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 ...
Actually they got it from the Babylonians. There's nothing in the Tanak commanding married people to wear wedding bands.
Which characterisation includes the Triune God.
ARTIST: Dar Williams
TITLE: The Christians and the Pagans
Lyrics and Chords
Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay"
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three
He told his niece, "It's Christmas eve, I know our life is not your style"
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and it's been awhile"
/ G C Am D / / Em C Am D / / G C Am D / /
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses
/ G C Em D / / Em C Am D / Em C Am D G - /
The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?"
His mom jumped up and said, "The pies are burning," and she hit the kitchen
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, "It's true, your cousin's not a Christian"
"But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere"
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And where does magic come from, I think magic's in the learning
Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning
When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, "Really, no, don't bother"
Amber's uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father
He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year
He thought he'd call him up and say, "It's Christmas and your daughter's here"
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tug his sleeve saying
"Can I be a Pagan?" Dad said, "We'll discuss it when they leave"
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold
Innocent, bishop, servant of the servants of God, Ad futuram rei memoriam ...our beloved sons Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger, of the order of Friars Preachers, professors of theology, have been and still are deputed by our apostolic letters as inquisitors of heretical pravity...
Examine, for a moment, the word "Easter". It has nothing to do with the Resurrection, the name comes from a pagan holiday celebrated in the Spring in recognition of the equinox. "Christrise" would be a more appropriate name and etymologically similar to "Christmas".
You are making the most common of mistakes, confusing the secular authorities with an organized religion. The magistrate may be a Congregationalist but that does not mean the faith made him do it. Catholics make this mistake when complaining about treatment from Protestant authorities and vice a versa. But the people who are most likely to make that mistake are those who do not like organized religion at all.
Jim Jones used to to the same thing (dulls the moral sensibilities of the followers), long before he issued the Big One. Of course they followed him, he's testing us again.
Nope. Pay careful attention to the passage in question, and you'll see that Abraham was acting out prophecy. Two thousand years later, probably on that exact same spot, another Father sacrificed His Son--and this time, there wasn't anyone higher who could provide a substitute as God did for Abraham.
Furthermore, Abraham knew that he was acting out prophecy, which is why he named the place Yehoveh Yirah, or "The Lord Will Provide," and said, "In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided." (Gen. 22:14) He also trusted God's promise that through Isaac he would have a great nation come out of him that he could be confident that even if he went through with the sacrifice, that just meant that God would raise Isaac from the dead (Heb. 11:17-19).
Sorry. I wasn't paying attention.
Are you talking about paganism or Catholicism here?
I've come to expect that.
Snippet: "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"
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Well, how anti-CHRISTian. Some things just never change.
I didn't say I believed it, or if it was correct, I'm just passing on something I read.
gross
So you're saying that according to the pagan view, there's absolutely no moral difference between a friend willingly flinging himself in front of a bullet, sacrificing his own life to save yours, and you choosing to throw your friend in front of that same bullet, sacrificing his life against his will to save your own?
If so, that just makes me even more grateful to be a Christian, whose God condemns human sacrifice, but who also said,
"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you" (Jn. 15:13-15).As for the Lord's Supper, aka the Eucharist, if you actually understood what that's about, you would know that it is the (symbollic, IMHO, but opinions vary) act of taking Jesus Christ, the very person of God, and making Him a part of us just as we make ordinary bread and wine a part of us when we consume them. In no other act is the phrase more true, "You become what you eat."
See, the life of a true Christian is not just about acknowledging a few doctrines intellectually or following a handful of rules in order to get into a "heaven" of eternal sitting on clouds and strumming on harps. It's about being "conformed into the image of [God's] Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom. 8:29).
Yawn. Six hundred years ago is 'much more recently?'
When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead.
G. K. Chesterton
And....
Jesus said, "O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." -From THE BIBLE: Matthew 12:34
Yes, got a math problem?
I never disputed the presence of pagan imagery in the Church, but Hitler was not a religious person. To infer by his words that he was a faithful Catholic is a bit inflammatory.
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