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#pre-christian paganism was naturalistic
hylozoic-atheopagan · 10 months
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What is Hylozoic-Atheopaganism?
Hylozoic-Atheopaganism is a constantly evolving, science-based yet spiritual, branch of paganism where the core beliefs are that there is no god, spirits exist, and that everything is connected.
Hylozoic comes from the Ancient Greek words:
ὕλη (hyle, “wood, matter”) and ζωή (zoē, “life”)
Hylozoism is a philosophical doctrine where all Matter is alive and unified with life or spiritual activity. Typically, in this theory, all types of matter participate in something known as the World Soul. This word was coined by English Plantonist philosopher Ralph Cudworth in 1678.
Atheo comes from the Ancient Greek word:
ἄθεος (átheos, “godless, without a god”)
Paganism is a religion that is non-Christian or pre-Christian that typically involves some sort of nature worship or respect for the Earth.
Atheopaganism is another spiritual belief on it’s own coined by Mark Green. It is a naturalistic pagan religious path founded in 2009. The belief in itself is athiest, but it embraces pagan practices to increase happiness individually and in society. It has Four Sacred Pillars and 13 Priciples that it’s followers practice. Mark Green states that they do not believe in gods or the supernatural.
Hylozoic-Atheopaganism is not related to Atheopaganism, as we believe that spirits exist, but it is similar. The spiritual path entails not believing in a god, which is the atheo part of it, but we do believe in the supernatural. We believe that everything is connected in one way or another—that we are part of the Earth and Universe. We believe we need to respect the Earth, and we believe knowledge is valuable, so we want to constantly learn about the world around us. Due to this, Hylozoic Atheopaganism is bendable and changes with information. It is also up for interpretation and open. As long as you believe in the core beliefs, you can call yourself a hylozoic atheopagan.
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The God of America is Nature's God and the God of Nature is Satan.
yes
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occultwhores · 3 years
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Hermaphrodites, Gynomorphs and Jesus: She-Male Gods and the Roots of Christianity.
The first western god was both male and female. All of western religion springs from the veneration of a bi-gender entity, known to the ancient world as the Gynomorph. The worship of hermaphroditic gods like the Gynomorph surfaces in ancient pagan cults as well as early Christianity.
The celebration of female gods with penises impacted the development of western culture. Veneration of the Gynomorph is the basis for modern western law courts. The founders of democracy worshipped similar female divinities who possessed penises. Ritual sodomy as a means of celebrating hermaphroditic gods directly promoted the birth of western democracy. In fact, ancient priestesses responsible for guiding the worship of hermaphroditic goddesses laid the very foundations for democracy, science and philosophy.
The oldest western pharmaceuticals were sex drugs used in religious initiations in celebration of the Gynomorph. Snake venoms used in cultic sex rituals were immensely popular in both Greece and Rome. In addition, abortion-inducing drugs promoted the first scientific investigations. Classical civilization relied heavily upon the use of cannabis, opiates, and hallucinogens, which were mixed with sexual stimulants. Greco-Roman witches, who served a prominent hermaphroditic goddess, Hecate, were among the earliest western scientists and naturalists.
Devotees of gynomorphic divinities were the first westerners to promote the religious practice known as necromancy. The first baptists” were cross-dressing necromancers, who celebrated the Gynomorph. Eunuchs who served the same goddess were chemically castrated with scorpion venom. Ancient pre-Christian oracles declared that the messiah must be a hermaphrodite. Christianity tried to assimilate and employ the use of necromancy. The earliest Christians used designer sex drugs in their rituals in order to venerate a messiah given gynomorphic status by church bishops.
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pyroookinesis · 3 years
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what being pagan means
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the term “pagan” comes from the latin word paganus, which refers to those who lived in the country.
this term was assigned to them because, when christianity started to grow in the roman empire, it was primarily in cities, so those who lived outside of the cities kept believing in “the old ways” and were known as people who believed in things outside “mainstream” religions, like christianity or judaism.
they are known, primarily, for not having any official doctrine and believing in a divine presence in nature, and they mostly live by the wheel of the year rather than the roman calendar of months.
different types of paganism
historical paganism
paleopaganism
civilopaganism
mesopaganism
syncretopaganism
neopaganism
secular paganism
modern paganism
naturalistic paganism
humanistic paganism
paleopaganism is the standard of paganism. it’s a pagan culture that hasn’t been disrupted by “civilization” by another culture. for example: druidism (ancient celtic religion), the religions of the pre-patriarchal cultures of old europe, norse religion, pre-columbian native u.s. religions, etc.
civilopaganism is the beliefs of “civilized” communities which evolved in paleopagan cultures, such as: classical greco-roman religion, egyptian religion, middle-eastern paganism, aztec religion, etc.
mesopaganism consists of a group, which may or may not still constitute a separate culture, that has been influenced by a conquering culture, but has been able to maintain an independence of religious practice.
syncretopaganism, while similar to mesopaganism, had to tosubmerge itself into the dominant culture, and adopt the external practices and symbols of the other religion. for example, the various afro-diasporic traditions (voodoo, santeria, etc.), culdee christianity, etc.
