The experience of contemporary Paganisms (a talk to Bristol interfaith group)
[slide: The experience of contemporary Paganisms]
The experience of contemporary Paganisms is as diverse as the practitioners involved in them. Each person defined by a label, whilst sharing common values in some way with others included by that label, is also individual in that they have come to occupy that space via their own unique experience. There are as many paganisms as there are Pagans. There is no central dogma or credo; there are only signposts and shared ideas – it is up to each of us to decide what to believe.
Many people have asked why we have chosen the labels Pagan, witch, or heathen; but there is a power in words and concepts, and they may unlock forgotten aspects of the psyche. It is unfortunate when the label is one that is deemed negative by the prevailing culture, and is used to exclude people from the wider community. But sometimes we need to reclaim words, like pagan, witch, queer, darkness, mad...
I have garnered some quotes which give a flavour of what each of the Pagan paths is about, and why their practitioners are drawn to them.
“The answer to all things are in the Air – Inspiration, and the winds will bring you news and knowledge if you ask them properly. The Trees of the Wood will give you power, and the Waters of the Sea will give you patience and omniscience, since the Sea is a womb that contains a memory of all things.”
Robert Cochrane, 1966
A feeling of coming home. The words, the energies, and the space are beautiful and resonant. This is the place between the worlds, where we walk on the edge of time and space, with one foot in the otherworld, a space where you can commune with the universe, develop the self, engage in sacred play, and honour the divine within each other. Celebrating the beauty of the night and the human body. The ecstatic leaping across the fire, wild and free. The flames, symbolic of life and passion... The feeling of journeying together to other worlds, communing with the ancestors, the land, and the spirits of the land. Walking with gods and goddesses.
Yvonne Aburrow, 2005
What is Druidry? A Spiritual Path, a way of life, a philosophy, Druidry is all of these… Druidry today is alive and well, and has migrated around the world forming a wonderful web of people who honour and respect the Earth and the sacred right to life of all that is part of the Earth. Like a great tree drawing nourishment through its roots, Druidry draws wisdom from its ancestral heritage. There is a saying in Druidry that ‘The great tree thrives on the leaves that it casts to the ground’. Druidry today does not pretend to present a replica of the past, rather it is producing a new season’s growth.
Cairistiona Worthington, The Beginner’s Guide to Druidry
Heathenry, like all ancient European pagan religions, is polytheistic. Heathens recognise numerous sentient entities, generally referred to as 'wights'. In addition to humans, these include major gods, local gods, ancestral spirits, and various sorts of beings familiar from Germanic folklore (elves, brownies, trolls, etc.). Heathens regard all these entities as real parts of the natural world, distinct individuals capable of independent thought and action, just as humans themselves are. Wights are understood to vary in their concerns and behaviour on the basis of mood, character, and circumstance, and two wights of the same kind may have very different personalities.
Arlea Hunt-Anschütz, 2002
a spirituality that is both holistic and practical: holistic, because Roman religion acknowledges that spirits of place (genii loci) exist everywhere, along with ancestral spirits (dii manes), spirits of house and home (lares and penates), other, lesser but more mobile minor deities (numina or daimones), as well as a host of gods of tribe and locality (some of which only seem to manifest at certain times of the year, as others are only apparently available in certain localities), besides the internationally-acknowledged gods of the official Roman pantheon. In addition to all these, every human being is a small god in potentiality because within each of us is a genius (possibly best translated as the Higher Self). In other words, the visible and invisible worlds are full of interactive entities, with whom the believer constantly negotiates relationships which it is hoped will be mutually beneficial.
Nick and Carol Ford, 2004
[slide: How many Pagans are there?]
How many Pagans are there?
According to the UK Census 2001, there are around 40,000 Pagans in the UK. However, Professor Ronald Hutton has estimated that the figure may be as high as 120,000. The disparity between his estimate and the census figure may be explained by the likelihood that many people did not disclose their religion for fear of discrimination.
Only connect
Many people are drawn to Paganisms because they feel a connection with Nature, the Earth, or the land. Those who feel drawn to a more nebulous concept such as “Nature” – sometimes an abstract personification of nature in general – tend to feel drawn to the more eclectic practices, which may draw upon myths and practices from all over the world. The ones who feel a connection to the Earth often become involved with practical ecological activities as well as Pagan ritual practices. Those who feel a connection to the land tend to base their practices on more specific local myths and practices, grounding their spiritual understandings in specific traditions.
