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Author Topic: Paganism in your opinion  (Read 23551 times)

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earthmuffin

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #25 on: February 04, 2012, 06:56:04 PM »

She has come a long way from an Atheist background to what she is today.  :D

 :rolleye:

I'm glad that you two think I am on the right track and approve; otherwise I am not sure how I would be able to live my life. ;)

From wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism
 "Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.[1][2]"

GW, this was the actual question that you did not answer:
Is any religion or spiritual path that evolves away from the original teachings to be considered erroneous?


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Rovay

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #26 on: February 04, 2012, 07:01:43 PM »

She has come a long way from an Atheist background to what she is today.  :D

 :rolleye:

I'm glad that you two think I am on the right track and approve; otherwise I am not sure how I would be able to live my life. ;)


That sounded a bit snippy, I thought I was nice.
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diniesaur

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #27 on: February 04, 2012, 07:35:01 PM »

She has come a long way from an Atheist background to what she is today.  :D

 :rolleye:

I'm glad that you two think I am on the right track and approve; otherwise I am not sure how I would be able to live my life. ;)


That sounded a bit snippy, I thought I was nice.

I think she was just being sarcastic in a friendly way.
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earthmuffin

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #28 on: February 04, 2012, 09:33:46 PM »

She has come a long way from an Atheist background to what she is today.  :D

 :rolleye:

I'm glad that you two think I am on the right track and approve; otherwise I am not sure how I would be able to live my life. ;)


That sounded a bit snippy, I thought I was nice.

I think she was just being sarcastic in a friendly way.

That was my intent-- friendly sarcasm and I was chuckling as I wrote it so the tone in my head at least was not snippy...I could be more blunt and say that honestly, guys, I find your talking about me as if I am not here to be impolite and discussion about the correctness of my path or anyone else's to be insensitive and insulting to those on those paths, but I was hoping you would have figured it out from my comments above so I wouldn't have to. I'm not angry or anything so hope you won't take this criticism the wrong way. In general, people seem to be having a lot of difficulty yesterday and today with smooth communications (myself included) and I don't want to add to the difficulties. Heck, even our two cats are fighting like cats and dogs today. Anyway, I hope there will be no hard feelings from my honesty. I do value the exchange of ideas and the many personalities that are represented on this board.
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Crystal Dragon

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #29 on: February 05, 2012, 04:51:23 AM »

That sounded a bit snippy, I thought I was nice.

How is being judgmental of anyone (even in jest) being "nice"?  Frankly, I find it rude and somewhat offensive.
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Rovay

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #30 on: February 05, 2012, 04:54:19 AM »

That sounded a bit snippy, I thought I was nice.

How is being judgmental of anyone (even in jest) being "nice"?  Frankly, I find it rude and somewhat offensive.

Mmmm, I wanted to politely express the opinion that we should leave EM alone because she seems just fine. I failed, apparently.
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YoungSoulRebel

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #31 on: February 06, 2012, 04:38:43 AM »

1. What does the word "Pagan" mean to you?(meaning is it more of a classification or religion to you)
2. Why do you feel that way?
3. Do you ever find people that disagree with your interpretation of "Pagan"? What is their view and argument for it?

A1&2:
I keep an open mind about language; I'm kind of an English language buff, and understand that words often can vary in meaning and nuance depending on context, so I don't typically define words in any concrete sense based on "feeling" or "opinion".  I recognise several meanings of "pagan", including its common use among anthropologists as a shorthand umbrella term for "polytheist and/or animist pre-Christian religion", and I recognise that many who practise ostensibly polytheistic or animistic Eastern / Asian-indigenous, and even indigenous North and South Amer. religions wish to distance themselves from the word "pagan", as their history of being slurred with that word by Christians is much closer in time.  I also recognise the ancient Latin "paganus", meaning (roughly) "country-dweller", and so this can imply a rural or rustic spirituality, id est "nature religions" --in spite of most people simply not knowing the Latin origin, this seems to be the prevailing implicit definition of "pagan" when speaking to most people, especially with connotations of Popular Wicca or "Wiccanate paganism".

