Immanence

It's easy to see how paganism might look to people who are brought up in a western culture -- one saturated with Christian and Capitalist ideas and images. Is paganism in general just another "new age fad", as some people might suppose, or does it offer something more practicle to people?

 

The best exploration of this that I have read is Starhawk's Dreaming the Dark (Beacon Press, ISBN 0-8070-1037-5). In it, she explains the politics and ideology behind neo-pagan and Christian differences, puts it all in context in ways that are practicle and meaningful. I will be exploring some of these ideas below, but you still ought to go out and read this book!. These are my understandings of her ideas:

 

Estrangement

We live in a culture where value, worth, and meaning, are not seen as intrinsic to oneself, but as a result of approval from a "source above". This is partly the result of a concept of God existing outside and above the material world. Because of this there has been a tendency to see that world as a series of inanimate dead objects that can be manipulated and exploited.

The processes created or maintained by governments and other institutions are ones that reinforce their authority. Hence they devalue personal worth by a process of estrangement. Work becomes impersonal and basically unsatisfying because it is seperated from the self; profit as aseen as a goal rather than an end to a means. People are deliberatly isolated and dis-empowered because then they are less able to resist authority from above.

 

Power Within vs Power-Over

Starhawk posits two types of power: Power-Over and Power-Within. Power-over relies on force and violence and favours those with the guns, money and influence. Often this power is not always obvious and hides in institutions and governments. What difference does one party or another make if they all rely on power-over to be effective.

Power from within comes from an attitude of seeing teh sacred and the divine as being inherant in teh world, rather than apart from it. If you and I have both the Goddess and the God within ourselves, then instrinsically we have self-worth, and development and expression of the self has importance and value. But in order to develop and express ourselves we must have access to choice. Deny the choice (or impose an external schema of values) or deny our inner feelings is to deny a divine expression.

 

Different Selves

There are several different selfs: the Deep Self; The Young Self; The Talking Self; and the Self-Hater. These are (with my own equivalents in brackets) --

The deep self is the matrix from which individual incarnations come from (the quot;Genius" or "Higher Power").
The Young Self is that part of ourselves that feels and relates in symbols (I would call this my "Inner Child") and this is the part that is most involved with magic.
Talking Self is that part most involved in teh day-day experience of the world (the "Adult").
The Self-Hater is the part of us that takes on societies values and applies them before our own (the "Parent") and criticises us for the difference.

 

Magic

Magic is the process of restructuring reality. There are a number of ways of doing this, ranging from the simple (by use of different language) to the more active (such as ritual). THus we all live a magical life if we wish, but this requires and active stance and the desire to see the beauty and the divine nature of the world.

Having done so, it follows that we have to be pro-active in our choices and actions. From from any sense of guilt or obligation, but that by doing so we empower ourselves.

There is more from the book, but I would do it even more of an injustice to try and precis it all. The point is this. Being pagan isn't just about dressing up (or stripping off as the case may be) and performing rituals in the middle of the night. It's about taking an active stance towards the world and oneself in a positive and meaningful way, so that the divine nature of each can be expressed to the full.

To be actively pagan and do nothing while the earth is raped of its resources is to be hypocritical. This doesn't mean that one has to join a conservation group or political party, it means taking action on a personal level in a manner consistent with one's beliefs. Most of the Goddesses in my pantheon are Earth Godesses, representing the nurturing and supporting qualities of our planet. To stand by and do nothing is to relinquish my own personal power, to say that I cannot change anything.

But I know this isn't true.

I'm also an artist, and my work seems to have an increased religous context as I development. I can't seperate my work from my beliefs from my life. And in that I hope at least to influence people, to show that there are other ways.