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I think that while there's a lot of informationally isolated pagans out there who still buy into the "burning times", hidden matriarchal religion, pagan surviva
by JulianMorrison 7y ago
I think that while there's a lot of informationally isolated pagans out there who still buy into the "burning times", hidden matriarchal religion, pagan survivals in folk customs, etc etc stuff, anyone who's well informed knows that all that has been shown to be 19th-century romanticism at work. So what is left is a contemporary mystery religion founded in the 1940s by a charismatic man, that borrows aesthetics from the popular idea of a witch, and combines a magical style in the Crowley tradition with western herbalism, western astrology, Masonic ritualism, and its own theology. And that's fine.
There's room out there too for grimoire traditionalists, cunning-man revivalists, catholic folk-magic, brujeria, santeria, pagan historical reconstructionists, and any number of other detailed traditions that aren't Wiccan. And that's fine too.
I welcome the idea of learning from the past rather than imposing romantic fantasies over it, but that doesn't mean the past is where everything of value resides. If you think religions relate to real things, rather than purely being a human construct, then those things have agency of their own, and exist in the present day. Authenticity, then, becomes about the strength of connection.
- api 7y agoI heard it put this way: neo-paganism is 99% neo 1% pagan.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoAnd reconstruction is about 50-50, because they do their best but archeology honestly doesn't know the answers.
- z3phyr 7y agoI have a strong opinion that Indo-European polythiestic religions have a common mythical and structural framework. So it would be easier to revive any of them by studying and borrowing back from the vast sample of such religions
- JulianMorrison 7y agoThey have commonality of roots but they barely resemble each other. To give an example, Dis Pater, Jupiter, Deus, Zeus, and possibly Tiw are variations of the same name and identity after many centuries of divergence.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago> I welcome the idea of learning from the past rather than imposing romantic fantasies over it, but that doesn't mean the past is where everything of value resides. If you think religions relate to real things, rather than purely being a human construct, then those things have agency of their own, and exist in the present day. Authenticity, then, becomes about the strength of connection. I see them as instructive in inducing certain mind states, similar to mindfulness, that allow one to perceive reality through a different lens. You will see angels and demons when ingesting psychedelics, that take on attributes of your own psyche.