I don't typically self-identify as "pagan" except when it's just easiest to (I'm always surprised at how few people can actually figure out what the word "polytheist" means, even if they've never encountered it before) or occasionally when identifying myself with people or figures that are more "generally pagan / neopagan" rather than explicitly specific to my religion (Hellenic polytheism).  It's not my first choice because of a lot of the aforementioned connotations that I simply don't identify with:  My spirituality is very urban, I'm not Wiccan, I don't find it a very powerful word to "reclaim" from a status of slur --but I use it when I prefer to avoid lengthy educative speeches at people who really don't care to learn the finer nuances of language.


A3:
I don't often find people who especially disagree, because like I said, I keep the definition flexible, depending on who I'm talking to, and I find most people who self-identify as "pagan" understand it to be an umbrella term similar to the anthropological definition.  Once I found myself in a surreal conversation with some-one who was very insistent that "pagan means nature-worshipping" and simply would not stand for any-one who "found [their] Goddess Forms in a concrete space" to refer to oneself as "pagan" (nor would she apparently allow for said person to be male and thus lack any "Goddess forms", whatever that might be)... people can be really weird, let me tell you, Internet.

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #32 on: February 06, 2012, 06:47:37 AM »

I also recognise the ancient Latin "paganus", meaning (roughly) "country-dweller", and so this can imply a rural or rustic spirituality, id est "nature religions" --in spite of most people simply not knowing the Latin origin, this seems to be the prevailing implicit definition of "pagan" when speaking to most people, especially with connotations of Popular Wicca or "Wiccanate paganism".

From what I've been able to glean from various sources is that "paganus" was the Roman equivalent of "redneck." Not quite as benign as "country-dweller."  :D Kinda funny it was an "insult" even then. (Assuming I'm not completely talking out of my arse.)
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YoungSoulRebel

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #33 on: February 06, 2012, 11:13:13 AM »

I also recognise the ancient Latin "paganus", meaning (roughly) "country-dweller", and so this can imply a rural or rustic spirituality, id est "nature religions" --in spite of most people simply not knowing the Latin origin, this seems to be the prevailing implicit definition of "pagan" when speaking to most people, especially with connotations of Popular Wicca or "Wiccanate paganism".

From what I've been able to glean from various sources is that "paganus" was the Roman equivalent of "redneck." Not quite as benign as "country-dweller."  :D Kinda funny it was an "insult" even then. (Assuming I'm not completely talking out of my arse.)

I can never get a straight answer from any-one on the exact ancient connotations of "paganus", and I'm not familiar enough with the ancient sources using it to get a better idea for myself.  The best I can tell, it was likely a relatively benign term, up to a certain point in ancient history, after which it became nastier, but like I said, I'm not familiar-enough with those sources to say for certain.  Even so, in modern English, "redneck" has very specific, namely rural connotations toward the addressee, so even if that is absolutely the most-accurate translation, as I said, my own spirituality if very urban, so that's not an appropriate term for one like myself to reclaim and empower.

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BronwynWolf

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #34 on: February 06, 2012, 07:51:17 PM »

Oh trust me, Young.... you do not have to be rural to be a redneck!
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YoungSoulRebel

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #35 on: February 06, 2012, 08:34:15 PM »

Oh trust me, Young.... you do not have to be rural to be a redneck!
Except that people unfamiliar with how you use it, especially those who don't speak English as a first language are going to find that it's commonly defined to have those connotations, thus enforcing those connotations.  Furthermore, I can probably very easily find white people who'll say "you don't have to be black to be a n-----" (I've actually met people who've said that), but that doesn't make it OK for myself (being white), for example, to adopt that slur in reclaimation.  I cannot meaningfully empower a word when I'm not among the people it was designed to disempower.  Yes, the history of the word "pagan" as a slur clearly shows that it's evolved from "paganus" to be more-inclusive, but that doesn't change the fact that a majority of people, including self-identified pagans, have this mental image of "pagans" who not only take a very spiritual approach to nature, but explicitly celebrate it, often ignoring or simply being ignorant of any spirituality to the cities.  Even Urban Primitive by Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein, one of only two currently in-print book about urban pagan spirituality, has a very clear and unapologetic rural bias in its pages (the other being Christopher Penczak's City Magick, but I've never read it; Patricia Telesco's The Urban Pagan has been out-of-print for years, and I don't have a copy to reference).  How easy is it to find on-line guides to "pagan camping", but pretty impossible to find a guide to "pagan couch-surfing" or "pagan squatting" --the pagan community just assumes that everybody who does or may identify with it is going to welcome the rural and rustic spirituality, and so it ignores or outright rejects the urban, making it a super-special niche topic for anybody who might be interested.

