Calling all pagans...

[pillars]

 

[pillars]

Homemade florida water recipe. I don't know if anyone else uses this, but we have a lot of herbs left over this summer and I am thinking about using them to make Florida water, which I can then give away as gifts. The herbs we have are lemon verbena, thai basil, pineapple sage, mint and rosemary. All will die off sooner rather than later when the first frost hits, so I'd like to do something useful with them. Not sure what that combo would smell like. I'm thinking lemon verbena, pineapple sage and mint might be nice together though.

Servant Bones: Homemade Florida Water

 

[Treeshepherd]

Can't quote properly on this contraption, but I disagree with Luddly Neddite that some or another religion is necessarily limiting. His statement is that Christianity is necessarily limiting to pagans. I live in a city where we fairly recently had a green party majority on the city council. Here, there is no strife between monotheism and polytheism. They live side by side in harmony.

Furthermore, there is no conflict in my mind between religion and every scientific wonder that Derideo describes. Can a theist not be a brain surgeon, or an astrophysicist? I myself enjoy learning about natural history and evolutionary biology. Anyone can embrace the empirical dimension. To embrace further dimensions beyond that is the opposite of limiting.

Love. Is it an adaptive biochemical response resulting from a series of evolutionary contingencies? Yes. That's a dimension of love. The atheist stops there, because that's as far as empirical knowledge can go. It would seem, therefore, that he must suspend his belief in order to be carried away in the follies of romanticism (much like anyone would suspend their belief in order to enjoy a fantasy movie).

Your criticism would be valid if atheists were as two dimensional as you are painting them to be.

But reality is that atheists are exactly the same as theists when it comes to emotions and how they impact our lives. There is nothing stopping an atheist from being a romantic or a lover for that matter. Some of the most famous romantic poets were atheists.

Positive Atheism's Big List of Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotations

If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism

Love's Philosophy - Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley

O World! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more -Oh, never more!

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more -Oh, never more! ​

Shelley was not the only romantic atheist.

Romantic Atheism

Romantic Atheism explores the links between English Romantic poetry and the first burst of outspoken atheism in Britain, from the 1780s onward. Martin Priestman examines the work of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Keats in their most intellectually radical periods, as well as a host of less canonical poet-intellectuals and controversialists of the time. Above all, the book conveys the excitement of Romantic atheism, whose dramatic appeals to new developments in politics, science and comparative mythology lent it a protean energy belied by the more recent conception of "loss of faith."

"Priestman's study adds the obvious but still overlooked and unquestionably important feature of atheism, especially as it gets expressed in the discourse of Romantic poetry. By addressing attacks (both oblique and direct) on conventional religion expressed in Romantic poetry, Priestman presents us with a study that is long overdue." Religion & Literature​

I hope you understand why I'm pushing back against your tracts, Derideo. It has to do with the fact that I would never enter a thread called "Calling all Atheists (let's have a discussion circle)" and make attempts to invalidate the views of the group.


William Blake was a mystical Christian, but not really into the politics of church. Coleridge, as noted in the link below, was an overt Christian. Mary's deal was a bit more complicated. Whatever any of their beliefs were, their poetry dealt with pagan and Christian subject matter, Hecate being a subject in the Keats poem that pillars posted. Shelley's examination of Prometheus and Frankenstein's monster examines the concept of man "playing God".

"Mary [Shelley] remained steadily and impressionably exposed to his wide circle of famous and erudite friends, including, perhaps most notably, the overtly Christian poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (whose poem The Ancient Marinergreatly influenced Frankenstein). Later, married to the self-proclaimed atheist poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and following his death, Mary Shelley herself owned a searching and an openness to the Christian religion. Never an atheist herself, she found solace in a faith that sought – much like the metaphor of her famous monster – to patch meaning together out of suffering."
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Our Struggle with God (Part I) - Pressing Save

Anyway, I didn't say that atheists can't be romanticists, just that they must suspend their beliefs to do so. Nobody writes legendary poetry about profane chemical interactions of molecules. Hardly anyone cares about the Golden Compass in fantasy. Whether they know it or not, they prefer the pagan and Biblical themes of the Lord of the Rings.

 

[westwall]

where are the druids, wiccans, neopagans, asatruars, gaiaists, and other pagans on board? Surely there must be a few.

Treeshepherd Pogo strollingbones anyone else?

Let's create an ongoing spiritual conversation.

I'm agnostic but my wife is Wiccan.

 

[westwall]

Stone Age peoples tend to be more egalitarian, simply because they haven’t developed advanced systems of administration. But, is the doctrine of equality really a tenet of paganism?

