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Reclaiming the Pagan Worldview:
The Heart of Mysticism and the Return of the Old Ways
Copyright 2005 by Robin Artisson
From "The Witching Way of the Hollow Hill"
* * *
In my way of thinking, what makes a person a “pagan” is not adherence to
the surface beliefs of a pagan religion, nor some strongly
individualistic way of challenging the status quo, nor even embracing an
antique religious model- in the modern day, what pass for “pagan”
religious models tend to be created by certain left-wing people to
bolster some equally-as-left-wing ideologies. True and honest “paganism”
is hard to come by.
In my opinion, being “pagan” is far from any of that- it is a matter of
changing your worldview to an older way of seeing and being, giving
reconsideration to older wisdoms, and making them relevant to you today.
There is a struggle of spirit going on- people are looking for Wisdom
and peace, and some look back to the past for hints about how others
once found it. This is a good impulse- the past has much to teach us.
But it is still a struggle, because mainstream religions strongly
disapprove of people looking too far back.
Modern mainstream religions “win” the struggle of the spirit in a new
way- they win when people have no awareness of the subtle power of
worldview, and when people do not question where the features of their
worldviews come from. In the old days, the modus operandi was for the
church to convert kings and rulers, get influence over the laws, and
kill the heretics and dissenters. But organizations like the church
couldn’t do what they were trying so hard to do, which was change the
basic worldview of the people they converted. That took centuries.
Conversion in name is not enough- to become a true follower of a
religion, you have to embrace the worldview associated with the religion
completely; and that normally only happens when you are raised from an
early age surrounded by a culture that espouses and demonstrates the
features of that worldview. Christianity took generations to “set in”
properly and fully. In the modern day, pagans have a lot of “unlearning”
to do, before they can really say “we are pagan”.
A Matter of Worldview
Nowadays, people can believe whatever they want. There is no locked,
enforced way of believing. But there IS a worldview that most people in
the west accept, people who are pagan and Christian alike, without even
realizing they accept it. Many people today feel and want so much to be
“pagan” again, and to escape the dominant Judeo-Christian paradigmatic
worldview, but it doesn’t happen overnight, just like it didn’t grow
overnight.
Some people don’t understand this- they think that being pagan is a
matter of reading some books, of making a blanket rejection of their
original religious beliefs, and taking part in “pagan” rites or even
“doing their own thing”- and nothing could be further from the truth.
The essence of paganism is found in the worldview. Worldview is a matter
of how you feel and think about things, on a deep, mostly pre-conscious
level. Worldview is normally tied up in culture, and it is a matter of
how you were raised, from day one, to think about things and see them.
“To be pagan” is to alter or change these deep patterns in your mind, to
be more in alignment with a genuine pagan worldview- and a “genuine”
pagan worldview should be based on older pagan ideas and ideals.
Hopefully, if any “modern paganism” is worth its salt, it will be
inspired by older pagan ideas that still have importance and relevance
for us today- and many do. Some features of older worldviews can be
interpreted in new ways to make them relevant. We are dealing with
organic features that changed to suit the times and needs of long ago,
so this is not odd in the least.
Part and parcel of the standard “pagan” worldview, ancient or modern, is
a sense of the sacredness of the Land; that the Sacred Land is alive and
inhabited by spiritual forces ranging from Godly spirits to the souls of
the dead, that All life emerged from the Land or from Nature, and that
all will return to it cyclically, on the tides of birth and death.
The relationship between men and women is vital to the modern pagan
worldview- the rather destructive imbalances of the past, evidenced in
antique (and in some places, persistent) social orders between men and
women, fill most modern pagans with a desire to find a healthier way for
men and women to relate. Pagan mythologies present men and women as
being created simultaneously, not one before the other, or one for the
other, as Eve seems to have been a device created from Adam to alleviate
Adam’s boredom or loneliness; in ancient Germania we have Woden creating
a man and a woman at the same time from trees; the same story gets told
in a different form in other places- and even the Greeks, before the
latebreaking “Pandora” myth, had man and woman springing up
simultaneously from the Earth itself, or from the humus and trunks of
Ash trees.
