Air Force Academy Adapts To Pagans, Druids, Witches and Wiccans

Air Force Academy Adapts To Pagans, Druids, Witches and Wiccans Officials say an $80,000 Stonehenge-like worship center underscores a commitment to embrace all religions.

(Pic in URL) Cadets gather for the dedication ceremony of the Air Force Academy's Cadet Chapel Falcon Circle worship center this spring. The center serves cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of “Earth-based.” (Jerilee Bennett, (Colorado Springs) Gazette / May 3, 2011)

By Jenny Deam November 26, 2011 Reporting from Colorado Springs, Colo.— In the still of a cold November evening, a small gathering of pagans, led by two witches, begins preparations for the coming winter solstice. But these are not just any pagans, and this is not just any setting. They are future officers of the United States Air Force practicing their faith in the basement of the Air Force Academy's cadet chapel.

Their ranks are slim. According to the academy's enrollment records, only three of 4,300 cadets identified themselves as pagans, followers of an ancient religion that generally does not worship a single god and considers all things in nature interconnected.

Still, the academy this year dedicated an $80,000 outdoor worship center — a small Stonehenge-like circle of boulders with propane fire pit — high on a hill for the handful of current or future cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of "Earth-based." Those include pagans, Wiccans, druids, witches and followers of Native American faiths.

Witches in the Air Force? Chaplain Maj. Darren Duncan, branch chief of cadet faith communities at the academy, sighs. A punch line waiting to happen, and he's heard all the broom jokes.

“You’d be familiar with many of the practices of my religion because Paul, a Hellenized Jew, brought them into Christianity.”

Spirited: Your claim is only partially true. Christian theism is the “new” thing while all earth-based systems are the very “old” thing, having their Hermetic origins in ancient Babylonia and Egypt. Thus all nature systems have as their point of orgin nonliving yet nevertheless divinized primordial matter, usually called Chaos but Nu by the Egyptian Sun-god Ra.

Chaos was the first substance to exist and apparently spontaneously generated itself from nothing as it has no living Creator. Out of Chaos evolved, emerged, and/or emanated, depending on whether one is a Gnostic materialist or Gnostic pantheist, either man (materialists) or the gods and goddesses and everything else (pantheists). All things are therefore parts of the not-divine or divine one-substance.

With Hermetic materialism the formula is, “As below (matter) so above (matter) while with Hermetic pantheism it is, “As above (divine), so below (divine).”

Both systems converge on the idea of man’s divinity.

Earth-based systems are naturalistic, meaning that there is only the one substance. Christian theism is supernaturalistic, meaning that between the substance of man and the substance of the supernatural Creator there exists an unbridgable chasm. Man does not share God’s substance is not divine.

The supernatural God lives, is personal and He created all things ex nihilo. The one substance is not alive, but is rather an impersonal energy force tantamount to electricity or an impersonal intelligence tantamount to a computer.

Returning to your claim, up until Jehovah spoke to Abraham, Isaac and Moses, virtually all people were believers in earth-based systems. Not everyone though. For immediately after the deluge, Noah established worship of the living God in the East (i.e.,India, China) while in Babylonia, Ham, Cush, and Nimrod established history’s first earth-based system. Babylonia is the mother of all Mystery Religions, Hermetic magic, and earth-based systems.

In light of this, it makes sense that Old and New Testament prophets and apostles understood that the practices of the earth-based systems were in appeasement of gods and goddesses evolved from noncreated, nonliving primordial matter. Being concerned for the salvation of Gentile souls it was only natural that they dedivinized nature and esoteric objects like the egg and dove and reinterpreted them in accordance with worship of the supernatural Jehovah.

That increasing numbers of Westerners are returning to Hermetic magic, the Mystery’s and earth-based systems is not a sign of progress to something new and better but rather the very reverse.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.