Posted on 12/16/2004 11:04:00 AM PST by quidnunc
The sky was already murky at 4 p.m. when I locked my bike outside Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. Inside, it was even murkier: wood-panelled corridors stretched off into the gloom, men in grey suits were wedged together, smoking Bensons and drinking bitter. No one looked even slightly like an Arch Priest of the Council of British Druid Orders. At 4:10 I found a separate little bar near the back of the pub. As I walked in, a big man with round shoulders and grey hair stared at me and I saw the corner of a magazine poking out from inside his coat. As I watched, the whole cover slowly emerged: a yellowy-purple watercolour of a fairy, and the title: The Witchtower. ‘Steve?’ I said. He nodded.
We bought bitter, found somewhere to sit, and began what turned out to be a three-hour crash course in modern paganism, one of the fastest-growing religions in Britain.
-snip-
So, can a modern pagan just pick any god to worship? I asked. Egyptian? Roman? African? Are there any rules? Steve put his hands self-consciously under the table, ‘No rules,’ he said. ‘Being a pagan is about being free from institutional rules. And the gods? Once you start seeking they choose you, really. Everyone has their own path, but we all celebrate the same festivals: the summer and winter solstices, spring and autumn equinoxes and four other festivals: Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasad.’
Pagans, I discovered during our second pint, are also united by their sense of the injustices done them by Christians. The last 2,000 years of history is a heart-wrenching tale of innocent occult revivals squashed by ignorant Christians …
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
And let's not get into the whole cannibalism idea of Communion.
Yeah, it's almost as bad as real-life pagan cannibalism. Not.
Here we go again.
Didn't take long.
Heck, maybe I should just hit "abuse."
Who needs this at CHRIST-MASS time?
> Please tell us what pagan cultures you consider to be examples of the good fruits of your belief system so that we can consider it and judge for ourselves.
Well, from the old day, I'm personally quite fond of the pre-Christian Norse republic set up in Iceland. The peopel were freer than anywhere else in the world at the time; and, despite the fac tthey were basically dirt-poor, a man could make his own way without bureaucratic hinderance. And then... Iceland Christianized. Within fifty or so years, the republic collapsed under the weight of the Church, it's taxes and tithes. Property rights withered.
More recently, I'm quite fond of the United States. What with a Constitution based on some seriously pagan principles ("What? Allowing people to worship whatever god they want? That's against the First Commandment!", and "What? A man as master of his own fate?"), and with no appeals to the Christian God in the Constitution, we've done quite well.
I'm sorry. How many cannibalistic pagans do you know?
Technically, for Catholics at least, it IS real-life cannibalism.
Like a Priest in a whorehouse, it just doesn't belong and it shouldn't be there.
They believe they can consume their life force that way, like vampires. It wouldn't be tolerant or diverse to judge them. The world is shades of grey and all, you know?
Yeah, but pagans do it for real.
> They believe they can consume their life force that way, like vampires.
Yeah, that whole Communion thing IS rather creepy...
Do they? I've never known any to do so. I've known of far more cannibals who believed in the Christian god than who were pagans.
Pagans actually eat human flesh. That's really creepy.
Documentation please.
Er... yeah. And we really do fly around on Brooms as well. Careful, or I'll turn you in to a newt.
I don't know of any modern pagans who engage in cannibalism. When we think of the Classical Pagans, such as the Greeks and Romans, cannibalism and human sacrifice were not part of their rituals (and were outlawed, which is one of the reasons why the Romans were repressed the Druids so fiercely).
One of the things that turned the Romans off when it came to Christians was the idea that the Christians engaged in ritual cannibalism of their god.
A goodly portion of the first century Jews didn't get it either.
Thank God, some did.
Yeah but the difference between Christian cannibals and pagan cannibals is that pagans like to eat human flesh. When you become a Christian, you don't stop sinning, you just stop liking it.
!
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