More on religion....
Long, so it's behind the cut
In this post, the following quote from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" was discussed. As a bit of context - Wednesday (Odin) and his right hand man are with the Goddess Ostara, at a coffee shop, and the waitress is wearing a pentacle.
Wednesday looked up at their waitress. 'I think I shall have another expresso, if you do not mind. And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship?'
'Worship?'
'That's right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and dusk?'
Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, 'The female principle. It's an empowerment thing. You know.'
'Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name?'
'She's the goddess within us all,' said the girl with the eyebrow ring, colour rising to her cheek. 'She doesn't need a name.'
'Ah,' said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, 'so do you hold mighty bacchanals in her honour? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon, while scarlet candles burn in silver candle holders? Do you step naked into the foam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping at your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?'
'You're making fun of me,' she said. 'We don't do any of that stuff you were saying.'
...
'There,' said Wednesday, 'is one who "does not have the faith and will not have the fun," Chesterton. Pagan indeed.'
I've been thinking about this quote a lot since that post. A lot of the comments were either people liked the book, or statements that Gaiman was poking fun at Wicca.
But is this really poking fun at Wicca, or is it more a statement of fact? Wicca is not the old ways, by any stretch of the imagination. In all but the most traditional of BTW (British Traditional Wicca) covens, it's been sanitized to the point of being cleaner than mainstream Christianity.
For clarity, I'm going to call the more modern (and usually more eclectic) Wiccan groups that fall outside the BTW spectrum the neo-Wiccans. Back to the question at hand...
Even the Christians have the human blood sacrifice of their God - take Mel Gibson's movie as a sign that the down-and-dirty, not politically correct face of the Christian church is coming to the forefront....and all the while, modern neo-Wicca pushes a public face for all Pagans that is fresh as the morning dew, clean as a mountain stream, innocent as the first flowers of spring. Christians have an ongoing battle with Satan - whether they see this battle as a real-world battle or as a figurative battle makes no difference, because either way it is a way to quantify the things that are wrong with the world. All neo-Wicca has
Recent research suggests that humans have allergies and asthma in part because we live in a sanitary world - our imune systems don't have anything to fight except our own bodies. Cleanliness, when taken to extremes, is not next to Godliness - it's a long slow way to die.
Ever wonder if religions can suffer the same fate?
*********
Why is this, anyway? Why would anyone be drawn to a religion that teaches there's no evil in the world, but that there are still things that are socially taboo? Or that the only evil is from those who aren't Pagan (when what they really mean is that everyone who doesn't believe and practice just like them - Pagan, Christian, or otherwise - is evil).
I remember reading once somewhere that doing magick of any sort with blood (animal or human, mine or someone else's) was Just Plain Wrong. And yet, there are perfectly reasonable uses for such items. Now, the "in" thing among the more feminist neo-Wiccans is for women to use their menstrual blood as some sort of ritual sacrifice. Does this mean that menstrual blood is ok because it's leaving our bodies anyway, but other blood isn't? I'll admit that I've used blood in rituals before - I've used menstrual blood for a personal ritual, and I've used blood directly from my veins a part of a protective spell for a friend (symbolically, and literally, someone I'd die to protect). I'm still me - not any more crazy than I was before the ritual in question, and certainly not harmed in any way by either ritual.
How did the rich basis of emotionally charged rituals that we've got historical references to (much less the ones we've guessed at, or derived from other, more modern primitive cultures) get turned into such shallow, worthless, drek? How did the ritual sacrifice of animals as offerings to the Gods become vegetarian living - how does not performing sacrifices honor the Gods?
Of course, there's also the other side of the coin. Why don't more of us who aren't in the Neo-Wiccan crowd take advantage of our position, and the ways of worship open to us? Why do we think we have faith in our Gods if we don't have the "fun" to go with it?
Not that I'm perfect in this respect - I've spent the last year or so battling a deep apathy within my soul. And I suspect that a small part of that apathy comes from this thought - why do people seek to learn about the old ways, when they don't really want to do what it takes to live them? Why can't I find a way to connect with that same intensity, and why can't I convince myself to really put some effort into this?
