 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Snapshot of Neo-Paganism
The pagan worldview encourages reverence for nature and a personal relationship with the Divine. While pagans tend to be very individualistic and non-dogmatic, they agree that the divine resides in the Earth and all things. Therefore, they revere the Earth and seek to live in harmony with nature. The term Neo-pagan covers a wide variety of traditions that include re-creations of ancient Celtic Druidism (a British organization of sun worshippers who gathered in sacred groves), Wicca or Witchcraft, Ceremonial Magick, and Neo-shamanism (revivals of ecstatic journeys into the spirit world in indigenous and pre-Christian cultures). Neo-paganism’s historical origins lie in nineteenth-century religious movements such as Theosophy, folk practices such as tarot and astrology, studies in folklore and anthropology, the theatrical rituals of an Edwardian occult group called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the countercultural milieu of North America in the 1960s. Neo-pagans’ images of god and goddess emerged from nineteenth-century British folklore and literature and were influenced by the armchair anthropology of scholars like Sir James Frazer (1854–1941), author of the sweeping Golden Bough (1890), and the mythology of Robert Graves (1895–1985), author of The White Goddess (1948). In Europe, contemporary pagan organizations usually claim a lineage that is ancient and unbroken, often tied to nationalism and ethnic pride. American, Canadian, British, and Australian “Neo-pagan” communities differ in that they have been influenced by feminist and environmentalist movements and are self-conscious revivals created to be egalitarian and individualistic. In practice, most pagans support nonviolent, communal, socially progressive efforts. They stress personal responsibility, challenging people to rely on their own strength and inner sources of power to lead righteous lives. Without specific commandments, individuals must determine right from wrong for themselves. Neo-pagans tend to emphasize newness, creativity, imagination, and invention over tradition, creed, established doctrine, and institutionalized religion, but they also claim ancient traditions as their heritage. Neo-paganism did not emerge directly from ancient pagan cultures, even though a few Neo-pagans would argue that their religion descended through the centuries from a pre-Christian goddess religion. According to scholarly consensus, there is no direct lineage from ancient goddess cultures to Neo-paganism. The original practitioners of these religions were driven underground by the Roman Catholic Church, where much of their knowledge and traditions were lost. Contemporary Pagans (pagan was originally a term that referred to non-Christians or country dwellers) are “neo” in the sense that they are revising and updating what they can learn from ancient traditions to meet the needs of modern people. They believe that, in some aspects of life, ancient cultures have much to teach contemporary people, such as respect for the earth and maintaining a balance between humans and nature. They search for alternatives to the gods they were raised with by looking to Asian and Native American religions, and they claim that spiritual beings from other cultures are more accessible to humans than the Western monotheistic god. The various forms of Neo-paganism share a desire to revive ancient pre-Christian nature religions. In the process of creating new religions in the cast of old ones, Neo-pagans borrow from Native American and other available religious cultures. They tend to be tolerant of eclectic uses of other cultures’ myths and traditions, but borrowing from Native American religions has been more controversial. Some Neo-pagans, for instance, argue that “white people” should only borrow myths and deities from their “own” cultural heritage, such as Witchcraft or ancient Druidism of the British Isles. Druids, for instance, often learn ancient Celtic languages and focus on their roles as caretakers of the woods. Neo-pagans who are intrigued by specific ancient cultures look to Tibetan, Greek, West African, Roman, and Egyptian pantheons. They find ritual texts, usually in translation, and fashion their rituals after mythological stories, such as the descent of the goddess Persephone into the underworld. Neo-pagans dressed as Aphrodite and Dionysos put in appearances at Neo-pagan festivals, and festival rituals encourage participants to explore divine archetypes from ancient pantheons of deities. Gardnerian Witchcraft and “Wicca”Witches and “Wiccans” form the largest religious culture under the Neo-pagan umbrella and include, at one extreme, separatist feminist Witches who worship a great goddess in women-only covens, and at the other, traditional Gardnerian Witches who worship a god and a goddess together. Gardnerian Witches claim to have the oldest lineage, and pass down their rituals from teachers to students