There are more things in heaven and earth....
Most contemporary Pagans share an awareness that there is more to the world than its purely physical aspect. Whatever terminology they use to express their understanding, most Pagans believe that there are forces and beings shaping our fate and our existence. Heathens call the underlying pattern of reality the Web of Wyrd – the web or network of threads or potentialities that connects us all, and which may be influenced by our actions, our oaths and our intentions. Many Wiccans also recognise this underlying pattern, but call it different names depending on the mythological tradition they work within. They often use terminology derived from magical traditions to describe the different levels of reality, such as the astral, spiritual, mental and physical planes (though most would see them as interpermeable with each other and occupying the same space – it’s just a matter of attuning your perceptions to the right ‘frequency’). Druids have a rather different concept called Awen, which is a light that permeates all things; it is also the inspiration that flows from the divine.
The sacredness of the Earth
This awareness that everything is ensouled often leads on to an engagement with environmental and other activism. Many Pagans have been involved in protests about globalisation, the war on Iraq, road-building programmes, and other social and environmental issues. On a day-to-day basis it involves thinking about the choices that we make and taking responsibility for our impact on the Earth, trying to minimise the damage we do. It also involves consulting the spirits of the land and deities and involving them in our decision-making processes. Wiccans, Heathens, practitioners of Religio Romana and other reconstructionist paths make offerings (libations) to gods and wights (spirits of the land). These are of wine, flowers, or cakes; sometimes the offering might take the form of a song or a pledge to carry out some task (such as doing something for the environment).
[slide: the mythopoeic worldview]
The mythopoeic worldview
This term was coined by JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis to describe understandings of the world which are steeped in myth; which see below the surface of things to the divine essence within.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
Of living silver made that sudden burst
To flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
Whose very echo after-music long
Has since pursued. There is no firmament,
Only a void, unless a jewelled tent
Myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth
Unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.
JRR Tolkien, from Mythopoeia
Most Pagans share a mythopoeic worldview (of course there are many people following other religions who also share this worldview).
Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine, and could take human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows, and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were no less divine and changeable. They saw in the rainbow the still bent bow of a god thrown down in negligence; they heard in the thunder the sound of his beaten water jar, or the tumult of his chariot wheels; and when a sudden flight of wild ducks, or of crows passed over their heads, they thought they were gazing at the dead hastening to their rest; while they dreamed of so great a mystery in little things that they believed the waving of a hand, or of a sacred bough, enough to trouble far off hearts, or hood the moon with darkness.
W.B.Yeats (Irish poet, 1865-1939)
[slide: Pagan cosmologies and beliefs]
Cosmology
Most Pagans are quite happy with the scientific paradigm of the Big Bang, evolution etc. Some suspect that the universe has always existed. However, we view the scientific paradigm as missing out the presence of consciousness, or spirit, in the universe.
The way I see it, the purpose of our existence is to enter into a relationship with the Universe. By being aware of it, we enable the Universe to be conscious of Itself. Before the Universe existed, there was the Unmanifest. Manifestation arose from the Unmanifest because opposite polarities within it differentiated themselves, and became manifest. (This mystical account of the origin of the Universe is similar to the quantum theory of the Big Bang, which was actually more of a series of little pops as particles winked in and out of existence, until eventually enough of them existed to start the Universe.) As the Big Bang expanded outwards, the distribution of matter became uneven, or ‘clumpy’ – and it seems to have been the same for consciousness or spirit. Spirit coalesced into distinct beings, whom we call deities. Another way of seeing it is that these beings arose out of the primal chaos. Different Pagan mythologies have different stories to explain this. Sometimes these involve the destruction of a giant or dragon-serpent by the younger gods, who then create the Earth from the remains of this primal being (both Norse and Sumerian mythology have a creation myth of this type).
Most Pagans do not expect the destruction of the present Universe, but do see it as changing, becoming more intertwined with spirit, more ensouled, more aware of itself.
Deities
Several different views of the divine can be found in contemporary Paganisms (just as is the case within Hinduism).
