Being Pagan

My discovery of paganism has played a huge role in my spiritual growth and healing over the past year, and so I wanted to make a post about what being a Pagan means to me and how I follow this path in relation to commonly accepted ideas on Paganism. This is not intended to be a fully fledged, researched essay on all aspects of Pagan thought. There are gaps and I am aware of this. This is simply a summary of what constitutes my Pagan path.

Paganism is a hugely varied and eclectic path, and as a result pretty much anything goes. Many pagans struggle with this as it makes it difficult to explain their beliefs and ideals to others. Beyond “revere the earth” there isn’t any real hard and fast rule. There are a number of particular branches of paganism. These include Wicca, Druidism, Heathenry and Shamanism. I personally do not belong to any of these traditions, although I continue to research as much information as I can about them and indeed any other strains of pagan thought. Being bound by the rules imposed by such groups, being told what to believe and how to live my beliefs, doesn’t gel with me. But I do encourage anyone who feels out of touch with the world to investigate Paganism, as it is a very open and welcoming spiritual path with a whole array of solutions to your spiritual aches and pains should you put the work in.

Lets start with the definition of a pagan as stated by The Pagan Federation. A pagan is a follower of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion.
Na, this isn’t me. I do not follow or worship anything, nor am I religious. I’m very spiritual, but I am not religious. I follow my own creed and conduct, and I am not about to place responsibility for my actions on a deity, sprite, or any other ethereal being (that may or may not exist) who is trying to mind its own business. I follow the basic rules required to be a decent human being, and I do this better than most religious people I have come across, and that’s good enough for me.

If I was to attach a label to my beliefs as a pagan, I suppose they would most closely echo the belief statement of the World Pantheistic Movement http://www.pantheism.net/manifest.htm. I revere the earth as my sacred home within the cosmos, and do not imbue the cosmos with any form of consciousness. I do not believe that the cosmos thinks and feels as I do. I believe its is a bunch of rocks and gas, although an amazing, highly important and fascinating bunch of rocks and gas. My belief system is bound within scientific thought. I am a scientist by trade (or will be soon, yay!) and it is the theories and ideas generated within science that I deem to be the closest thing we have to reality at the moment, although there is no ‘scientific proof’ for what I am about to state as my belief system. An oxymoron I know, but I justify this with the following. Just because there is no proof now, does not mean that science will not prove it in the future. Once upon a time germs spontaneously generated out of nothing and the world was flat. What is magic now can be tomorrow’s scientific discovery.

So, what do I believe? I view the earth and all that lies within it as a whole, a wondrous natural machine that is all carefully interlinked and full of connections and communications. All organic matter (that is, from the earth and not man made) hums and thrums with the energies and rhythms of life. If you practice active meditation, you can feel this energy. Its like a caress on your skin, and makes you all tingly. It’s a lovely feeling. It is this energy that connects all living things. As an integral part of nature, living within it and not apart from it, I feel it is my duty as a more evolved life form, to help preserve the earth and all it contains. Even if it wasn’t my duty, evolution has created so many wondrous designs, colours, bodyshapes and life strategies that are simply amazing, how could I not want to help protect them? So, I eat organic food, support local farmers, support conservation groups, am training to be a conservationist, try and reduce my carbon footprint, and love sinking my hands into rich fertile soil. My paganism is more the practical version, I try to make a physical difference to the earth with my behaviours and actions. Nature fascinates me, it supports me, it enriches and enlivens me. It is most definitely worth tipping my hat to, but I do not worship it. I do not view the earth as above me or bigger than me. It is part of the cosmos, just as I am, all linked by the same natural energies. I to am a wondrous result of millions of years or evolution. So, the earth does not need me to bow to it, but it certainly deserves a lot of respect. At the end of the day, no earth = no paganhorsegirl, and that sucks!

What about deity? Nearly all branches of Pagan tradition involve the worship of deities of some sort, with particular focus on the Goddess. Some practitioners follow a single pantheon, others pick and choose deities from a range. Some view the Gods and Goddesses as literal beings, others view them as aspects of the one God and Goddess, and others still view them as archetypes. I am of this final persuasion.
For me, deity and divinity are religious concepts grounded in superstition and dogma, grounded in the need for humans to not realise their full potential and therefore take full responsibility for their actions in this world. The number of times you see stories about people who suddenly become eco warriors or dash off to Africa to save the children because of some divine intervention. Please, you just suddenly realised what a selfish little s**t you were and felt guilty.

Anyway. Wikipedia defines archetype as a generic form of personality, for example a mother or a warrior. The idea of archetypes was most readily promoted by Carl Jung (one of my favouritist people ever!). Jung’s archetypes were psychological organs that arose via evolution, and are limitless in their scope. There are a number of main recurring archetypes, and these include the Child, the Hero, the Mother and the Sage. They reside within our unconscious, and become actualised through myth, symbolism, dreams and behaviours. If you look into this further, we basically created the Gods. Hercules – the epitamy of a strong and noble hero. In Celtic mythology, Danu exists as the great Mother. Should you wish to delve into their individual personalities and stories, it is clear (to me in any case) that all Gods and Goddesses exist as an archetypal construct, they all represent an aspect of the human psyche at some level. As psychological products of evolution, the archetypes exist within us all within the collective unconscious. In Jung’s words: “there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

There are considerable parallels between the different pantheons, between cultures with vast expanses of physical distance between them. This alone is evidence for me of a collective unconscious, that myths and deities that actualise the archetypes are created and given life by humans are given life by humans. We do this to fulfil basic psychological needs, to fulfil the need for a Mother or Hero. Myth provides us with faces, with personalities for us to interact with, so we can ‘talk’ with our unconscious self and learn from the collective on a level that we understand. Myth makes archetype tangible. I engage as often as I can with what I call my higher self, both through active and traditional forms of meditation. I have a number of figures who I see and discuss matters with. My primary ‘guardian angel’ looks like I used to in darker days, but she is very wise, and terribly droll. She is the one who raises her eyebrow at me and, in her gentle albeit condescending manner, walks me through what im doing wrong and what I should be doing. I also talk with Pan, and have a horse called Taffy who is my transport.
Religion also makes archetype more ‘real’, but it creates something that is outside of us, not within us. It teaches that rather than working with, we should be working for. It does not acknowledge our own power and potential as human beings which can be achieved the more we learn about ourselves from both our personal and collective, but rather dictates, controls, and oppresses any sense of learning or creative thinking.

Magic is another facet of organised Paganism that attracts people to this path. It us unfortunately, the primary attraction for most. I don’t practice magic. I’m terrible at it, and I’m terrible at it because I don’t feel comfortable with manipulating natural energies for my own ends. I personally think that magic should be the ultimate last resort. We don’t understand enough about the world to intelligently and safely start mucking around with natural balances and to divert energy to places it has no right in being. We have no idea what backlash could result from magical activity, and in this case I refer to spell casting. I do practice divination, herbalism and crystal healing, and in all honesty I have no idea if these activities have a negative backlash. I do my best to be responsible, and only employ the use of natural energies to enhance what I have already begun within myself rather than to induce the change. So, whilst a believer of magic, I don’t cast spells in the traditional kitchen witch sense, nor do I practice high magic rituals (which I do believe are little more than mumbo jumbo, just my opinion, not truth, get back in your pram). I use oils, herbs and rocks to help me re balance, re centre, and understand my emotions. Other than that, I do a lot of thinking, which I personally believe is the highest form of magical power available.