We have the Christian example of Jesus ministering to the lowest members of society. Christians teach that even the most wretched among us have eternal value. That was a radical divergence from Roman and Greek way of thinking.

Classical paganism celebrates the hero. In Greek drama, the smallest of lives can be sad, but not tragic (important). It was crucial for all people to participate in rites, to attune themselves with the forces that be, but not because any god was paying attention to a low born street urchin.

The doctrine of equality is neo-pagan, but not necessarily pagan. And while neo-paganism may deemphasize the importance of communal rites, they were essential to classical pagans. That's why the pre-druidic peoples built a frikkin Stonehenge. The rites were the important thing, but not the doctrine.

Stone age people are more egalitarian because they have so little there isn't enough to separate out the classes in the first place. To have the 'haves and the have not's' you have to have something!

 

[Grandma]

I'm pagan.

After going through several NDEs I have concluded that there is no God or Goddess. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a hierarchy, but it's not a monarchy.

Any "religion" that claims one gender or race is more like God Himself or the Goddess is not a religion, it's a cult. No one can get spiritual enlightenment in an elitist vs. slave theocracy.

 

[strollingbones]

where are the druids, wiccans, neopagans, asatruars, gaiaists, and other pagans on board? Surely there must be a few.

Treeshepherd Pogo strollingbones anyone else?

Let's create an ongoing spiritual conversation.

I'm agnostic but my wife is Wiccan.

thus making you pussy whipped

 

[strollingbones]

tree .....i am a blake fan.....nice to see him mentioned

 

[strollingbones]

okay here is my conundrum....parents of bestest baby want her to be raised as a christian...ouchie....but what choice do i have....so i have to get on board with this...but have mentioned i will not quiet when she reaches the age of decision

 

[IsaacNewton]

I think where I would disagree with Pogo and agree with Ashtara is Pogo's suggestion that Christianity is limiting.

I didn't express that. I just meant the worldview and philosophy I was being taught as a wee sprout didn't feel right, which let me know that, contrary to their "my way or the highway" approach, I figured there must be something else out there on the highway. And there was. Quite a lot.

Of course we must needs differentiate between the religion and the institution. It's the latter that takes the exclusivity approach for its own self-perpetuation. And once given a view of the highway it was obvious why. The institution insists it's the only avenue.

Not to derail to politics but perhaps the attraction of Paganism versus the traditional monotheism avenues is that Paganism is democratic and egalitarian whereas monotheism is hierarchical and authoritarian.

If there's a 'limitation', that's where it is --- the exclusivity as opposed to Paganism's inlcusivity. Whenever an entity insists "this is all there is", to me that screams "don't you dare look behind the curtain".

That is where I live, I look behind every curtain, every floor, behind every door, on the roof, out the windows, in the crawlspace, basement, penthouse, and everywhere else.

To fear knowledge is to voluntarily wear glasses that only provide a blurry view of the world.

Forget it, I want to see all with eyes wide open.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot -

 

[Treeshepherd]

I think where I would disagree with Pogo and agree with Ashtara is Pogo's suggestion that Christianity is limiting.

I didn't express that. I just meant the worldview and philosophy I was being taught as a wee sprout didn't feel right, which let me know that, contrary to their "my way or the highway" approach, I figured there must be something else out there on the highway. And there was. Quite a lot.

Of course we must needs differentiate between the religion and the institution. It's the latter that takes the exclusivity approach for its own self-perpetuation. And once given a view of the highway it was obvious why. The institution insists it's the only avenue.

Not to derail to politics but perhaps the attraction of Paganism versus the traditional monotheism avenues is that Paganism is democratic and egalitarian whereas monotheism is hierarchical and authoritarian.

If there's a 'limitation', that's where it is --- the exclusivity as opposed to Paganism's inlcusivity. Whenever an entity insists "this is all there is", to me that screams "don't you dare look behind the curtain".

That is where I live, I look behind every curtain, every floor, behind every door, on the roof, out the windows, in the crawlspace, basement, penthouse, and everywhere else.

To fear knowledge is to voluntarily wear glasses that only provide a blurry view of the world.

Forget it, I want to see all with eyes wide open.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot -

That TS Elliot quote comes from "Little Gidding, named after a 17th-century Anglican monastery renowned for its devotion, is the place where the problems of time and human fallibility are more or less resolved... The poem considers those who have come to the monastery, who come only “to kneel / Where prayer has been valid.” It is here that man can encounter the “intersection of the timeless” with the present moment, often by heeding the words of the dead, whose speech is given a vitality by a burning fire."- spark notes
Basically, Elliot is saying that after all of our tireless explorations, we may come back to where we started, kneeling in prayer.