Many are polytheists, that is, believing in many deities as distinct or discrete entities. These deities are not seen as “the goddess of love” or “the god of war” – though they may have an interest in these activities – but as individuals who are located within the web of destiny and are subject to the same laws of the universe as we are. The difference between us and them is that they have a larger perception of causality, time, space, and fate, and are not necessarily bound to a single physical location at a time, as we generally are. They are not human in form, though they may choose to manifest themselves to us in human form. Some of them may be deified heroes, e.g. Odin, Hercules, Aradia, Asklepios; others may be the personification of a natural force, e.g. Thor, Nut, Tefnut, Amaterasu; or the personification of an abstract concept, e.g. Nemesis, the Furies, Maat. Some deities are an amalgam of two or three of these types, e.g. Hecate. They may acquire power through the strength and complexity of belief in them, or they may acquire it from the phenomenon they embody. They may also acquire power from their participation in social interaction with those who honour them. However, there is a definite personality associated with all these deities.
Many other contemporary Pagans are duotheists, that is people who believe that “All the Gods are one God and all the Goddesses are one Goddess”. They tend to talk about “the masculine and feminine aspects of deity” and “the masculine and feminine principles”. They tend to see individual deities as archetypes or expressions of the ultimate divine source.
Most Pagans are also animists – that is, they believe that everything has a spirit: trees, rocks, places, animals, birds, etc. Many are pantheists, believing that the divine is immanent (present) in Nature.
Some Pagans are monotheists, believing in a single deity – either the Great Spirit borrowed from Native American beliefs, or the Great Goddess. These may also be pantheists.
What unifies Pagans with different theological points of view is their shared practice and worldview. This is not to say that the different practices may be conflated – the polytheist worldview in particular tends to give rise to a different set of practices, which involve negotiating and consulting with the deities and wights. But the different practices engaged in by Pagans recognisably share some family characteristics.
Spirits
Most Pagans also acknowledge the existence of, and many work with, ancestor spirits, faeries, nature spirits, spirits of place, or spirits of the land (wights). Ancestor spirits are not necessarily our direct genetic ancestors, but may be people from the past we feel an affinity with, either because they were associated with the locality where we live, or because they shared ideas and values that we hold dear.
Life after death
Most Pagans believe that the spirit or soul survives death in some way. Many believe in reincarnation, feeling that their aim is to continue to look after the sacred places of the land, and continue their connection with nature. Others believe in an afterlife (often referred to as the Summerlands). Those who believe in reincarnation often see the Summerlands as the resting-place between incarnations. Ancient Heathenry appears not to have included any ideas about reincarnation; rather, the spirits of the dead journeyed to various places in the Nine Worlds – some to the realm of mist among the roots of the World Tree, which was called Hel; some to dwell in Vanaheim with Freyja; others to dwell in Valhalla with Odhinn. Many Wiccans believe that ancestral spirits may guide us, but also believe in reincarnation. One explanation offered for this is that the spirit (the consciousness of the individual from the present incarnation) goes to join the ancestors, while the soul (the core essence of our being) is reincarnated with a new spirit. The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul has 13 parts, each of which has a different destination after death. Many Pagans report memories from past lives.
[slide: Pagan values and virtues]
The ethical viewpoint of Paganism is that each person is responsible for their own actions, and must therefore consider the consequences of every act. This means that the desirability of a given action will be different under different circumstances, so there is no "Thou shalt not..." The ethic of Paganism is love, respect, and kinship with Nature. Pagans do not seek to make converts; Paganism as an attitude wells up from within the individual - it cannot be imposed from outside. Pagans believe in the equality of men and women, and express this by celebrating both goddesses and gods. We also believe that sexuality in all its forms is sacred; this includes same-sex relationships.
Many Pagans tend to view the Universe in terms of the polarity of masculine and feminine, light and dark, and their creative interaction. Darkness does not equate to evil. The darkness is necessary for rest, growth, and regeneration. Death is not evil, but a necessary adjunct to life. If there was no death and dissolution, there could be no change or growth. The cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth is part of the interaction of the polarities. Suffering is also part of the process of growth; just as a tree is shaped by the wind, we are shaped by our experiences. It is only by experiencing suffering that we acquire sufficient depth to know the fulness of joy. It is then that the full light of consciousness dawns in us, and we achieve mystical oneness with the divine.
Wiccans cultivate four pairs of Virtues: honour and humility, mirth and reverence, strength and beauty, power and compassion. The pairs are balanced – too much honour and one would be pompous and punctilious, too much humility and one would be a doormat, and so on. Wiccans also value love and trust.