Yeah, maybe I'm not helping the matter by pointing this all out (and I claim a cookie the first time anybody attempts to accuse me of "dwelling on it" -LOL), but it's a very real thing I have to live with:  The community of self-identified pagans has not designed itself for people like me, and any time I try to make a corner for myself and others like me, I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle.  There's a very real historical and etymological basis for this rural bias, and that's fine, but at the end of the day, I still feel like if I'm going to empower a formerly pejorative term for my own purposes, it should be the Latin equivalent of "city-slicker" rather than "hillbilly".  That doesn't mean I don't feel some solidarity with the pagan community, especially those with whom I share practises and worship the same gods --but I always only feel "pagan, but only just barely". 
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earthmuffin

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #36 on: February 06, 2012, 10:07:58 PM »

I'm curious what the connotation of pagan is within the pagan community in your view. I ask because I'm fairly new to the whole thing, have only attended one function that could be considered pagan but was sort of a special subgroup and I live in California. From comparing the people at the function to the ones I've met online and others locally that I suspect are pagans, there seems to quite a variety, though the no. Cal pagans do seem to have their own flavor. I'm thinking the connotation the word has could largely be a function of where one resides and the types of pagan social events one has attended.
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YoungSoulRebel

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #37 on: February 06, 2012, 10:31:27 PM »

I'm curious what the connotation of pagan is within the pagan community in your view. I ask because I'm fairly new to the whole thing, have only attended one function that could be considered pagan but was sort of a special subgroup and I live in California. From comparing the people at the function to the ones I've met online and others locally that I suspect are pagans, there seems to quite a variety, though the no. Cal pagans do seem to have their own flavor. I'm thinking the connotation the word has could largely be a function of where one resides and the types of pagan social events one has attended.

Well, to find the pagan-cultural connotations of the word, just look at the aesthetics of this site, for starters!  LOL  All green, and photos of forestry....  A Google Image search will turn up some pentagrams, pics of runestones... and then fanciful paintings of Stonehenge rituals surrounded by trees, that Waterhouse painting of the witch in the woods, various "Green Men", photos of people in modern woodland ritual....

My spirituality is one that can sense the nymphai playing in subway tunnels, one that sees Pan in every Skid Row.  These images of woodland rituals and romanticising the woodlands really don't speak to me on a spiritual level --if this is what the Pagan community says represents the community, then I don't see my spirituality represented.


« Last Edit: February 07, 2012, 08:58:15 AM by dragonspring »
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dragonspring

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #38 on: February 06, 2012, 10:43:54 PM »

I am cleaning this thread up.  If you have posts that have been modified or deleted, it is because they were unrelated to the OP questions.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2012, 09:08:38 AM by dragonspring »
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earthmuffin

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #39 on: February 06, 2012, 11:05:32 PM »

I'd say the connotations of pagan being hippie earthmuffins probably fits quite well here where I am. But many people are like that here where I live whether or not they are pagan. I do think when I learned about paganism being composed of earth-based religions, I did expect a lot of nature lovers and was surprised to learn many of those I met online were not as nature-loving or hippie-ish or green as I expected them to be. I also found a lot of hard to read websites with black backgrounds, moons and gothic fairy art, for the most part interspersed with more Celtic looking ones, none of which really appealed to me. I attended one local  event as I mentioned and boy, did I feel like I stood out like a sore thumb. It was difficult as I was stuck with these people for three days in the rain and cold. But, in the end, they were OK. I can't say I've ever met a more cheerful or accepting bunch. No one snickered at my lack of organic hemp elven clothing or pierced nose or the fact that I'm not on a gluten-free diet and all were openly warm to me. It sounds like, and forgive me if I am making assumptions I should not, that maybe you've been rejected or ridiculed by some not-so-nice pagans and I feel badly if that has been the case. Personally, I still don't feel like I fit in with any spiritual group in particular but at this point, I'm OK with it. I do my own thing and I come here for a sense a community and I do get quite a lot out of it. I think there's a fairly diverse set of beliefs represented here.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2012, 09:01:07 AM by dragonspring »
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YoungSoulRebel

