The Yew Tree

What is Paganism?

Paganism is a nature-based religion, with many paths (Wicca, or the Craft; Druidry; the Northern Tradition; shamanism, etc.). Pagans honour the ancient deities of the earth and celebrate the seasonal cycle of festivals. Most Pagans believe in reincarnation, magic, and the celebration of life. This includes a positive attitude to pleasure in all its forms. As the Goddess says, "All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals". This means that sexuality (in all its many and varied forms) is celebrated as a gift from the Gods. Pagans also celebrate the beauty of the physical realm. Spirit is regarded as immanent in matter, and the universe as a conscious entity. The purpose of our existence is to enter into a relationship with the Universe. By being aware of it, humans 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.)

Pagans’ relationship with the divine is not one of self-abasement, but of honouring the divine as it is manifest in Nature and in other human beings. Each of us has a spark of the divine within us. In Nature, everything has a soul: animals, trees, rocks, mountains, rivers. It is just that the consciousness of other entities operates on a different “frequency” from our own, and humans have to become attuned to them in order to perceive them. This process of attunement is part of the practice of magic. Magic is "the art of changing consciousness in conformity with Will" (that is, the higher or divine Will, the aspect of the psyche that is attuned to the collective dynamic of the universe). It can include healing, consciousness-raising, visualisation, and spirit travel. The aim of magic is to make whole what is broken: that is, to reconnect matter and spirit.

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 the masculine and feminine aspects of the divine.

Paganism tends to view the Universe in terms of the complementarity of feminine and masculine, dark and light, inner and outer, 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, people are shaped by their experiences. It is only by experiencing suffering that one acquires sufficient depth to know the fullness of joy. It is then that the full light of consciousness dawns, and mystical togetherness with the divine is achieved.

I've always adopted a simultaneously open-minded and sceptical view of any phenomena that I might encounter - I allow all possible interpretations to simmer gently on the back burner of my mind until I arrive at a holographic understanding of the phenomena. But I usually have a preferred interpretation; like most people, I tend to have an emotional investment in my view of the world.

I've always regarded my "beliefs" as working hypotheses rather than set in stone. Having said that, I do actually believe in a multiplicity of gods and goddesses, and the immanence of the Divine in Nature. The way I see it is that the consciousness of the Universe is manifest in multitudinous forms (rocks, trees, humans, other animals, spirits of place, deities, etc.) so we can talk about the Goddess as if there was only one, but also about Her myriad manifestations. And as we are all embodiments of space, which is the Universe, we are all manifestations of the divine.

I believe the origin of the word 'religion' is "to reconnect" - re-ligio (as in ligament). My religion is all about connecting to Nature. The reason religions arose was when we started becoming conscious of ourselves as individuals and consequently felt the need to re-pool ourselves with the collective dynamic from time to time. You have to remember that most of the world's religions have been polytheistic (many gods), animistic (everything in Nature has a soul), and that monotheisms are an aberration from the norm. Also most religions (I'm including the practices of tribal peoples here) include the honouring of a Goddess - She is the soul of Nature, Ted Lumley's lovely image of the 'mysterious woman'...

"it is an acceptance of inclusion within nature, ongoing nature, continuously evolving nature that self-renews and self-innovates ceaselessly, ... a dynamical context that invites the birth and assertive participation of contents, ... an implicit dynamical context that somehow stands ahead, ... a mysterious woman awaiting with outstretched arms beckoning to us to be born and to join in the cosmogenetic dance into the not-yet that is the collective us."
(Ted Lumley, from email communication)

Also, I would draw a distinction between religion and spirituality - religion is a community/group experience where the connections very often involve mere conformity to the norm rather than connection to the mysterious and numinous; whereas spirituality is an individual (and possibly small group) holographic sharing with no rigidly defined rules.

Spiritual paths are not hierarchical and do not have an image of an angry external deity outside the world, judging it and finding it wanting. The world is the divine made manifest - or the divine is immanent in the world. The truth is not revealed by a specially chosen prophet, it can be found in your own heart.

The Goddess is the mysterious woman, the valley, the inductive, and the soul of nature. Her consort is the ever-renewing lord of the forest, the God of Nature. Having said that, there are definitely other forms of sexuality (e.g. gay) among Pagan deities, they just tended to get suppressed in the past. My view on this is that the complementarity is primarily between inner and outer (or macrocosm and microcosm) and that the interplay between the two makes a third, a pivotal place of connection.