the term neopaganism, a.k.a. contemporary paganism or modern paganism, was coined in the 19th century, when paganism resurfaces as a topic of fascination in romanticism. particularly in the context of the literary celtic and viking revivalism that portrayed historical celtic and germanic polytheists as noble savages.
revivalism, in architecture, is the use of visual styles that consciously echo the style of a previous architectural era.
by the mid-1930s it was used to refer to new religious movements, and by 1964 and 1965, it was used as self-designation in publications related to witchcraft. at the time it was used by revivalist witches in the u.s. and the u.k.
contemporary paganism attempts to reconnect with nature, using imagery and forms from other types of pagans but adjusting them to the needs of modern people. their practices and beliefs are said to be a collection of modern, religious, spiritual and magical traditions that are self-consciously inspired by the pre-judaic, pre-christian, and pre-islamic belief systems of europe, north africa, and the near east. some examples are:
wicca, in its many forms
neoshamanism
neodruidism
asatru and other forms of norse neopaganism
neonative u.s. practices
the range of practices labeled “women’s spirituality”
secular paganism is a form of neopaganism in which pagan deities are viewed as archetypes instead of real beings, but pagan virtues and principles are upheld. this means that secular pagans do not have a formal religion — they do not believe in any form of goddess or god. however, they remain pagan to its truest form.
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historical paganism is passed down generation to generation, while neopaganism is self taught and closely related to historical paganism beliefs.
secular paganism is not atheist paganism, as secular pagans believe in energy —or chi— while atheists simply do not believe in anything. although secular means non-religious by definition, secular witches still believe in energy. religion is not the same as the belief in the supernatural. religion is also not synonymous with theism because there are non-theistic forms of religion, like buddhism and taoism.
the fifteen guiding principles of secular paganism, according to abby willoroot:
ethical behaviour does not require a religion
all living things have a unique spirit or soul
the equality of genders, races, and all humans
care must be taken in using nature’s resources
all Earth’s life is connected and inter-dependant
the Gaia Principle is an important, basic, truth
the cycles of Nature teach us what is important
balance must be maintained for all life to flourish
our health depends on the the environment’s health
our individual actions can and do have consequences
evolution is an ongoing process that occurs in all species
birth, living and death are natural cycles shared by all life
respect for ourselves requires respect for the Earth
all human cultures have value and can teach us
goddesses and gods can be seen as metaphors
“secular paganism is not a religion — it is an ethical view of the world, based on the belief that nature is sacred and must be respected and treasured. secular pagans hold many of the same views about nature that religious pagans and many people of other religions do. secular pagans believe that we are a part of nature, not her master. there are no particular religious views connected with secular paganism.”
—Abby Willowroot
naturalistic paganism is a form of philosophical naturalism, which seeks to explain the universe without resort to supernatural causes. for naturalistic pagans, “naturalistic” is synonymous with “scientific.” in general, they adopt the most current explanations of science and are skeptical of claims not supported by science.
naturalistic pagans are also skeptical about things like magic(k), psychic abilities or communication with spirit entities, attributing intention to inanimate nature to the extent that, when they speak about “magic(k)” or “gods,” they tend to use these words differently than their common usage. naturalistic pagans may understand “gods” as metaphors for natural phenomena.
in short, naturalistic paganism integrates mythic, editative, and ritual practices with a worldview based on the most compelling scientific evidence.
as well as naturalistic paganism, humanistic paganism describes the pagan path for those who are uncomfortable with or skeptical of the supernatural or metaphysical elements of contemporary paganism. they are pagans who are firmly rooted in the physical world. humanistic paganism “is a naturalistic path rooted in ancient paganism and contemporary science.” it is a form of religious or spiritual humanism.
religious humanism can describe any religion that takes a human-centered ethical perspective as contrasted with a deity-centered ethical perspective. what is good is defined in terms of human experience rather than the will of any goddess or god. religious humanists tend to be atheistic or non-theistic. for religious humanists, human experience and reason provide a more than sufficient basis for ethical action without supernatural revelation. humanistic paganism can embrace the notion that we humans are part of a much larger community of beings to whom we have ethical obligations. the adjective “humanistic” is intended to contrast with “theistic;” it excludes goddesses and gods, but not other living beings.
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deus-sabaoth · 3 years
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And they were mingled among the heathens, and learned their works: and served their idols, and it became a stumbling-block to them. And they sacrificed their sons, and their daughters to devils. And they shed innocent blood: the blood of their sons and of their daughters which they sacrificed to the idols of Chanaan. And the land was polluted with blood.