In this post, the following quote from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" was discussed. As a bit of context - Wednesday (Odin) and his right hand man are with the Goddess Ostara, at a coffee shop, and the waitress is wearing a pentacle.
Wednesday looked up at their waitress. 'I think I shall have another expresso, if you do not mind. And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship?'
'Worship?'
'That's right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and dusk?'
Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, 'The female principle. It's an empowerment thing. You know.'
'Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name?'
'She's the goddess within us all,' said the girl with the eyebrow ring, colour rising to her cheek. 'She doesn't need a name.'
'Ah,' said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, 'so do you hold mighty bacchanals in her honour? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon, while scarlet candles burn in silver candle holders? Do you step naked into the foam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping at your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?'
'You're making fun of me,' she said. 'We don't do any of that stuff you were saying.'
...
'There,' said Wednesday, 'is one who "does not have the faith and will not have the fun," Chesterton. Pagan indeed.'
I've been thinking about this quote a lot since that post. A lot of the comments were either people liked the book, or statements that Gaiman was poking fun at Wicca.
But is this really poking fun at Wicca, or is it more a statement of fact? Wicca is not the old ways, by any stretch of the imagination. In all but the most traditional of BTW (British Traditional Wicca) covens, it's been sanitized to the point of being cleaner than mainstream Christianity.
For clarity, I'm going to call the more modern (and usually more eclectic) Wiccan groups that fall outside the BTW spectrum the neo-Wiccans. Back to the question at hand...
Even the Christians have the human blood sacrifice of their God - take Mel Gibson's movie as a sign that the down-and-dirty, not politically correct face of the Christian church is coming to the forefront....and all the while, modern neo-Wicca pushes a public face for all Pagans that is fresh as the morning dew, clean as a mountain stream, innocent as the first flowers of spring. Christians have an ongoing battle with Satan - whether they see this battle as a real-world battle or as a figurative battle makes no difference, because either way it is a way to quantify the things that are wrong with the world. All neo-Wicca has
Recent research suggests that humans have allergies and asthma in part because we live in a sanitary world - our imune systems don't have anything to fight except our own bodies. Cleanliness, when taken to extremes, is not next to Godliness - it's a long slow way to die.
Ever wonder if religions can suffer the same fate?
*********
Why is this, anyway? Why would anyone be drawn to a religion that teaches there's no evil in the world, but that there are still things that are socially taboo? Or that the only evil is from those who aren't Pagan (when what they really mean is that everyone who doesn't believe and practice just like them - Pagan, Christian, or otherwise - is evil).
I remember reading once somewhere that doing magick of any sort with blood (animal or human, mine or someone else's) was Just Plain Wrong. And yet, there are perfectly reasonable uses for such items. Now, the "in" thing among the more feminist neo-Wiccans is for women to use their menstrual blood as some sort of ritual sacrifice. Does this mean that menstrual blood is ok because it's leaving our bodies anyway, but other blood isn't? I'll admit that I've used blood in rituals before - I've used menstrual blood for a personal ritual, and I've used blood directly from my veins a part of a protective spell for a friend (symbolically, and literally, someone I'd die to protect). I'm still me - not any more crazy than I was before the ritual in question, and certainly not harmed in any way by either ritual.
How did the rich basis of emotionally charged rituals that we've got historical references to (much less the ones we've guessed at, or derived from other, more modern primitive cultures) get turned into such shallow, worthless, drek? How did the ritual sacrifice of animals as offerings to the Gods become vegetarian living - how does not performing sacrifices honor the Gods?
Of course, there's also the other side of the coin. Why don't more of us who aren't in the Neo-Wiccan crowd take advantage of our position, and the ways of worship open to us? Why do we think we have faith in our Gods if we don't have the "fun" to go with it?
Not that I'm perfect in this respect - I've spent the last year or so battling a deep apathy within my soul. And I suspect that a small part of that apathy comes from this thought - why do people seek to learn about the old ways, when they don't really want to do what it takes to live them? Why can't I find a way to connect with that same intensity, and why can't I convince myself to really put some effort into this?