Spirituality is more about experiences you have than about certainty or dogma. The difference is that as a child, other people tried to tell you what to believe, but now you know by experience. Beyond that there can be no certainty, and even then your interpretation of what you experienced may change. (I'm defining experience in the widest possible sense, here, not just "seeing is believing". It can include subtle sensations, internal states, etc., like the experience of "flying" in a sharing circle.) I don't believe anything unless I've experienced it, and even then I maintain uncertainty (at least three theories for any specific question!) but I can still have a valid spiritual path, where the certainty is that I feel connected to Nature, and I have wonderful experiences. You can't be converted to Paganism, it wells up from within; it is the desire to experience communion with Nature.

As to the question of origins, my current hypothesis is that if there was a big bang, it was actually a centres-everywhere lot of little bangs. Poetically expressed, we find various creation myths from different parts of the world which are probably really about how the universe (multiverse?) came to be aware of itself. I suppose this is the real 'origin'. I'm also quite enamoured of the idea that the universe has always been here, it just changes when whoever's dreaming it rolls over in their sleep. I see our Universe as a permeable bubble among many other universes; it is an emergent complexity.

In a way, maybe the question of where we're going is more important than how we started. I don't think there's "progress" in the accepted rationalistic sense, and historical evidence bears this out. A material gain may result in a spiritual loss. It's all about balance and cycles.

What is inclusionality?

"Inclusionality is an awareness that space, far from passively surrounding and isolating discrete massy objects, is a vital, dynamic inclusion within, around and permeating natural form across all scales of organization, allowing diverse possibilities for movement and communication. Correspondingly, boundaries are not fixed limits - smooth, space-excluding, Euclidean lines or planes - but rather are pivotal places comprising complex, dynamic arrays of voids and relief that both emerge from and pattern the co-creative togetherness of inner and outer domains, as in the banks of a river." (Alan Rayner)

See also: My inclusionality page; Alan Rayner's website; Ted Lumley's website.

Paganism and inclusionality

In “Complementary Visions” (1), Alan Rayner articulated the distinctions between rationalism, inclusionality, and holism.

The rationalistic world-view is very much derived from and based on the Christian world-view: it takes everything literally, including myths; it divides the world into two domains - “either you’re with us or against us”; and it is supremely individualistic.

The holistic world-view is typified by the New Age movement, where you tend to find the view that everything is one, and there are no boundaries. The New Age movement tends to reject reason and rationality, but Paganism does not reject reason, it includes it within a larger paradigm.

It is often assumed that Paganism is a part of the New Age movement, but actually the two are quite distinct in philosophy – the New Age movement tends to be “all sweetness and light”, whereas Paganism is about the marriage of darkness and light, integrating the shadow (to use a Jungian metaphor), and healing the rift between matter and spirit. These concerns are also at the heart of inclusionality, though they may be expressed using slightly different terminology.

Another inclusional aspect of Paganism is its emphasis on triplicities and thinking in a ternary mode (inner, outer and inter). In Wicca, there is the Triple Goddess; in Druidry, the divine is conceived of as three-fold: the God, the Goddess, and Divine Child (generally regarded as the source of creativity). However, these images of the divine are not taken literally as discrete entities; rather they are regarded as how the polymorphous consciousness of the universe manifests itself in our own finite awareness; in other words, as distinct identities. I also feel that this is what ancient polytheism (and certainly Neoplatonism and much current Hindu thinking) was about. In much of his work, Joseph Campbell warns against taking myth literally, as this blocks access to the numinous (2).

Pagans celebrate diversity in all its forms; do not have any dogma (there is room for many theories of divinity, and many interpretations of phenomena). There is a strong emphasis on liminality (the experience of being on the threshold, neither one thing nor another, being between the worlds); cyclical time rather than linear time (Pagans celebrate the cycles of the seasons, and regard life as a cyclical or spiral experience, from birth to death to rebirth again).

Pagans tend to believe in magic, but our definition of magic is subtler than the commonly accepted view of it. Magic is the awareness of hidden connections and sympathies, and a belief that consciousness affects the physical plane – there is no Cartesian separation of mind and body in Pagan philosophy. We also employ the symbolism of the classical elements in our rituals (Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Aether or Spirit). These could be equated to the modern concepts of solids, liquids, gases, and energy; and Aether is akin to the inclusional concept of space. According to Wikipedia,

'Aether ("upper air"), in Greek mythology, was the personification of the "upper sky", space and heaven. He is the pure, upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to "aer", which mortals breathed. He was the son of Erebus and Nyx, and brother of Hemera. He is the soul of the world and all life emanates from him.'