Psalm CVI. 35-38
(...) Our society has forgotten our patrimonial memory of the Fall, thus whole swaths of human beings fall for the Devil’s tired tactic of telling us we can be like gods. We worship sex, we worship the natural sciences, we worship celebrities and politicians. Furthermore, we seek to medicate ourselves out of any redemptive suffering. We sacrifice our children at abortuaries to the gods of prosperity. We murder the sick and elderly as a liberation to appease the gods of pain and disease. We advocate for the naturalistic creation-myth of the Prophet Darwin. Schools look to the Pantheon of Physicists to tell us the meaning found in a  meaningless cosmos. We have replaced the Judges of Israel with the black-robed Judges of the Court. Legal matters are no longer beholden to the Law of the Lord, but instead to the Logic of Lucifer. We look not to God as Master of Morality, but to ourselves.
Occultists are consulted to predict the future, and horoscopes are commonplace. We have recaptured the worship of the sun and moon as lords that rule the day and night. Animals are given human-rights as we exalt ourselves to the base nature of the common beast. The Cult of the Environment has confused people about which heat to fear - they obsess over a slight rise in temperature, yet advocate for inhuman solutions that may lead to a place that is burning hot. Our society is Godless, Christless, and void of the Virgin Mary. Our culture is no longer Christian; our culture is Pagan.
We have given up Roman Catholicism in order to live in pre-Christian Rome. We no longer confess our sins to Priests, but instead seek validation of our perversions from psychologists. Often, therapy acts as as confession without absolution. (...)
Christendom is dead, but as Hillaire Belloc famously said, “The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.” Our Christian civilization was born through death, and has been murdered time and time again by Saracen and Socialist. Yet, our Lord is very adept at descending into the dead, and calling the dead-man to rise. Through the power of the Sacraments we contain the life of Christ within. If we are to recapture our heritage, what rightfully belongs to God, we must rid ourselves and our society of paganism.
- Kennedy Hall, Terror of Demons: Reclaiming Traditional Catholic Masculinity (2020), Chapter IV, p. 64-66.
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thegreenwolf · 5 years
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The Invitation of Wild Geese
Originally posted on my blog, A Sense of Natural Wonder, at http://www.thegreenwolf.com/the-invitation-of-wild-geese/
I feel like not enough people knew of Mary Oliver, who passed away on Friday at the age of 83.
I myself, not being a huge fan of poetry, never heard of her work until just a few years ago. Somehow in my enjoyment of nature writing I had overlooked her work. While the poet herself is gone, her legacy is immortalized in an incredible body of work spanning several decades.
Like so many people, my introduction to Oliver’s work was her poem Wild Geese. I was working on my ecopsychology certificate in graduate school, and encountered her words in a reading. Initially my attraction to it centered on the imagery of nature, the painting in my head of the movement of pebbles and sun and geese over the land. For years I came back to it just for this picture as a source of solace and joy.
But over time it gained a deeper meaning for me. Having been raised Catholic, I was soaked from an early age in the idea of original sin and the idea that humanity is inherently flawed. This, of course, also bred in me a deep sense of guilt and inadequacy, as well as contributing to the anxiety disorder I still deal with today. When I shot forth from these confines as a teenager and landed in the lap of neopaganism, I thought the main thing I wanted was a religion that was centered on nature, rather than seeing it as a set of materials to be exploited.
I got that, of course, but what I also got was a lot of fellow pagans carrying a lot of Christian baggage. (1) The need for a higher power to have control of things and to be petitioned for aid; a tendency to divide things into dichotomies like “light” and “dark” or “white magic” and “black magic”; a desire for some authority (often scriptural) to offer clear lines of What To Do and What Not To Do. And with the crossover of paganism with environmentalism, I often ran into sentiments dripping with the idea of sin, guilt, and flawed humanity, like “humans are just cancer on the earth”, and “Gaea is going to make us all pay for what we’ve done to Her”.
I carried much of my Catholic baggage with me. I especially yearned for structure and ritual and orthopraxy and definitive methods of pleasing the powers that be, or at least that’s what I told myself I needed in order to be a Really Good Pagan. The crescendo of that particular adventure was the few years I tried putting together a formalized path using various bits and pieces of things I had learned and developed over the years. The harder I tried to make that work, though, the more I found myself rebelling all over again.
I went back and re-read Wild Geese. I read the opening lines:
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
In that, I broke open. Catholic tirades about how we are all tainted with original sin even from birth, pagan moralizing over how the Threefold Law is gonna get ya or preaching Gaea’s ecological smackdown–these all came flowing out as though from a deep wound lanced. “Love what it loves” wasn’t a call to crass, reactionary hedonism or indifferent amorality, but instead trusting our instincts and deeply-ingrained social bonds that our ancestors evolved over millions of years to thrive together.(2)
And that was the key: the idea that humans are not inherently flawed, that we are just another species of animal in a highly complex world full of many ecosystems. Our actions have evolutionary roots, even if we’ve taken them in some beautiful, strange, or even terrible directions. Our large-scale destruction of the planet has largely coincided with increasing beliefs that we are separate from nature; after all, it’s easier to destroy something you don’t see any responsibility toward. Yet here was a call to return to our place in the natural order of things, where we are one among many.