Suffice it to say, the romantic poets dealt with romantic love, the sacredness of nature, the old gods, biblical themes, etc. They were not enamored with profane knowledge, nor the institution of religion.

 

[Treeshepherd]

I'm glad Mary Shelley was mentioned in this thread. Her 'Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus' is one of my favorite books. Prometheus is the Greek titan who gave fire (science) to the humans.
The book is a profound cautionary tale about the consequences of scientifically dicking with nature.
Consider today that we are on the threshold of a bio-engineering revolution (or extinction, depending on your views) Consider the constant threat of nuclear war and you see Zues' point. You start to get why he punished Prometheus.

Science needs spiritual guidance, like a reverence for nature. Do we place our trust in the wisdom of the goddess? Or is everything a crap shoot, necessitating that we hack our future?

"Sweet is the lore which nature brings,
Our meddling intellect,
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things:-
We murder to dissect."- Wordsworth

 

[ChrisL]

Paganism is certainly interesting topic, but I don't really have any kind of beliefs in any "supernatural" types of entities. I feel no need to worship anything. I do like the fact that most pagan belief systems are based on a basic respect for our earth and nature. I don't see this level of respect from other types of belief systems. They seem to think their "god" is going to take care of everything for them.

 

[Damaged Eagle]

where are the druids, wiccans, neopagans, asatruars, gaiaists, and other pagans on board? Surely there must be a few.

Treeshepherd Pogo strollingbones anyone else?

Let's create an ongoing spiritual conversation.

I'm agnostic but my wife is Wiccan.

I considered myself agnostic at one time.

Someone suggested that I look up Pantheist one night as we discussed our beliefs.

*****SMILE*****

 

[Derideo_Te]

Can't quote properly on this contraption, but I disagree with Luddly Neddite that some or another religion is necessarily limiting. His statement is that Christianity is necessarily limiting to pagans. I live in a city where we fairly recently had a green party majority on the city council. Here, there is no strife between monotheism and polytheism. They live side by side in harmony.

Furthermore, there is no conflict in my mind between religion and every scientific wonder that Derideo describes. Can a theist not be a brain surgeon, or an astrophysicist? I myself enjoy learning about natural history and evolutionary biology. Anyone can embrace the empirical dimension. To embrace further dimensions beyond that is the opposite of limiting.

Love. Is it an adaptive biochemical response resulting from a series of evolutionary contingencies? Yes. That's a dimension of love. The atheist stops there, because that's as far as empirical knowledge can go. It would seem, therefore, that he must suspend his belief in order to be carried away in the follies of romanticism (much like anyone would suspend their belief in order to enjoy a fantasy movie).

Your criticism would be valid if atheists were as two dimensional as you are painting them to be.

But reality is that atheists are exactly the same as theists when it comes to emotions and how they impact our lives. There is nothing stopping an atheist from being a romantic or a lover for that matter. Some of the most famous romantic poets were atheists.

Positive Atheism's Big List of Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotations

If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Necessity of Atheism

Love's Philosophy - Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley

O World! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more -Oh, never more!

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more -Oh, never more! ​

Shelley was not the only romantic atheist.

Romantic Atheism

Romantic Atheism explores the links between English Romantic poetry and the first burst of outspoken atheism in Britain, from the 1780s onward. Martin Priestman examines the work of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Keats in their most intellectually radical periods, as well as a host of less canonical poet-intellectuals and controversialists of the time. Above all, the book conveys the excitement of Romantic atheism, whose dramatic appeals to new developments in politics, science and comparative mythology lent it a protean energy belied by the more recent conception of "loss of faith."

"Priestman's study adds the obvious but still overlooked and unquestionably important feature of atheism, especially as it gets expressed in the discourse of Romantic poetry. By addressing attacks (both oblique and direct) on conventional religion expressed in Romantic poetry, Priestman presents us with a study that is long overdue." Religion & Literature​

I hope you understand why I'm pushing back against your tracts, Derideo. It has to do with the fact that I would never enter a thread called "Calling all Atheists (let's have a discussion circle)" and make attempts to invalidate the views of the group.


William Blake was a mystical Christian, but not really into the politics of church. Coleridge, as noted in the link below, was an overt Christian. Mary's deal was a bit more complicated. Whatever any of their beliefs were, their poetry dealt with pagan and Christian subject matter, Hecate being a subject in the Keats poem that pillars posted. Shelley's examination of Prometheus and Frankenstein's monster examines the concept of man "playing God".