Heathens value the Nine Noble Virtues: frith, troth, honour, courage, discipline, truth, steadfastness, freedom, hospitality. A very important concept in Heathenry is “a gift for a gift” – the ethic of reciprocity. These are modelled on the virtues listed in the Havamal, a long Norse poem recounting the deeds of Odhinn.
Religio Romana takes as its model the Roman virtues of antiquity. These were qualities that were used as a model for attainment of excellence in character and outlook in both private and public life. Many Virtues were represented as deities and had their own cults and even Temples. Although no one is expected to assume all aspects of these Virtues they are used as a source of inspiration and ultimate achievement toward self-fulfillment, harmony and happiness. It is the combined practice and worship of these qualities that are emphasized as being conducive toward an individual’s personal growth and in achieving pax Deorum (peace with the Gods).
Druids place emphasis upon peace, compassion, inspiration, wisdom - druid values are enshrined in the Triads, a collection of poetic and proverbial wisdom which were recorded by the old Welsh bards.
Magic
Pagans use magic for healing and other positive outcomes. For example, they may do workings to heal the planet, or people who have asked for healing. Its use is bound by ethical codes, the same as action in the physical world. Pagans do not generally do healing unless asked to do so. Most serious practitioners frown upon love spells and the like as being unethical. Magic is all about shifting the pattern of destiny to achieve a desired outcome, but leaving room for free will and the efforts of the individual. It is emphatically not meant to be a substitute for effort in other spheres, i.e. physical and mental. Prayer is often seen as “passive magic”, spells are “active magic” – prayer asks for something to be done, magic attempts to change the parameters of reality to make the thing more likely to come about. Often the boundaries between the two are blurred, as spells may involve asking for a deity’s assistance. Not all Pagans practice magic – many would go to a specialist in this area if they required it.
Ritual
Ross Nichols, founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, said “Ritual is poetry in the world of acts” – in other words, we physically enact metaphors in order to internalise them spiritually and psychologically.
The purpose of ritual is to connect and balance – to connect us to each other, the world around us on all levels; to balance us internally and with the world, and to bring about harmony and balance in the world.
Rituals may be rites of passage (namings, coming-of-age, weddings, funerals etc.), seasonal celebrations, or magical workings.
The atmosphere of ritual is special and sacred: we do a lot of preparation to ensure that the atmosphere is right, because most of our ritual spaces get used for other things. We celebrate in each other’s living rooms or gardens, and sometimes, if we are lucky, and with the permission of the landowner, in sacred spaces in the landscape.
Ritual often includes feasting and celebration – partly for its own sake, and partly to reconnect us with the physical realm.
Pagan organisations and links
The Pagan Network (formerly known as WiccaUK) draws most of its membership from the younger members of the Pagan community, mainly because it has a really cool website with good-quality discussion forums.
The Association of Polytheistic Traditions is a group set up to represent polytheists and their traditions, whether they fall under the category of Pagan or not. (Polytheistic Hindus welcome!)
PEBBLE, the Public Liaison Body for British Paganism was set up last year in response to a statement by the Home Office that they felt Pagans did not speak with one voice – of course we don’t, does any religious tradition? PEBBLE aims to draw together the various voices into a single channel in order to communicate more effectively with government.
The Pagan Federation was founded by Wiccans in 1967 to represent all Pagans. It has three principles which members must sign up to in order to join. Recently these have become somewhat duotheist. The PF has done a lot of good work combating the negative stereotypes of Pagans presented in the media and by certain right-wing Christian groups.
OBOD, the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, was founded in the 1950s by Ross Nichols. After his death it lapsed somewhat, but was revived by Philip Carr-Gomm and now has thousands of members all over the world. It exists mainly to teach druidry to those who feel drawn to it, and to organise events and camps for druids.
These are the main Pagan organisations, but there are many others representing the shifting network of groups and interests.
Further reading
Ronald Hutton (2001), The Triumph of the Moon:
A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Oxford: OUP
Ronald Hutton (2003), Witches, Druids and King Arthur, London: Hambledon
Ronald Hutton (2003), Stations of the Sun:
A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, Oxford: OUP
(1989), Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England, Harvard: HUP
Jenny Blain (2001), Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Neo-shamanism and Ecstasy in North European Paganism, Routledge.
Jenny Blain, Douglas Ezzy, Graham Harvey (2004), Researching Paganisms, Altamira
Graham Harvey (1997),
Listening People, Speaking Earth: Contemporary Paganism. London: Hurst & Co.