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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #40 on: February 06, 2012, 11:26:11 PM »

I'd say the connotations of pagan being hippie earthmuffins probably fits quite well here where I am. But many people are like that here where I live whether or not they are pagan. I do think when I learned about paganism being composed of earth-based religions, I did expect a lot of nature lovers and was surprised to learn many of those I met online were not as nature-loving or hippie-ish or green as I expected them to be. I also found a lot of hard to read websites with black backgrounds, moons and gothic fairy art, for the most part interspersed with more Celtic looking ones, none of which really appealed to me. I attended one local  event as I mentioned and boy, did I feel like I stood out like a sore thumb. It was difficult as I was stuck with these people for three days in the rain and cold. But, in the end, they were OK. I can't say I've ever met a more cheerful or accepting bunch. No one snickered at my lack of organic hemp elven clothing or pierced nose or the fact that I'm not on a gluten-free diet and all were openly warm to me. It sounds like, and forgive me if I am making assumptions I should not, that maybe you've been rejected or ridiculed by some not-so-nice pagans and I feel badly if that has been the case. Personally, I still don't feel like I fit in with any spiritual group in particular but at this point, I'm OK with it. I do my own thing and I come here for a sense a community and I do get quite a lot out of it. I think there's a fairly diverse set of beliefs represented here.

Quite the contrary:  Most of the self-proclaimed "tree-hugging dirt-worshippers" I know (especially locally) are some of the kindest, warmest people I've met, who typically make every effort to be as accommodating to others as possible.  I just don't have anything really in common with them.  I don't enjoy camping, and I don't really get a welcoming spiritual sense from woodlands, no matter how nice and welcoming any co-ritualists are making themselves.  They don't see anything spiritual and divine about subway tunnels or urban loading-dock alleyways.  Nice people, we just don't have anything in common, and I'm OK with that.

Granted, I also have a deeply "mystic" sort of spirituality, and I tend to be deeply uncomfortable with going through the motions of group rituals that don't share some meaningful commonality with my own practises just for the sake of community outreach --and I'm also OK with that; it just means I'm not going to go dance in the woods with a bunch of people just because they're nice and we all happen to be "pagan" by anthropological definitions.  At the same time, it's danged-near impossible for me to escape the cultural connotations of the word "pagan" with "nature-based / rural spirituality" within the pagan community; within the pagan community, it's a self-reinforcing stereotype for the majority of people.  That sort of self-reinforcement doesn't create diversity, but instead it creates sub-communities, given enough time and enough people who just naturally go against the grain --and I'm OK with that.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2012, 09:02:12 AM by dragonspring »
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Re: Paganism in your opinion
« Reply #41 on: February 07, 2012, 08:26:56 AM »


To return to the original thread, the learned etymology site "Take Our Word For It", has this on Pagan:
The literal meaning of the Latin paganus is "villager" or "rustic" (from pagus "rural district").  It was once thought its meaning of "non-Christian, heathen" developed because the ancient idolatrous religion persisted in the rural districts long after Christianity had been generally accepted in the towns and cities of the Roman Empire.  While it may indeed be true that the older Roman religions lingered in remote hamlets, this is not the word's true origin.

A secondary meaning of paganus was "civilian".  Early Christian authors such as Tertullian and Saint   Augustine called themselves milites Christi, "soldiers of Christ".  It therefore became natural to refer to those who were neither Christian nor Jewish as pagani, "civilians".

http://www.takeourword.com/TOW143half/page2.html

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