What is paganism?\u00a0 Pagan is simply a word which means anything other than Christian.\u00a0 It only has meaning the same way that Gentile has meaning.\u00a0 Everyone who is not a Jew is a Gentile.\u00a0 Everyone who is not a Christian is a pagan.\u00a0 Heathens and blasphemers are people who, although educated and initiated into Christianity do not agree with or believe every one of the teachings – or the practices.\u00a0 In many cases, blasphemers are people who disagree on one philosophical point, or who believe the church is corrupt and has practices so unChristian that they object.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There are many religions in the world other than Christianity and Judaism.\u00a0 Technically, Christianity still is, or at least started out as a Jewish sect.\u00a0 However, in The Bible Jesus makes it clear that he is willing to welcome anyone who will bother to listen to his spiritual teachings and who can make good use of his wisdom.\u00a0 He makes it clear that any spiritual truth he imparts has come from God, his spiritual father.\u00a0 In the Jewish tradition, people are not to even write \u201cGod\u201d and so, even that, is a change from their traditions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The main doctrine is that there is one true God who has created the world and has the spiritual power to control material reality and can impart spiritual teachings, wisdom and skills to those who follow Him.\u00a0 A major feature of this is that humans have not created this deity, just as humans have not created the planet Earth or the nature of the human body itself.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Over the 2 thousand years since Jesus Christ\u2019s life, the Catholics and others have tried to spread Christianity.\u00a0 All too often this has been done with a great deal of aggression but that is not exactly in accordance with Christ\u2019s teaching of non-killing of other humans – especially not murder.\u00a0 Christianity has often attempted to progress peacefully and much of the strange nature of the Catholic Church is the result of what happened when they met with a different religion and culture.\u00a0 There are pagan goddesses who have been adopted and embraced as Catholic Saints.\u00a0 This means, that instead of hating them for having been goddess worshipping pagans; they went into it deeply enough that those goddesses who were gentle enough or otherwise sufficiently lived in ways that do not offend Christian sensibilities have been embraced as spiritually powerful saints, subdominant to and under the authority of the same one and only real God.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the contemporary world, in Europe and North America if people say \u2018pagan\u2019 they usually mean Wiccans or Druids or Asatru – because those are the religious traditions native to the region.\u00a0 They all include goddesses and gods.\u00a0 They are all polytheistic.\u00a0 They all have rites which could be viewed as magic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, any \u2018supernatural effects or results\u2019 which have not come from the one and only true God through Jesus Christ [His only son to have incarnated on Earth as a living deity] are magic, and to be considered bad or suspect.\u00a0 If such effects are achieved by the grace of God and in direct accordance with His will and power then the same church views that as entirely acceptable.\u00a0 They don\u2019t describe it as magick, but as a consequence of God\u2019s miraculous powers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is paganism?\u00a0 Pagan is simply a word which means anything other than Christian.\u00a0 It only has meaning the same way that Gentile has meaning.\u00a0 Everyone who is not a Jew is a Gentile.\u00a0 Everyone who is not a Christian is a pagan.\u00a0 Heathens and blasphemers are people who, although educated and initiated into Christianity do not agree with or believe every one of the teachings – or the practices.\u00a0 In many cases, blasphemers are people who disagree on one philosophical point, or who believe the church is corrupt and has practices so unChristian that they object. There are many religions in the world other than Christianity and Judaism.\u00a0 Technically, Christianity still is, or at least started out as a Jewish sect.\u00a0 However, in The Bible Jesus makes it clear that he is willing to welcome anyone who will bother to listen to his spiritual teachings and who can make good use of his wisdom.\u00a0 He makes it clear that any spiritual truth he imparts has come from God, his spiritual father.\u00a0 In the Jewish tradition, people are not to even write \u201cGod\u201d and so, even that, is a change from their traditions. The main doctrine is that there is one true God who has created the world and has the spiritual power to control material reality and can impart spiritual teachings, wisdom and skills to those who follow Him.\u00a0 A major feature of this is that humans have not created this deity, just as humans have not created the planet Earth or the nature of the human body itself. Over the 2 thousand years since Jesus Christ\u2019s life, the Catholics and others have tried to spread Christianity.\u00a0 All too often this has been done with a great deal of aggression but that is not exactly in accordance with Christ\u2019s teaching of non-killing of other humans – especially not murder.\u00a0 Christianity has often attempted to progress peacefully and much of the strange nature of the Catholic Church is the result of what happened when they met with a different religion and culture.\u00a0 There are pagan goddesses who have been adopted and embraced as Catholic Saints.\u00a0 This means, that instead of hating them for having been goddess worshipping pagans; they went into it deeply enough that those goddesses who were gentle enough or otherwise sufficiently lived in ways that do not offend Christian sensibilities have been embraced as spiritually powerful saints, subdominant to and under the authority of the same one and only real God. In the contemporary world, in Europe and North America if people say \u2018pagan\u2019 they usually mean Wiccans or Druids or Asatru – because those are the religious traditions native to the region.\u00a0 They all include goddesses and gods.\u00a0 They are all polytheistic.\u00a0 They all have rites which could be viewed as magic. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, any \u2018supernatural effects or results\u2019 which have not come from the one and only true God through Jesus Christ [His only son to have incarnated on Earth as a living deity] are magic, and to be considered bad or suspect.\u00a0 If such effects are achieved by the grace of God and in direct accordance with His will and power then the same church views that as entirely acceptable.\u00a0 They don\u2019t describe it as magick, but as a consequence of God\u2019s miraculous powers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}