Am I A Pagan?

I agree with you to a degree. While it is true that practices and festivals are and were more important (and so much more important to me that I am more or less avoiding the current conversation about “pop culture” heroes, having made only one comment on the matter), it is also true that pagans both past and present thought about and discussed theology in detail. I think that the more important attitude difference is that they did not seem to consider their own theology to be definitive and all other varying theologies to be therefore wrong.

In today’s world, we also have to focus a little more on theology because there are social advantages to doing so: notably, it is through a coherent, expressed theology that we are allowed by authorities to exercise our supposedly inalienable rights to practice our religions, for instance in prisons or through sacrificial rites, to choose two areas (among several more) where religious repression is highly likely to occur in the modern West.

I have been told that I am a pagan, fundamentalist Christian, Satanist, neo-pagan, agnostic, atheist, and heathen in my time. This is because the whole concept is woolly anyway, particularly when it comes to magicians. . I think it is normal for magicians not to fit into comfy boxes. For a start the problem is that Magicians do not tend to worship gods but work with them, They have a concept of God which is so abstract that forming a comfy relationship with it is impossible. I think Terry Pratchett said it best when one of his witches said “of course I believe in Gods and Goddesses, but I would not be doing with worshipping them.”

I was told that i was not pagan but a uptight prude, because i didn’t think that it was appropriate for a provocative and nude photo shoot to go on in a house where 3 young 9 year old girls happened to be… The truth is, Paganism doesn’t fit in to a neat little box, its all over the place, that’s why we call it Eclectic Paganism. If there is one thing that the whole Pagan community needs to realize is that we mustn’t criticize each other for our differences… we must embrace them, accept them and learn from them. If we can learn anything from the Christians, it is that. Their many forms of Christianity that have been arguing for eons… lets not be like them, and show the world how strong we can be, because of our acceptance and understanding of each other. Blessed Be )O(

You’re chaos, baby. SEE YOU AT THE MEETING!

I agree with everything you said, especially the part about it being sad how we’re starting to loose out on the cross fertilization there used to be. I was struck by your use of the phrase “don’t take refuge in Gods”, which I’ve never heard that way before. It really resonated with me. Can you say more about exactly what you mean by that? Is it the same thing I mean when I say I work with gods, but I don’t worship them?

As a former seminarian, I find the whole “what do you believe?” thread in paganism right now to be tedious if not upsetting. I got used to the idea that every so often a professor or a visiting alumnus would ask questions designed to test orthodoxy as they understood it. Infuriating and upsetting, and stressful to my fellow students who were planning on ordination. Compare that with the current “pop” vs. “trad” pagan debates, and it seems like so much more orthodoxy and fundamentalism.

I contrast this with strategic sorcery, or with Rufus Opus’s gate rites. Or with Druidic studies, for that matter… The deeper into magic I delve, the less important my “beliefs” seem to be — results, order, harmony and contentment don’t emerge as much from what I believe as what I do, make, write, or ritualize.

I don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be — or if that was one of the big lessons i should have taken from the SSC — but I’m happier painting and drawing gods and angels and geometric mandalas and building things or alchemizing, to arguing about what it all //means//…

[…] I am a pagan — specifically a Theurgist [ETA: This was a bit of sloppy reading on my part, as Jason doesn't say he's not a pagan, only that his blog isn't a pagan blog].  Often, when I go for a […]

This is an excellent post. You really hit the nail on the head.

Yep. I’m a pagan who no longers calls myself “pagan” because of the general awfulness of so much of pagan culture, at last as it is expressed in the blogosphere.

My husband came of pagan-age in that era when everybody was cross-training and getting initiated into everything. There was this hunger to encounter new material. Now it seems to be a race toward orthodoxy.

[…] then I came across this interesting blog post from Inominandium, who discusses being perceived as not-pagan: I think it would be accurate for some people to say […]

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