Pagan theology: Paganism and Existential Faith Do you believe in the Gods and Goddesses? I would suspect that many Pagans would answer: “don’t know,” “maybe,” or “doubt it.”   Fair enough.   Neo-Paganism accommodates a lot of different theologies, including those that border on atheism, deism, pantheism, pantheism, or Gnostic monotheism.  However there is also a literalist interpretation of our religion, one where the Gods and Goddesses exist as real entities.  For those of us who believe in their existence, the idea of faith poses a particular challenge.  What does it mean to have faith in the existence of the Gods and Goddess, and what kind of responsibility does the acceptance of…

Pagan theology: What good is it? Given that I’ve written 27 of these columns I thought I’d stop and think a little bit about Pagan theology and the role it does, or should, play in our faith. One of the things that makes Pagan theology complicated is that different people focus on different aspects of the theological question.  When you talk theology you can be referring to what we believe; for example, why do we cast the clockwise circle and what does it mean.  Or you can be referring to why the things we do work, what I would refer to as relating our faith to our existence in the…

Pagan theology: You are it Off and on over the last few columns I have been talking about various ways of explaining magic.  I divided the ways of talking about how magic “works” into three broad categories:  systematic, individual, and theistic.  In previous columns I covered a variety of systematic explanations, all of which essentially use a set of rules to explain magical effects through some sort of cause and effect relationship.  Systematic explanations say “you do this, the effect will occur.”  These systems can range from scientific to just plain made up. Now I’d like to talk about individualistic explanations for magical effects.  Here, instead of a “system” or…

A Major Distraction I’ve always known that the blog The Wild Hunt [1] was full of interesting and provocative stuff, but lately I’ve been reading it a bit more and realize just how good it is.  One of the entries caught my eye and I thought it would be worth discussing it [2]. The background is that Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis apparently has a pretty fuzzy idea of what religious tolerance is [3].  He came out on twitter deploring the religious intolerance of Egyptian Muslims toward Egyptian Christians.  Then, not 20 minutes later he tweeted:  “Wicca and Druidism to be given chapel space in Air Force Academy Chapel…Where will…

Pagan theology: Dog Days of Winter So I decided I wanted to put on a ritual centered on dogs.  Don’t ask why, I don’t even like dogs, but there it is [1].   I also had to write a column, Pagan Pages never sleeps, after all.  So I thought: why not just stick them together and see what comes from it? One of the most important questions, I think, is what can we take from what we know about Celtic worship.  I’m not talking about modern (including 18th century) reconstructions.  Those reconstructions often have either a romantic, or a ethnocentric [2], view of the “Celtic” religions.  Instead, I’m asking: what are…

Magic:  Made up Explanations Before I got busy and started to talk about other things I was working on a series of columns devoted to understanding magic.  The question that I am trying to answer is “how does magic work?”  In a previous column I developed a typology for how you might go about answering that question, with explanations dividing up into three categories:  systematic, individual, and theistic.  Systematic explanations develop some sort of system that, if followed, results in magic.  This ranges from science, to sort of science, to just plain made up systems.  Individual and theistic explanations appeal to something other than a system, like yourself or your…

Pagan theology:  roots and influences So I’m teaching a class “Paganism as a Religious Tradition” and the other night I wanted to cover the progression of modern Paganism from its inception with Gardner to the present.  While that’s a big task, its’ not as big as it seems; I find that many of the Pagans I encounter are not well informed about the roots of our faith, despite a very large number of books on the subject [1].  So a lot of detail and fippery was just as likely to overwhelm as inform, and the class was geared toward a more general religious seeker audience anyway.   I didn’t want to…

Pagan theology short:  religious tradition Is Paganism a religious tradition? The sensible answer is “of course”. But lets think about this a little be more.  First, I guess it depends on how you define “religious,” “tradition,” and “religious tradition.”  In some sense this is the same as asking if Paganism is a religion (which common sense again says it is) [1].  But I’d say its also more than simply asking if Paganism’s a religion, it also asks whether Paganism has a connection through time.  Not sure exactly what its connected through time to, but a connection nonetheless.  It could be a connection to a historical tradition, or it could be…

Pagan theology short:  graven images Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God – Exodus 20 3-5. Recently a member of our group got very upset over the loss of one of her owls.  It was a small, black owl that she had used in ritual several times, and now it was missing.  She was inconsolable.  It was as if she…

Pagan Theology Short:  Pagan Finances Past surveys of Pagans say that we work mostly in the computer, education, and “helping” professions.  Thus the economy may not be impacting us as much as it is others.  However the question of how our religion relates to the economy, and economic difficulties, is an interesting one.  The Christian religion has it relatively easy, the manual they were given from the Jewish tribe has a lot of passages that repute to tell them how to build wealth, and go about asking their god for wealth.  We are in a slightly different situation, with little or no guidance about practical matters in any historical document,…