"Mary [Shelley] remained steadily and impressionably exposed to his wide circle of famous and erudite friends, including, perhaps most notably, the overtly Christian poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (whose poem The Ancient Marinergreatly influenced Frankenstein). Later, married to the self-proclaimed atheist poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and following his death, Mary Shelley herself owned a searching and an openness to the Christian religion. Never an atheist herself, she found solace in a faith that sought – much like the metaphor of her famous monster – to patch meaning together out of suffering."
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Our Struggle with God (Part I) - Pressing Save

Anyway, I didn't say that atheists can't be romanticists, just that they must suspend their beliefs to do so. Nobody writes legendary poetry about profane chemical interactions of molecules. Hardly anyone cares about the Golden Compass in fantasy. Whether they know it or not, they prefer the pagan and Biblical themes of the Lord of the Rings.

I have no objections to your "pushing back" and I welcome the fact that you are doing so in an intelligent manner. It is good to have discussions of this nature.

I am not intending to "invalidate" the views of anyone in this thread. I am merely trying to point out that there isn't as big a divide between pagans and spiritual atheists as most might imagine exists. In many respects they are closely related IMO.

 

[strollingbones]

i have no problem with non believers....i see their point many times....why is one spirit in the sky any different from any other spirit in the sky?

how can you be tolerate of other's beliefs but not tolerate a non believer?

why would one resist being connected with nature? we originate in base desires and when we pass we will go back to the earth...in one form or another....that is why i am fascinated by the burials traditions of other countries....i would love a tibetan sky funeral...they haul your dead ass up a cliff....bust you open with rocks and such....leave you for the vultures...now that is kick ass

 

[Derideo_Te]

I'm glad Mary Shelley was mentioned in this thread. Her 'Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus' is one of my favorite books. Prometheus is the Greek titan who gave fire (science) to the humans.
The book is a profound cautionary tale about the consequences of scientifically dicking with nature.
Consider today that we are on the threshold of a bio-engineering revolution (or extinction, depending on your views) Consider the constant threat of nuclear war and you see Zues' point. You start to get why he punished Prometheus.

Science needs spiritual guidance, like a reverence for nature. Do we place our trust in the wisdom of the goddess? Or is everything a crap shoot, necessitating that we hack our future?

"Sweet is the lore which nature brings,
Our meddling intellect,
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things:-
We murder to dissect."- Wordsworth

We faced this dilemma at the dawn of the nuclear age. Some scientists pushed back and were sidelined. The advance of knowledge is unlikely to stop. What we do with that knowledge is what matters. This is an ethical issue and yes, we need all viewpoints and perspectives. Atheists embrace ethics because that is how we reach our values. And Pagans have ethics that are very similar.

The greatest ethical divides on the issue of bio-engineering revolution will come from those who perceive it as "playing god". That skews their perspective and hence what they consider to be unethical.

 

[presonorek]

where are the druids, wiccans, neopagans, asatruars, gaiaists, and other pagans on board? Surely there must be a few.

Treeshepherd Pogo strollingbones anyone else?

Let's create an ongoing spiritual conversation.

They were killed/converted by Christians and Muslims throughout the course of history.

These religious groups were annhialated. There a few people that have tried to revive these traditions but I doubt there is anybody who has received their religion purely by oral tradition.

 

[Campbell]

where are the druids, wiccans, neopagans, asatruars, gaiaists, and other pagans on board? Surely there must be a few.

Treeshepherd Pogo strollingbones anyone else?

Let's create an ongoing spiritual conversation.

None of the aforementioned.....I'm a Jack and the Beanstalk man myself.

 

[Grandma]

....i would love a tibetan sky funeral...they haul your dead ass up a cliff....bust you open with rocks and such....leave you for the vultures...now that is kick ass

I want to be cremated and have my ashes shot into space.

where are the druids, wiccans, neopagans, asatruars, gaiaists, and other pagans on board? Surely there must be a few.

They were killed/converted by Christians and Muslims throughout the course of history.

These religious groups were annhialated. There a few people that have tried to revive these traditions but I doubt there is anybody who has received their religion purely by oral tradition.

They weren't annihilated. The numbers were greatly reduced, but paganism was never truly destroyed. And that was just in Europe.

Eastern, African, and Native American religions are nearly all pagan-based. True enough these cultures were somewhat westernized, and Islam is force-converting Africans, but the Old Ways are still with us.

It won't happen in our lifetimes but the cultlike religions will disappear and be replaced by paganism. Not paganism as we know it, more like The Force from Star Wars. It'll almost certainly happen within the next 100 years. People are tired of wars based on religion, freedom stripped away because of religion, social status determined by religion, and thought itself controlled by religion. As we become ever more global the Karmic Weave becomes stronger.