I’m wondering if I’m Pagan

From my research, paganism is more than believing in a pre-Christian pantheon or participating in Pre-Christian esoteric practices or holidays. Pagan cultures, as I’m taught, held to beliefs of world acceptance, meaning to accept the nature of the world and actively interact with it. As opposed to belief systems that involve transcending the world into the metaphysical.

What I’m gathering is that the ideas of world accepting and world denying are not things I typically focus on. Instead, I tend to focus on the ideas personal freedom vs personal responsibility. Or more specifically, whether I have the right to do what I want, be who I want, identify as I want, and live as or where I want vs having to follow a path already set out in front of me by an outside source whether it be society, nature, or The divine. Do my desires come in conflict with the already established status quo? And if so, do I have the right to go after them in-spite of that? Do I have a responsibility to myself or the collective. Do the needs of the group triumph over my own?

While world acceptance and world denying are not the focus of my own ideology, they do seem to interact. Unfortunately, I feel as if it’s only human nature to accept or embrace aspects of nature that suit them and deny or try to escape from those that don’t. And I feel as if, as a magician, that’s what I’m doing. That’s what every magician is doing. We use magick to bring about things we want and ward off things that we don’t.

I guess one of the goals I want to accomplish as a magician is to project my mind back in time and redo some part of my younger life. The initial reason is to prevent a depression, but I would also want to re-experience the innocence that comes with it. Overall, I’d say I want to accomplish this feat simply so I can say that I did. The very deed would be quite a symbolic act of taking control of ones destiny out of the hands of fate. Whether or not this is possible remains to be determined.

I’m not sure if this is truly an ideology of world acceptance or denial. It’s more of an ideology of rebellion; one rooted in self centered intentions.

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Pagan was used in the past by Catholic and Christian churches as a catch all for polytheistic faiths, it was meant to be derogatory in their eyes to call them pagans. So any religion that contains polytheism is pagan in nature, another term synonymous with it is heathen. Now it’s more of a “reclaim it” by modern pagans.

While I don’t believe you can change the past but however can view it and learn from them, however taylor ellwood’s book inner alchemy teaches you to work on altering the mind and body even depression.

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A common phrase I use in my fiction is witchblooded. I got the name after reading that during the dark ages, witches were thought of being born from the blood of Cain who was believed to be born from Eve and the serpent.

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This means you’re viewing people holding non-JCI philosophies through the propaganda of xtians … that’s the opposite of being “pagan”, that puts you firmly into the xtian mindset - using xtian terms and xtian myth, not pagan ones.

If you research the history of the witch trials, it was more about economics as men took over brewing, midwifery, medical care and herbalism, formerly the domains of women, and put them out of business. The excuses were just excuses, they have zero basis in fact, in xtian or pagan lore.

If you want to explore a non-xtian religion, think you would do well to think about what’s important to you and if any of the old gods have called you, pick one and immerse yourself in it to understand it from the inside.

You can’t change your past, but what you can do, is retrain your subconscious to fix patterns of thought that don’t work for you. You can use a lot of systems from this, from subluminals to removing energy blocks, to magickal pathworking through a pantheon or tree.

Which one? There are hundreds. Some are very in the moment, like the Norse who are very accepting of death of themselves and the world at Ragnarok, and some are all about releasing ego and leaving the suffering of the world behind, like Buddhism.

You probably want to do some research, figure out the different approaches, and not lump “pagans” into one basket.

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The worldwide use of entheogens and other methods to achieve altered states kind of undermines that, also almost all pagan cultures had at least some godforms which were part human, part animal, so again that’s not really accepting of what we know as everyday reality. :thinking:

And there’s little to no evidence Christianity teaches that you can’t accept the world, and deal with it as it is.

Christians are the ONLY faith group to have ended slavery, twice, and they provided the first universal healthcare which valued beggars’ lives as highly as anyone else’s, and put their own people at risk caring for victims of highly contagious diseases. They didn’t just wish those things away, or blame karma, or the Will of God, they actually got right in the face of what they disliked and did something about it, festering sores and all.

I’m no advocate of desert monotheism, but it’s important not to let history be re-written on false pretenses. :slight_smile:

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It’s the main faction from a game. Sue me

No need to get defensive, I don’t care what you do :slight_smile:

I have no idea what game you mean, but it sounds worse. Games are often inspired by culture, but they have little useful bearing on real life. They are not designed to teach, but to entertain. It takes a very strong and inspired mage to glean a path from them.

If you’re serious about your magick, get real, learn to walk before you try to run. Or keep larping and never get anywhere meaningful, that’s your choice.

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I would like to point out that caffeine, staying up all night along with certain imagery and practices is a scary effective method of achieving altered states, and also a dangerous one. I used to really hate the idea of in person magical orders cause I thought they were only used by mundanes for force unwanted sexual activities on other mundane people, but now I’ve seen the real wisdom behind the idea particularly in a world still very hostile to these altered states.