I did want to touch on a point of two that you brought up, ES. This may be a bit jumbled, but bear with me.
First of all, I did not suggest that the early Pagans were not compassionate. I’m sure many Pagans did take care of their own. I am talking about the mindset of honor in which the unhonorable and criminals were put to death, whereas now we are “moral” and put criminals in jail and spend tax payers money supporting them. I am not saying every little infraction should result in death, and I am sure Pagans did not think so either. Being men and women like us, I am sure they let common sense rule.
This may not be a very popular view, but keeping people alive when they are brain dead or spending tax payers money on housing the severely retarded is detrimental to society in some ways.
I am not saying it is the wrong thing to do. And of course there are those like Christian Scientists who believe life-saving medicines are against God’s will. The point here is that if a man couldn’t feed his family or he died, for the most part the family died. That is nature’s way. Not saying people turned their backs on one another. They simply understood that sometimes nature is cruel. They accepted nature’s cruelty the same way as when natured blessed them with abundance.
As to the Ten Commandants... I was refering to the forced influx of Christianity, often at the end of sword. And as to the Jews... Let us remember that Jesus found the Jews to be living the letter of the law and not the spirit. And also how many people are "honest" only because they fear retribution and public humiliation? How many cheat and lie when they think they can get away with it? These people are not honorable but only following "the law." And yes I am guilty at times. That is not the point here. Dogma IMO often replaces personal integrity.
The Pagan of long ago finds no where to exist in a world where there are no new lands to conquer and no where to go to explore his own volition and experience his interpretation of the laws nature has taught him. One must follow the rules of society and is not truly free as his mind and his actions are of most often two different thoughts.
I spend most of my time reading the histories of western Europe. I find the Danes, incorrectly called Vikings which is a way of life and not the name of a people, to be very interesting people as well as the early Welsh and Britons. This is where I form most of my mindset about Paganism along with my favorite companion,
The Pagan Bible by Melvin Gorham. I read everything I can get my hands on, fact and fiction, about these peoples and especially first man, who we know so little about and can only surmise their thoughts from what their artifacts tell us. This type of reading appeals to my mind and makes a world of sense to me.
A true Pagan, in my opinion, is a being of sovereign individualism. With sovereign being the recognition of one’s own authority and power and individualism as a belief in the importance of one’s own self-reliance and personal integrity or quality. This fits into the god-entity idea. This is a man guided by no formal rules or dogma as law, but by his own conscious volition defined as the capability of conscious choice and decision and intention. When two or more people try to enforce their will upon another it results in a declaration of war against individualism.
While there are many benefits and advantages to groups and Pagans certainly did live in groups, there can be no nourishment of the individual is one subscribes to the dominance of said group in that one acts from the group dogma and does not act from one’s own individual heart and mind or conscious or integrity. Man is an entity and must think and act as an entity to be a true man and Pagan.
Children need to hear the “words” of dogma, but without the coloring we see so much of as in our own families who teach us what they think is best for us and pound into us the dogma of their beliefs. I have tried my hardest not to do this with my children, but sadly I have failed as I was living a very dogmatic life myself at the time of their major upbringing. One cannot spend their life researching the beliefs of others in order to find that right and perfect way or religion as life and duty calls, but one can learn to think as a true individual and to trust his own instincts and volition. IMO the so-called back-to-nature religions should spend their time finding out exactly what nature is teaching/demonstrating right before our very eyes if they profess to believe god is within nature and within man. The Pagan idea is to free man from acquired knowledge and through ”waking consciousness” discover within him his innate, or inborn and natural knowledge.
I do not subscribe to God/Gaia/Goddess as deity, but see it rather as the animating life force behind all that exists. I can only speak for myself through what Paganism means to me. I believe everything is a product of and contains God. I and everything is God manifest in the flesh. Therefore it makes no sense to pray to or worship something outside of myself. I am empowered by the God-entity that I am and can draw on the God-entity in others and all around me in the world also empowered by God. God in this case is a consciousness and unconscious force of will or life.
I apologize for going off target here. I have so much to say on this subject, and have cut this as short as I possibly could.