Men and women have different biological functions with respect to
reproduction, but no spiritual, mental, or any other ontological
inequalities. If men can offer women the gift of physical fertility,
women, and the feminine, offer to men the no-less vital gift of
emotional and spiritual fertility. Man’s strength is not there to hold
down and control the feminine, but to protect it and support it, for she
is the source of his life and his generations, and the secret heart of
his honor and joy- the very form of his deepest spiritual yearnings.
There is a great and holy reciprocity between the sexes, they are
needful to each other, and modern pagans tend to stand strongly on this
issue, as well they should.
The very basic pagan worldview- in common with the ancient beliefs of
all Indo-European pagans- is one of animistic fullness, with a simple,
earthy, ‘ground level’ emphasis on the idea of all things having a
spiritual dimension, and on the value of life and of human cooperative
well-being.
With the possible exception of the belief in the all important value of
Life and the Truth, there is no sense of ‘hard absolutes’; there is an
ambiguity at the heart of all things, for Nature herself is nowhere
clean and clear-cut, on any expressed level. Humans must decide, within
the context of every situation, what actions are proper and try to bring
their actions into alignment with whatever course brings about a greater
harmony. This worldview requires humans to be flexible, brave and
responsible.
This worldview has no sense of human moral depravity; no sense of guilt
or loathing for the basic organic realities of human life; a basic trust
in the dignity and goodness of mankind. Most scandalously, there is no
sense of the necessity of salvific revelations or the prophets and
saviors of revealed religions; “revelations” for those who live on the
Land, and who live as parts of the Land, are ongoing.“Revelations” can
be heard by anyone who listens in the wind or to the Land, and can be
heard daily in the interior of the heart.
The pagan worldview also has no sense of linear “salvation history”; the
world is not going to suddenly “end” one day at the behest of a heavenly
judge who will then dole out rewards and punishments. Responsibility for
making this world a better place is squarely on humans and the community
of life.
“Meaning” in life is not to be found at life’s end, or at the end of the
world, but every day, in every action and breath. The end of the world-
cycle or this era will come naturally, organically, just as it started;
it is not a heavenly catastrophe, but a natural reality, and the coming
of this “end”- which is itself a pre-cursor to a rebirth for the world-
is not the primary concern of humans, as much as living this present
moment with wisdom and peace.
Finally, and most importantly, the pagan worldview has a strong emphasis
on the surreal, supra-rational presence of the Otherworld, the immense
reality that lies beyond the boundaries of our own human perceptions and
pre-conceived notions, and which occasionally breaks through into our
“world” and perceptions in mysterious, exhilarating, or frightening
ways.
This great presence, this extra-sensory reality, is the force behind
pagan myths and legends; it is the animating principle of pagan
mythology, and the single, pervasive and omnipresent principle by which
otherwise inexpressible universal Truths can penetrate the world and
mind of man or woman. This reality is the home of the Gods, the source
of divine inspiration. Mythology is the presence of the Otherworld in
the form of ancient stories; mythology- any mythology can be thought of
as its manifestation.
Any mythology can be thought of as a gateway to a truly mystical
experience of timeless truth. Though the mythical stories themselves
don’t tend to be literally “true”, they are nonetheless still “True”,
all being expressions of great Truth. The ancients had no problems with
their myths not being literal. It was the symbolic and metaphorical
nature of these holy stories and lore that gave them power; they spoke
in the language of the Otherworld.
With the World or Against It
Having made this simple outline of a general “pagan” worldview, it seems
pretty straightforward. But modern neo-pagans tend to help preserve a
very non-pagan and decidedly non-traditional worldview, even when they
are in the grip of what they so fervently think is “paganism”.