From that point, the rest of the poem is a joyful invitation to return home. And I suppose that there is a bit of that shared concept of forgiveness in the idea that no matter how badly we’ve screwed up our lives and the planet–if we stop and do our best to turn things around, nature will still be waiting for us.(3) But it’s not a forgiveness gained through penance and punishment, nor is it dangled over our heads as the one and only alternative to an eternity in hellfire and brimstone. There’s no mention of any specific religion one must adhere to in order to be saved, no threat of damnation. We aren’t required to do rituals A, B and C in order to avoid angering the gods.
All it says is that the rest of nature has been there all along, waiting patiently for us to come back into the rhythm of the dance of raindrops and rivers. It will continue on in some form with or without us, but wouldn’t it be glorious if it were with us? There’s a grand, amazing world out there full of wonder and awe. Nature does not dole out sinfulness and punishment, but only natural consequences to actions, which are inherently neutral and not steeped in human ideas about morality.
Since that time, my paganism has evolved into something more naturalistic, and anything but structured and formalized. Instead it pervades every element of my life organically and without pretension. I feel constantly connected to something bigger than myself–the entire Universe–which is a key goal of spirituality anyway. Rituals feel redundant, unless you think of my daily farm chores and my meals and my sleep as rituals, all of which celebrate the world I live in in various ways. And I don’t see myself as being part of some cosmic hierarchy; I am not inherently better or worse than any other being here.
I am still working on returning to the rest of nature, but it is only because I am unpracticed, not because I feel unworthy. I can be concerned about the environmental destruction I am contributing to by my very existence and lifestyle without letting that concern translate into a guilt that continues to keep me separate as something dirty, foul, not deserving of nature’s touch. And the more I feel close to nature, the more responsibility I feel toward it, and vice versa. Nature may not be an entity that can love me; it’s pretty indifferent as a whole. But I can make up for that with the utter joy and astonishment I experience every moment I am aware of my place in nature and what amazement surrounds me.
It’s a cliche to say that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I never told Ms. Oliver how much her work meant to me, and of course now I will never have that opportunity. But I don’t think I realized myself the importance of Wild Geese in particular until the evening after she passed, when I began writing this post. And I sent out my gratitude in these words–too little, too late–but hopefully enough to share that meaning with those who remain.
What is remembered, lives.
Obviously, yes, #NotAllPagans. But after over two decades in this community, I’ve seen these and other leftover Christian patterns frequently. These phenomena do also occur in other religions, and arguably in some pre-Christian paganisms. But it was clear in the instances I saw that the patterns were most closely replicating those many of us were raised with in Christianity, with a thin pagan veneer pulled over them.
I recognize this is a pretty romanticized view of “instincts”, and that hunting and other violent things are also instinctual to a degree. That’s not what this is about, though. Leave those aside for the moment.
Of course, with climate change being what it is, it may not be able to wait for us much longer, at least not in a form that allows us to survive as a species. But leave the doomsaying for some other time and place. All it does is make people less likely to try to improve things, and more likely to just give up, and that is antithetical to what this entire post is about.
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therhiannonway-blog · 7 years
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Et in Arcadia Ego
An exploration of how landscape is used in literature to portray more than just the setting. With a focus on King Lear and The Great Gatsby.
Landscapes have always featured predominantly in literature, from Dante’s hell to Woolf’s lighthouse to Bronte’s moors to Tolkien's Middle Earth, and beyond, shaping the stories we read and the worlds we explore. Authors create, exploit and imitate landscape to support their tales, some real enough to visit whilst others can only be seen in our imagination. The choice of landscape - whatever petulant English students across the world say - is important and often relevant to the story, employed by the author to deliver another meaning rather than having to say it aloud. It gives literature another layer, another level of understanding that is not always explored as much as it was intended to be.
Such a landscape is featured in Shakespeare’s 1606 King Lear, Act 3’s heath arguably where the play’s climax takes place. The eponymous character, Lear, who has given up his kingdom to his daughters in the hopes of approaching death without the weight of the country on his shoulders, finally reaches a state of unbalance, his deteriorating mind now falling over the edge. Although modern interpretations might frame Lear as an Alzheimer’s sufferer, the fact that he has such an antithetical clarity of self suggests otherwise. He is seen to command the wind, demanding it to ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!’, his anger at his daughters presented in his wish for nature to ‘Strike flat the rotundity o’th’world!’ - their betrayal so great he desires the world end to atone for it. 
Contrastingly though, he also acknowledges himself as a ‘poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man’, the vulnerability of his statement juxtaposing the strength of his demands. This contrast is also reflected in the landscape itself, Shakespeare’s choice to have Lear stranded on the heath highlighting Lear’s isolation from humanity. As he deteriorates, he has no shelter to seek and the barren landscape offers no hope, simply implies that his actions have only served to bring him somewhere deserted and bleak. Thus the audience witness a king, expected to be surrounded by luxury, stranded in a desolate landscape, embodying critic A.W. Schlegel’s opinion that King Lear is a story about the ‘fall from the highest elevation into the deepest abyss of misery’. Furthermore, in many depictions of the heath, Stonehenge appears, grounding the play in a pre-Christian era, calling upon the naturalistic connotations of the pagan, and reminding the audience of the old Kings of ancient English lore. Suddenly Lear transitions from a fallen King to a King ready for the burial grounds, no longer Arthurian but simply ancient and forgotten.
