defining paganism is a sin
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usil&c=words&id=13510
The above link was posted in wiccan. You can see the whole thread here.
My final comment on this was:
Let's look at the definition of paganism that the author of the article suggests we should be defending:
Neo-Paganism is any earth-centric religion that attempts to either reconstruct or generally honor the folk traditions, beliefs, and practices of pre-Christianized Europe.
Granted, he's young, so he probably doesn't remember when neo-paganism wasn't "earth-centric" but I certainly do. When I entered the Craft, the focus was the Moon, not the Earth. I also remember when Wicca was a fertility religion, not a nature religion.
My point here is that that the "definition" of neo-paganism is an inherently moving target.
What's more, he has rejected anything that comes from Egypt or Asia Minor (which is where the Orphic Hymns are from). He's also rejected the possibility of our learning anything from any Afro-diasporic tradition, let alone the rest of the world.
By his excessively narrow definition, most of my pagan practice isn't pagan. And I've probably been doing much of it since before he was born.
Let me be blunt and point out that there is no possible definition of modern paganism that most pagans would agree on. Currently, we put up with descriptions of paganism because they are understood to be approximations for ease of communication. As soon as we begin excommunicating pagans for not meeting standards, we will discover that *most* pagans will violate any prescriptive definition in some way.
For a specifically Wiccan example, we would have to remove Kipling from the BoS, since we are forbidden to use literature as a source.
And that also eliminates all of the personages from the Mabinogion, as well. That's a large chunk of my personal deities, there! Plus, my initiatory lineage is Edmund Buczynski's Welsh Trad; does that get eliminated because of contamination from the Mabinogion? Does the entire initiatory lineage, including the Blue Star and Maidenhill lines, simply disappear in a puff of logic?
Let's ignore straw men arguments about Reiki and Wicca (since Reiki has never claimed to be part of neo-paganism--it's best classed with the Japanese NRMs). Let's take a hard look at the logical consequences of what you and he are proposing. You are proposing destroying paganism is the name of defending it.
[I feel like channeling Josh Geller at this point.]
The above link was posted in wiccan. You can see the whole thread here.
My final comment on this was:
Let's look at the definition of paganism that the author of the article suggests we should be defending:
Neo-Paganism is any earth-centric religion that attempts to either reconstruct or generally honor the folk traditions, beliefs, and practices of pre-Christianized Europe.
Granted, he's young, so he probably doesn't remember when neo-paganism wasn't "earth-centric" but I certainly do. When I entered the Craft, the focus was the Moon, not the Earth. I also remember when Wicca was a fertility religion, not a nature religion.
My point here is that that the "definition" of neo-paganism is an inherently moving target.
What's more, he has rejected anything that comes from Egypt or Asia Minor (which is where the Orphic Hymns are from). He's also rejected the possibility of our learning anything from any Afro-diasporic tradition, let alone the rest of the world.
By his excessively narrow definition, most of my pagan practice isn't pagan. And I've probably been doing much of it since before he was born.
Let me be blunt and point out that there is no possible definition of modern paganism that most pagans would agree on. Currently, we put up with descriptions of paganism because they are understood to be approximations for ease of communication. As soon as we begin excommunicating pagans for not meeting standards, we will discover that *most* pagans will violate any prescriptive definition in some way.
For a specifically Wiccan example, we would have to remove Kipling from the BoS, since we are forbidden to use literature as a source.
And that also eliminates all of the personages from the Mabinogion, as well. That's a large chunk of my personal deities, there! Plus, my initiatory lineage is Edmund Buczynski's Welsh Trad; does that get eliminated because of contamination from the Mabinogion? Does the entire initiatory lineage, including the Blue Star and Maidenhill lines, simply disappear in a puff of logic?
Let's ignore straw men arguments about Reiki and Wicca (since Reiki has never claimed to be part of neo-paganism--it's best classed with the Japanese NRMs). Let's take a hard look at the logical consequences of what you and he are proposing. You are proposing destroying paganism is the name of defending it.
[I feel like channeling Josh Geller at this point.]