And the problems of reclaiming a true pagan worldview today are not just
consequences of religious oppression, or the history of religion in the
west; even our modern materialistic sciences have problems. As much as
modern people (and even modern pagans) think that the sciences are
positive forces that are “against fundamentalist superstition and
ignorance”, it is a sad fact that many scientific paradigms aren’t any
more healthy than fundamentalist Christianity- the sciences too, can be
based on firmly non-spiritual and totally “we are automatically right
and you are automatically an ignorant, superstitious person for not
accepting our math and theories” attitudes. Sadly, science for many
becomes a new form of elitism, with its own dogmas and faith in its
ability to answer the mysteries of the universe.
But many pagans, thinking that science is a firmly non-Christian and
totally positive advancement, walk around trying to make our ancestors’
lore and ancient spiritual notions “fit in” with scientific-sounding
explanations; I have heard such horrid things, ranging from “the trance
state is really just an alpha state of consciousness” to “paganism and
Wicca are just quantum physics mixed with the ancient mysteries”.
I’ve heard neo-pagans actually trying to explain how their “law of
return” was firmly based on physics, and I’ve even heard neo-pagans
trying to “prove” that there is an “afterlife” with the rather tired,
pseudoscientific anecdote that goes something like this: “hey man, we’re
all just energy... electricity- and according to physics, energy can’t
be destroyed or created, it just changes form...so when we die, our
energy just changes form...”
I can’t tell you how depressing it looks when someone takes the most
precious gift of our ancestors' mythology- and all the lore and power it
contains- and tries to explain it all away in these analytical terms, to
make it more palatable to the science-dazed masses who think that things
can’t be “real” unless you can explain them in mathematical terms or
demonstrate them in a lab.
What is real and important in life cannot be so explained. A person who
thinks they can, will never reach the promise of the spiritual
worldview, nor achieve wisdom. They will join the endless mental paper
chase, which only ends in new questions, new debates, and never in
peace. They are swept away with the tools of dissection, and can chop
things into eternally smaller pieces, but never reach the bottom; they
can analyze, over-analyze, discover possible explanations, but never
find meaning.
An Older Wisdom
Our ancestors were very wise; they knew secrets to reality and about
reality that we can still access today, but only when we understand that
we need our ancestors and their legacy more than they need us- because
they weren’t savages who needed Christianity and rationalistic science
to save them from their errors; the “old days” didn’t need our ultra-
enlightened “modern day” to “fix” it’s superstitious mistakes. I’m not
saying the old days were perfect, but they did have access to a source
of wisdom that we have mostly grown unconscious to. And this source of
wisdom can spell the difference between life and death.
Let’s have a look at our ultra-enlightened modern day! Look at how we
Europeans, and to an extent, Africans and Asians, are all suffering from
spiritual amnesia, all of us, with lost memories of our ancestors, and
of who we are, and where we come from- replacing our wise pagan heritage
with foreign cultural beliefs based on guilt and misogynistic,
spiritually elitist hallucinations- look at how we have bathed this
world in blood; look at how we waste without shame; look at how we
degrade the world and environment!
And look at how our new ‘champion’ science has produced just enough
miracle technology to give us guided missiles and monstrous weapons that
could destroy the entire planet, and how it has gifted us with just
enough technology to keep most of the poor world under the oppression of
a small majority of the rich world, and just enough technology to
improve the ‘quality’ and length of life- so that we can each have 90-
100 year life spans, all the more time to feel alienated from each other
and confused, more years to suffer under the oppression of other
countries and corporations (if we happen to be born in the non-
technologically advanced world), and more hollow years of doubting the
existence of anything that we can’t see and hear and feel.
This is the curse of losing who we were and who we are. Wisdom was lost
with those things. Science would be a beautiful, wonderful tool, if we
had wisdom to temper it. But we don’t, and so science is abused and it
has become another monster, just like the old church.
I’m not saying we should destroy science; I’m saying we should restore
wisdom. Wisdom is to be found in the heart, in the fetch, in the soul,
in the feeling self- and the keys and gates to wisdom are encoded in
Mythology, and in the actual blood and spirit of each human being. What
allows access to this wisdom is trust in the self, trust for the basic
goodness and capability of humankind, and honesty to the deepest
emotions. Religions or philosophies that tell people not to trust their
own hearts are poison, designed to shackle humans in slavery.
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