This in itself incites images of other, ancient symbols which stand in memory of tales and ancient heroes. Odysseus, for example, leaves behind him the ship of the Phaeacians, turned to stone by their patron God and now thought to be the Kolovri Rock. The island symbolises unfair punishment and the Greek gods’ inclination to act selfishly before considering anyone else. Looking at the island, it is not its geological or physical history people see, but the hospitable Phaeacians, frozen eternally in stone before they were able to reach their homeland. Similarly, Mount Olympus is not the highest mountain in Greece, but the home of the gods, a spiritual home to be respected and prayed to. Thus, stories and mythology transform landscapes into places with predetermined connotations, belonging to the author and the reader instead of the earth.
Predetermined notions remained in culture, largely associated with the Western discovery of the Americas in the 1400s. Historically, the West has always been linked to an elevated landscape of luxury and and purity: the Elysian Fields, the Greek equivalent of heaven within Hades, were positioned on the edge of the Western world by Homer and the Hesperides, guardians of a blissful garden, were also called ‘Nymphs of the West’. Hence, on discovering that the world did not end in a waterfall, but a perceived untouched land, the first thoughts would have been of new chances, replenishment and rest. This in itself would have been enhanced by the fact that many of the first immigrants, usually classically educated, were escaping persecution, often based on their religion. However, the paradisiacal nature of the Elysian Fields and Hesperides are repeated in the Garden of Eden myth, where Adam and Eve’s discovery of knowledge leads them to be cast out of God’s grace and into punishment. They cover their nakedness, in opposition to Lear choosing to shed his clothes in search of truth, and find good and evil, corrupting themselves in God’s eyes.
Therein lies the human tragedy in landscape - as soon as we discover it, it will be immediately corrupted by our expectations and, literally, adapted to support humanity and nothing else. Lear adapts the kingdom to suit his needs, and in doing so ends up mad, surrounded by stormy skies and barrenness. Adam and Eve give in to temptation, and in doing so end up working the land or bearing children painfully. The first explorers find the Americas, and in doing so destroy land to build for themselves and try to wipe out the native race. Paradise, and the search for it, is humanity’s hubris, reflected in literature from the Bible to Shakespeare and, inexplicably, to the 20th century’s The Great Gatsby.
Whilst it would not seem the most common comparison, F. Scott Fitzgerald's tale of the extravagant roaring 20’s paints paradise as Gatsby’s parties and, more so, Gatsby’s reason for throwing them; Daisy Fay Buchanan is Gatsby’s paradise. Having loved her once and been away from her for so long, Gatsby’s mental image of Daisy becomes enriched with fantasy, the realism of her existence out of his grasp. As Lear stages the love test to satisfy his vanity, Gatsby throws his parties in an attempt to lure Daisy’s attention, and as Lear’s hope for a new life with Cordelia shatters, Gatsby’s dreams end with his prone body lying in the pool. They are both trying to achieve their paradise, embodying the saying et in Arcadia ego, and fall short, the truth instead found by others: Albany proposes to ‘sustain’ the ‘gored state’ and Nick decides Gatsby’s illusion is ‘no matter’, both knowing the future will hold more.
It is in his realisation that Nick recognises what Gatsby was never able to see. He sees the ‘old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes’, Long Island for them representing a new start and wealth, which ‘made way for Gatsby’s house’, hence acknowledging that humanity arrive and with them bring a desire to destroy in order to create. Fitzgerald frames it as ‘the old, unknown world’, but in recognising that the first man to set his eyes on the new world was ‘face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder’, he suggests the understanding that the first sight will always be the last sight because immediately it becomes corrupted by humanity’s preoccupations and, so, the ‘unknown’ is rather the predetermined.
In endings, both King Lear and The Great Gatsby reflect the paradoxical human desire for paradise too. Nick concludes ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’, implying that it is the past which makes us and it is inescapable. Those who left looking for the new world found it and changed it into a replica of the old and there was no ceasing of suffering or mundanity. Edgar distinguishes the importance of ‘this sad time’, as something to remember and learn from, noting that it will always be carried forwards in memory and not forgotten. The past, in searching for the future, corrupts it before humanity can achieve it, and so the hoped for landscapes literature present as the ultimate achievement will never be truly pure, because they are already laced with the sin of humanity.
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johnrgordon · 6 years
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Writing a historical novel #7 – how foreign a country is the past? & #8 – for the modern reader: a pact
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For the past ten years I have been working on a historical novel, Drapetomania, Or, The Narrative of Cyrus Tyler and Abednego Tyler, lovers, set in slavery times in the American Deep South, and telling of the passionate love between two men, Cyrus and Abednego, and their bid for freedom from bondage – out on 17th May, 2018. As I worked on a final edit of the 183,000 word manuscript, I began reflecting on the process. These are some of my thoughts.