who are instructed to perform them in exactly the same way. Gardnerian rituals emphasize the dual nature of divinity in the form of a paired god and goddess. An increasingly common kind of Witch is the man or woman who is an “eclectic Witch” or “Wiccan” and borrows from British traditional Witchcraft as well as from a variety of other religious cultures. Witches are sometimes trained and initiated through covens, but they are also self-taught or guided by correspondence courses and books, like Raymond Buckland’s (1934–) Complete Book of Witchcraft (1986), which includes lists of ritual tools, directions for how to make ritual robes, simple explanations of Witchcraft’s moral principles, and guidelines for basic rituals. Do-it-yourself Witchcraft has to some extent replaced traditional covens that included several levels of initiation. Another popular Neo-pagan title derived from traditional Wiccan teachings is the feminist Witch Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance (1979), which encourages individuals to tailor their rituals to suit personal needs and preferences and includes sections on herbal charms, chants, blessings, spells, and myths. Witches have only a few beliefs that almost all of them adhere to, and these include “The Witches Rede: An it harm none, do what you will” and “The Law of Threefold Effect,” the belief that any action a person commits will return to that person threefold. These beliefs, or similar versions of them, are also held by other Neo-pagans, such as ceremonial magicians and Druids, who share Witchcraft’s or Wicca’s origins in early twentieth-century British magical groups. Ceremonial magicians, another important community of Neo-pagans, are more likely to turn to late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultists for inspiration, especially the writings of the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (started in 1888), which included the Irish writer William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) among its members. Ceremonial magic also draws heavily on Qabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition. Ceremonial magicians may blend these traditions with their own interests in religious cultures as diverse as Haitian vodou and Tibetan Buddhism, while others stay within the bounds of organizations like the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), which Crowley joined in 1912 and which involves lengthy study and specific rites of initiation. Where ceremonial magicians emphasize their Golden Dawn heritage, Witches identify with the work of the English civil servant Gerald Gardner (1884–1964), whose novel, High Magic’s Aid (1949), and pseudo-anthropological study of a coven, Witchcraft Today (1954), are founding documents for contemporary Witchcraft that have influenced many other Neo-pagans as well. Although organizations like the OTO and Gardnerian Witchcraft offer structured guidelines for their members and levels of initiation based on the secret societies of the Freemasons, many Neo-pagans choose to create their own spiritual practice by drawing on information from a rich array of teachers and traditions. Hierarchical structures were common in the earliest Neo-pagan groups and still characterize some contemporary Neo-pagan communities, but by the twenty-first century many ritual groups had become more loosely structured and egalitarian. Elders are still acknowledged for their wisdom and experience but not viewed as allpowerful. One of the ways in which American Neo-pagans adapt religious traditions of the past and other cultures is to make them more democratic and inclusive, and this is particularly evident in the new rituals they create. Neo-druidismThe term druid is used by Greek and Roman authors, medieval Irish writers, and modern scholars alike to designate a priest of the ancient Celts. The word is thought to mean something like “those knowledgeable about the (sacred) oak,” being derived from two Celtic words meaning “oak” and “knowledge.” The ancient druids were polytheistic and worship aspects of nature such ‘the river’, ‘the sky’, and ‘the sun.’ The druids, as Caesar records, refused to commit their teaching to writing. Consequently, the whole of the traditional literature, including the mythology that gave the iconography its meaning, was confined to oral transmission and perished with the extinction of the Gaulish language. In the eighteenth century secret societies in Britain included a number that had a particularly “Druidic” flavour, such as the Ancient Order of Druids and the Order of the Universal Bond, later known as the Ancient Druid Order. These organisations often drew upon Iolo Morganwg for their philosophy and symbolism, including the use of the Druid’s Prayer. His teachings have since been shown to have had no historical basis; druidic sects have accepted this and nonetheless adopt his ideas as visionary, as opposed to scholarly insights. References
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
