Paganism and Fertility

[ns_kumiho]

For this week's Pagan Prompt I'm going to take a question from Joyce & River Higginbotham's Paganism: An Introduction to Earth- Centered Religions:

What do you think about (most forms of) Paganism including celebrations of fertility into it's scared year? Do you think that the Pagan celebration of fertility offers something positive to the culture

Comments

[trip_tych]

To which culture are you referring?

[nicanthiel]

I believe ns_kumiho is referring to the pagan (sub)culture. They may correct me if I'm wrong.

[trip_tych]

Hm. I guess I wasn't aware there was an overarching pagan culture.

[trip_tych]

Or I guess I could look at it as the culture of my particular pagan path. We do count fertility as one of our virtues, although many of us tend to think of it less as biological reproduction and more as growth or creativity.

[nicanthiel]

Just a note, I don't think that most pagans follow the scared year. ;)

[emberleo]

Most religions have some kind of sacred calendar, and if they're at all agrarian, or haven't much changed the calendar since they were, it's usually based on the land, seasons, and fertility.

That's actually pretty consistent as far as I've seen, though the details obviously change by culture and location.

Heck, it's not hard to see a fertility cycle in the Christian calendar, given what it's okay to eat when, where feasts are, when certain things are given up, etc. It's just that the overlaying symbology has shifted.

--Ember--

[briar_witch]

I think nicanthiel was making a tongue-in-cheek reference to the typo in the original post. ;)

[emberleo]

Oh! *laughs* Well, that's what I get for auto-correcting as I read...

--Ember--

[verginiamus]

Romans have Lupercalia and Liberalia which celebrates fertility in all its Beltane glory (in Feb and Mar).

ADF has fertility as one of its nine virtues.

If you are talking about sacred sexuality, that is a different matter. So it also depends on how you define fertility.