It’s tempting, particularly after fossicking about in contemporary writings of the period, to attempt to make a historical novel as alienatingly authentic as possible: to foreground all the interestingly unexpected ways in which the thinking of the times was radically different from how we think now, and show ‘the past as a foreign country’.  
To over-indulge this demonstrating of past ways of thinking is, I think, to make the same error as troweling on far too much period detail to prove one’s put in the work, even when it slows up the reader to no great gain in terms of the overall meaning of the tale. I don’t think there’s a straightforward answer to the question of how much period evocation is too much; in the end it’s a matter of intuition, and only your readers can tell you if your judgment was good. 
However, the usual rule applies: in rewriting, tend towards the ruthless cut. In a fast final, essentially proofing, rewrite I cut a further 3000 words from my manuscript. 
To the extent there’s a solution to the question of representing past mentalities, I would say it consists in keeping the narrative surface connected to what is, and always has been, true for human beings everywhere emotionally, (that is, motives we understand to be perpetual), and serving some narrative (moral or psychological) purpose with the contrast between these and the particularities of thought in the past. Umbert Eco achieves this brilliantly in his epic The Name of the Rose, which grips narratively as a detective story, but is lensed existentially through a well-evoked crisis in the medieval (European) Christian world-view. 
In my case, as I wrote I became fascinated by the idea that what Cyrus is experiencing as he makes his break for freedom is not in any way quaint and sepia-tinted: it is to him the brand-new, modern, latest thing – that this or that carriage is as up-to-the-minute to him as a self-drive car to us; that the telegraph is like the iPhone; that the whole horror-show of slavery is not only the now but also what seems to him to be the aggressive, overwhelming future, an endlessly accelerating industrialization; and that though we experience his tale as a period piece, he experiences it as ruthlessly and simply contemporary, and without foreknowledge that slavery (as a formal institution) will ever end. 
Alertness to this opened a way for me to have characters discuss things that to them are pressing contemporary issues in terms that (I hope) avoid the clumsy info-dump that hobbles much historical writing. As so often, aiming determinedly for as natural and naturalistic feel as one would in writing dialogue in a contemporary novel – what would these people really be saying about this? – helps greatly, as does taking care to avoid any too blatant foreshadowing of events, even in the connecting prose.
Writing a historical novel #8 – for the modern reader: a pact
However authentically one is trying to capture a sense of another time, we all know perfectly well (even if adopting the Gothic device of the found manuscript, which I didn’t do) that the reader will be modern, as is the writer. Both reader and writer willingly co-conspire in not acknowledging this fact. For instance, even if I scrupulously avoid foreshadowing the Civil War, every modern reader will know that I, a modern writer, am consciously and willfully performing this avoidance.
But then after all that’s the pact with all fiction: if you, the reader, will read this tale as if it’s true then, I, the writer, will respect your faith by not clumsily – or through arch over-reflexivity – undermining the plausibility of what I offer you. Umberto Eco manages this flawlessly and grippingly in his culturally-dense but highly readable (& bestselling) medieval detective tale The Name of the Rose.
If the writer does this skillfully enough, s/he can take the reader to very strange places. John Fowles’ A Maggot begins as a sort of Canterbury Tales but ends with an enigmatic apotheosis that might be science fiction (or might not). This could have been a total bust, but because his sense of period & language is so assured we are (or I was) totally carried along and ‘bought’ the story.
With Drapetomania I was particularly concerned that Cyrus and his lover Abednego (a house servant who hangs out with the field hands) not conceptualise their relationship and sexualities in ways that are overly modern. Homosexuality as an identity is a creation of C20th European thinkers – Havelock Ellis, Freud, Jung etc. Before that there were understood to be (sinful, illegal) sexual acts to which one’s nature might be drawn. However, for me, behind that is the larger issue of love: the desiring love between people of the same sex that has about it something profound & essential; something that is not merely a social construct without any claims to profound identity behind it, some essence that goes beyond being merely a set of acts, viewed with or without censure, that anyone might happen to perform without becoming any sort of person as a consequence.
And so I put much thought and a great deal of work into exploring Cyrus’ and Abednego’s self-conceptualisations in terms of their romance; in terms of their sexual intimacy: what it means to them, and how they understand it. Cyrus – who is if anything pagan and animist, harkening back to an Africa he has no direct knowledge of – has a pre-Christian understanding of himself that regards Christian morality as imposed on the truth of human nature – his nature – in a way that is not only hostile but, more importantly, untrue. Abednego is more ‘worldly’, more in his context modern – someone emerging from the other side of Christian Puritanism and dominance, moving into secular liberation, and so is defiantly himself, but I hope does not exceed his (self-perceived) modernity.
I hope I have succeeded in this, and thereby given gay/sgl readers an unapologetic and therefore nourishing rendition of sexual/romantic love that feels true to its time and place, and that also, while feeling real, convincingly rises up into a form of epic heroism.
