting at this point, I guess: PAGAN [OED] noun a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions.
In my own deep private beliefs I guess there is a paganism in the "no gods" sense of the term - the beauty of nature heals my soul; the darkness at the edge of the twilight woods prcikles my neck hairs; againt my rationality, the power of places always seems obvious in an instant. And as I've already said, that long-standing primeval feeling has become more extroverted. As I've become older, I;ve grown to tolerate and even appreciate that human neeed for ceremony and company. Christmas, Easter, the coming and going of the light. Now I have a child and work with the soil, it all seems to fit into place for me - neat markers around the year to celebrate the wax and wane of food, light and human hope and fortitude. It's right that we celebrate these with others.
I think I'm offput by the beliefs of whata I loosely dub "Western Paganism", which is maybe just my interpretation of paganism. It's all subjective, but Druids, Celts and Wicca magicks don't warm my cockles. They seem kind of narrow and exclusive. I'm often mbemused and often appalled at my (and often our) lack of knowledge of anything more than Celts, Vikings and pasteurised Eastern European tales. For that sort of folklore to be useful, we need to weave it from every culture, I think. Not just do the pick'n'mix that I so often end up feeling from my experiences so far.
So yeah, I guess just as I'm a social smoker, I'm possibly just a social pagan. Or maybe I'm a pagan purely my my stubborn determination not to be defined?
0ct0pus. Pure nosiness on his part, I reckon, but a good chance to stitch together some recent musings.After many years of uncheerful atheism followed by cheerful agnosticism, I've kind of settled on a multi-pronged approach to spirituality over the past year or so. Mostly by not thinking about it so much. I'd kind of drifted into a three-pronged approach - an idealism centred around my physical wellbeing (well looked after by practising yoga), a mental path (sympathetic rationalism i.e. we should be rational, but hey - I can understand it if you're not) and a sort of wobbly concept of social-spritual needs and, very loosely, "gods/belief systems". It's all a bit loose and wobbly, but to be honest I like it that way. People who arent's a bit hazy on these subjects tend to scare me.
So the spiritual needs then break down to two levels for me - personal and social. I have a need on a personal level to rejuvenate my soul and to "worship" something. In my case, it's NATURE. Always the natural world has been a source of wonder, beauty, strength and inspiration to me. Aside from my own needs, I recognise the need to connect socially to give some sort of meaningful, creative shared experience, especially since the onset of motherhood. I think this is the source of most organised religion, to be honest - the need to share some warm and fuzzies and some common ideals and purpose with the people around you.
And that's pretty much where the paganism comes in for me. I'm strongly inspired by the natural cycles of the year - they have meaning for me, and I think some meaning for all of us. I grew up with May Day celebrations and Harvest Home. So that aspect of paganism works for me.
The rest of the hummungus grab-bag that it seems to entail? I really don't know. Despite my rationality, I still believ in the paranormal. NOt magic, exactly, so much as a cheerful fuzziness around the edges of life. Or maybe at times a cheerless fuzziness. It wouldn't be fair if it were always cheerful, but as everything needs to be balanced somewhere along the line, there should be unfairness too. I guess the unfairness is probably that the fairness isn't spread equally. Some poeple seem to have a lot more fairness in their lives than others. Maybe they do "magic" or have "magic" to influence that. As someone who has never thrown an opening 6 in ludo, I can defintiely vouch for uneven spreading of the statistical butter.
So I don't believe in magic in the generally touted Wiccan sort of sense.More that there's enough fuzzy indeterminacy in our world to allow strange and improbable things to happen.
Does that particular non-belief allow me to be a pagan? Certainly not in some circles where paganism is a carefully (read: rigidly IMO) organised belief system in itself, almost certainly involving magic. Then in other cricles it's so damn loose and fluffy that there's no point calling it a belief system at all. Calling something a religion implies some sort of discipline IMO. If I could just shake up all the bits and bobs from various religions that I fancied, this job would have taken me until I was about 14.
The dictionary definition would be interesting at this point, I guess: PAGAN [OED] noun a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions.
In my own deep private beliefs I guess there is a paganism in the "no gods" sense of the term - the beauty of nature heals my soul; the darkness at the edge of the twilight woods prcikles my neck hairs; againt my rationality, the power of places always seems obvious in an instant. And as I've already said, that long-standing primeval feeling has become more extroverted. As I've become older, I;ve grown to tolerate and even appreciate that human neeed for ceremony and company. Christmas, Easter, the coming and going of the light. Now I have a child and work with the soil, it all seems to fit into place for me - neat markers around the year to celebrate the wax and wane of food, light and human hope and fortitude. It's right that we celebrate these with others.
I think I'm offput by the beliefs of whata I loosely dub "Western Paganism", which is maybe just my interpretation of paganism. It's all subjective, but Druids, Celts and Wicca magicks don't warm my cockles. They seem kind of narrow and exclusive. I'm often mbemused and often appalled at my (and often our) lack of knowledge of anything more than Celts, Vikings and pasteurised Eastern European tales. For that sort of folklore to be useful, we need to weave it from every culture, I think. Not just do the pick'n'mix that I so often end up feeling from my experiences so far.
So yeah, I guess just as I'm a social smoker, I'm possibly just a social pagan. Or maybe I'm a pagan purely my my stubborn determination not to be defined?
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 03:39 pm (UTC)Me too.
I tend to agree with a lot of what you have said here.
I don't think it's irrational to have your hairs prickle. There's a lot to be said for emotionally informed rationalism, based on phenomenology.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 05:45 pm (UTC)Groups like the Reformed Druids of North America are the kind I like:From Religion For The Hell Of It.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 03:02 pm (UTC)And yes, religion should be fun. There's little point in choosing a belief system unless it enhances your life. There are plenty of religions to choose from, so there's really no excuse for having a miserable one!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 03:43 pm (UTC)Pussies ;)