Since Classical times, many thinkers have tried to reconcile rationalism with spirituality, or to preserve and further develop the classical world-view. Some of these attempts are recognisable as prototypes of inclusionality.

Taoism originated in China sometime around the sixth century BCE. It posits the existence of the mysterious Tao, which contains two complementary opposites, Yin and Yang. Many of the ideas and images in Taoist thought are very similar to those found in inclusionality; indeed Taoism is a major source of inspiration for some of us.

As Taoist ideas flowed westwards, they were taken up by other traditions, such as Tantra, which is a tradition of using sexual experience to connect with the numinous. These ideas were also transmitted to the Sufi tradition (the mystical Neoplatonist strand within Islam), and thence to Western alchemists. Needless to say, whilst it seems that there was transmission of ideas across all these groups, they also developed ideas independently based on their own local conditions and symbolic ideas.

Neoplatonism was a late classical attempt to reconcile ancient paganism with Christianity, but many of its themes and ideas were enthusiastically taken up by later magical writers and movements (3).

All these traditions share an inclusional understanding of the world; they recognise the intraconnectedness of everything, and the complementarity of inner and outer, microcosm and macrocosm, darkness and light, matter and spirit. They are a hidden and suppressed tradition of the awareness of subtle influences. They celebrate the feminine principle of intuition and emotion – the mysterious woman of Taoist philosophy. They also share a belief in magic. Magic was originally a theory of how the world works. In the seventeenth century, it was supplanted by rationalist and mechanistic theories based on the thinking of Newton (which is rather ironic when you consider that the majority of Newton’s writings are about alchemy). The natural philosophers of the Renaissance and earlier believed in what we would now refer to as magic, but which they referred to as natural philosophy. This might include astrology, alchemy, action at a distance, magic, the Doctrine of Signatures, the mirroring of the macrocosm and the microcosm (similar to Alan Rayner’s concept of nested holeyness(4)), and so on. The modern definition of magic is “the art and science of causing change in conformity with Will” (where “Will” refers to the higher or true will, conceived of as going with the flow of the divine will, or collective consciousness of the universe).

However, there are two forms of magic, “white magic” and “black magic”. "Black magic" goes against the flow of the universe by imposing the will of the magician on reality. "White magic" seeks to maintain balance and harmony with the flow of the universe.

In magic and alchemy, everything has a metaphorical value, an inner meaning; it is not merely a physical fact or commodity, but has a spiritual aspect. There are many truths, depending on your perspective – there is not a single and absolute truth.

Rationalistic science and mythology are two different ways of looking at the “underlying reality”. It has been argued that we cannot know that underlying reality directly, therefore we tell stories about it. Science is one version of the story and mythology and folklore are another, but they convey different truths about the underlying reality. The beauty of inclusionality is that it is a much more realistic model of the underlying reality, and combines the best qualities of both the mythopoeic worldview and the scientific method.

There is a difference between “spiritual truth” and “facts” – e.g. many cultures divide the cosmos into four quarters with an axis at the centre. This makes symbolic sense but is not literally true. Mythology explains things by analogy and metaphor. Logical positivists deny the possibility of knowledge that is not derived from logical reasoning or empirical experience. If a narrative or discourse falls outside this kind of knowledge, they dismiss it as unverifiable.

Mythology and folklore are true in the sense that they resonate with our experience. The word ‘myth’ is often used in a pejorative sense to mean a fiction, an untrue thing. This is derived from a deterministic view of the world.

In the transition from the medieval view of the world (the magical and spiritual philosophy derived from Neoplatonism and Renaissance natural philosophy) to the rationalist and mechanistic ‘Newtonian’ worldview (including Euclidian geometry and the Cartesian split between mind and body), an essential quality was lost. That quality was the understanding of space as a dynamic inclusion in everything, the mysterious inductive quality of the feminine principle. Both Paganism and inclusionality, with their emphasis on the complementarity of feminine and masculine, darkness and light, inner and outer, microcosm and macrocosm, seek to restore that lost quality, to connect with nature and to sustain dynamic balance.

Yvonne Aburrow, 27 January 2004

References

(1) Alan Rayner (2003), Complementary Visions, http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/complementaryvisions.htm
(2) Joseph Campbell (1962), Oriental Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), Arkana.
(3) Ronald Hutton (2003), Witches, Druids, and King Arthur, London: Hambledon Press
(4) Alan Rayner, Rationality and Inclusionality - The "Outs" and "Ins" of Biological and Other Science, http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/cultureandbelief.htm