Buy Drapetomania here (US) or here (UK)
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jsanchez0114 · 6 years
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I would counterexample this statement through inductive reasoning by stating that the pre-christian festival of Saturnalia, in which the Ancient Romans celebrated Saturn, was considered a pagan holiday. The Julian calendar recognized the Winter solstice as being the 25th Of December, which is why we celebrate Christmas on the 25th. Through the naturalistic pagan rituals, the intaking and caring of natural resources such as trees was of optimal importance to these individuals. It wasn’t until the cultural appropriation of Saturnalia by the northern European countries alongside the appropriation of Christianity did Christmas and the Christmas tree become a standard. Now, to understand the concept of the word paganism, I choose to approach it from a Wittgensteinian approach. Ludwig Wittgenstein was an abhorrent critic of the Platonic Dialogues Of Socrates. Socrates, as you may know, wanted to find the essential definition of such words as Justice, Knowledge, Power. Wittgenstein approaches this through the idea of Language Games. He states that when such an abstract concept is asked to be defined, only an enumeration of imagistic concepts comes to mind, but not a description. Since there is such a hint of relativism in such concepts, they are difficult to define. Taking it from a Linguistic perspective will only make it Scientific. In fact, Wittgenstein states that Philosophy itself is a self-defeating process when discussing the ideals of Metaphysics, because one persons ideal of Metaphysics will surely be different from your arbitrary ideal of Metaphysics. Henceforth, there is no winning or monism in philosophical thinking. Back to the “textbook” definition of Paganism, it was originally ascribed to any polytheistic religion. However., once the Christian appropriation occurred during the reign of Emperor Constantine, the term quickly turned to include those who were not partaking in the events of the three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. By Abrahamic, I mean those religions who acknowledge the existence of the Antediluvian patriarchs and the acceptance of the Pentateuch in the Bible.
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thegreenwolf · 7 years
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[I know this is a long one, and potentially controversial. Do me a favor, please and read all the way to the end, and pay especial attention to the italicized bits? Thank you!]
Celtic Wicca. Samhain, the God of the Dead. Witches’ covens that extend back in an unbroken line thousands of years. These are just a few examples of the really bad history that’s been passed around the pagan community, and which has rightfully been skewered by those who have done better research. I came to paganism in the mid-1990s when Wicca was all the rage, and everything was plastered with Celtic knotwork. The Craft, Charmed and other media helped bolster support for aesthetic paganism that was more about looks than substance. A glut of books hit the market, many of which were full of historical inaccuracies from the mildly off to the blatantly awful.
Pagans with a decent background in history began to tear apart the inaccurate material, some of which had been floating around for decades (I’m looking at you, Margaret Murray!) We encouraged each other to go beyond strictly pagan books and explore historical texts, both those written for laypeople and more academic texts. We cited our sources more. And so now, twenty years later, while paganism still has its share of bad history, we have a lot more accurate information to apply to our paths, whether we’re hardcore reconstructionists or not. And we have space for things that aren’t necessarily historically accurate, but which we find personally relevant, like Unverified Personal Gnosis, or UPG (which you can read more about here.)
All this came out of a lot of discussions, along with debates and arguments. Post bad history in a busy pagan listserve circa 2000, and you were bound to get dozens of responses correcting you and offering good research material. And today wrong historical information is still swiftly corrected. What boggles my mind is that a lot of the same people who will throw down over historical inaccuracies won’t bat an eye when someone horribly misuses science. Woe be unto anyone who tries to say that Artemis and Freya are just different faces of the same Great Goddess, but sure, we can say that quantum entanglement proves magick is real without a doubt. Whatevs, it’s your belief, right?
In Defense of Facts
Wrong. Just as history deals in facts, so does science. Yes, there’s room for errors (accidental and deliberate) and updated research, but that doesn’t negate the general tendency of both of these fields of study and practice to deal in the most accurate information we have available to us. We’ve gotten good at pointing out where pagans are over-reaching historically through speculation and UPG. We suck at doing so for those speculating beyond what science has demonstrated to be true or impossible. It’s the same error at play: when history or science don’t have a clear answer–or the answer that you want–you don’t get to just make up whatever you want and say that it’s equally real.
Lots of anecdotes do not equal “anecdata”. No matter how much you really, really, really want to believe that you can make streetlights turn off just by walking under them, the evidence we do have is pointing toward it just being an occasionally blinking streetlight and good timing. It’s also confirmation bias in that you’re seeing what you want to see and that affects your “results”. No one has yet created a substantial, well-crafted study that even remotely suggests a person can affect the electrical flow to a light bulb (other than by physically tampering with the wires, unscrewing the bulb or turning off the power.) A group of people walking back and forth under a streetlight does not a solid experiment make.
Yet paganism is full to the brim with people claiming they can do similarly supernatural things. Look at the proliferation of spells that claim to be able to aid in healing, take away curses, or even affect political outcomes. That’s saying that “If I burn this candle or bury this herbal sachet or say these words over here, that thing or person or situation wayyyy over there will be directly affected in the way I want it to.” Sure, your process was more elaborate than just walking in proximity of your target, but you have no more evidence of causation than that other guy. And look at how many pagans claim that a simple spell is every bit as effective as a complicated one. Doesn’t it follow, then, that the simplest spell–walking under the light with the intent of making it blink off–has every bit the chance of working as something more complex?
Why We Treat Science Differently
But that’s getting away from the point. I think we don’t want to be sticklers for science in the same way that we’re sticklers for history because we don’t want our sacred cows slaughtered. Our beliefs can still hold up when we question historical inaccuracies because many modern pagan beliefs are based in history, and better history means better justification for our beliefs because “our ancestors believed it!”
But many of our beliefs are also based in pseudoscience, as well as bad interpretations of good science (like the misapplication of quantum anything to trying to prove magick is objectively real). When we start picking apart the scientific inaccuracies in our paths, it feels threatening and uncomfortable. If you feel a sense of control because you literally believe that a spell you cast will change a situation you’re anxious about, then you don’t want to question the efficacy of that act because you feel you’ve lost control again. If your connection to nature is primarily through thinking the local animals show up in your yard because you have special animal-attracting energy, the fact that they’re more likely just looking for food, shelter, and other normal animal things makes you feel less inherently connected. So instead of focusing on aligning our paths more closely with scientific research as well as historical research, we instead cling tightly to justifications.
The Rewards of Accuracy
I think that pressing for more historical accuracy has made paganism stronger as a whole, both as individuals and as a community. We’ve spent decades working to be taken more seriously as a religious group, sometimes to gain big steps forward like equal recognition for our deceased military pagans, other times to just be able to mention our religion without being laughed at. Those who want to emphasize to non-pagans that our paths have historical precedent and long-time relevance have more resources to do so. There are other benefits: Those who want to emulate the ways of pre-Christian religions have more material to work with. And history offers more depth to explore; your interest in a particular ancient spiritual path can extend out into knowing more about the culture, people and landscape that that path developed in. If you’re creating a new path for the 21st century, you have more inspiration to work with when you see what’s worked for pagan religions in both the distant and recent past.
Science has a lot to offer us as well. As a naturalist pagan–and a pagan naturalist–my path is deepened, and I find greater meaning, the more I learn about and experience the non-human natural world. I don’t need to believe the blacktail deer outside my studio are there because they have some special message for me. It’s enough that I can observe them quietly from the window as they go about their lives, our paths intersecting by proximity. I do not need to drink water from their hoofprints to attempt to gain shapeshifting powers; I can imagine a bit of what it is to be them when I follow their trails through the pines and see the places that are important to them. And that makes me even more invested in protecting their fragile ecosystem; my path urges me to give back to nature.
When pagans step out of the narrow confines of symbolism, and act as though nature is sacred because we know how threatened it is through the science of ecology, not only do we deepen our connections to nature, but we also show the rest of the world that we walk our talk. It’s just one way in which we demonstrate that, as with our historical accuracy, we’re also interested in scientific accuracy, rather than denying or ignoring facts in favor of our own spiritual self-satisfaction. And rather than getting entangled in self-centered interpretations of nature that elevate us as the special beings deserving of nature’s messages, a more scientific approach to paganism humbles us and reminds us that we are just one tiny part of a vast, beautiful, unimaginably complex world full of natural wonders that science can help us better explore and understand.
Conclusion
As always, I’m not saying don’t have beliefs. Beliefs have plenty of good effects, from strengthening social bonds to bringing us comfort when things go haywire to helping us make some subjective sense of the world through storytelling and mythos. UPG can be a really valuable tool in giving us a place to put the things we believe that don’t fit into known historical research, and I think we need to extend it to hold beliefs that go outside known scientific evidence, too. So keep working your spells and your rituals, and keep working with the deities and spirits that you hold dear. If you derive personal meaning by feeling that the crows are nearby because of some spiritually significant reason and it improves your life, don’t let go of that, so long as you also accept that the crows are just crows doing crow things.
But we also need to be able to make use of critical thinking skills and suss out areas where we’re factually wrong, no matter how we may personally feel about the matter. That way, as with history, we’re able to clearly say “This is the portion of my belief system that matches up with known facts, and this part over here is more personal.” We’ve learned to be skeptical of the claims of people who say that historians are wrong and they have the REAL history; we should be able to do the same for those who claim to know better than thousands of scientists.
What I am also asking you to do is really question your beliefs, their foundations, and where they intersect with and diverge from science (and history, while we’re at it.) If you have a belief that runs directly counter to known facts and you feel it has to be every bit as real as science or history, ask yourself why. What would happen if you allowed that belief to be UPG, or personal mythology? What would happen if you let it go entirely? What would you have left, and what value does it have?
I can’t say where this process of questioning will take you, whether you’ll let go of your beliefs, or recategorize their place in your life, or just cling to them more tightly. Every person’s path winds in its own direction. But just as we have questioned our historical inaccuracies and come out the better for it, I think that as individuals and as a community we can benefit from really questioning scientific inaccuracies in the same way. Won’t you join me in this effort?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider picking up a copy of one of my books, which blend a naturalist’s approach to the world with pagan meaning and mythology–Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up is especially relevant!
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