Gwydion Pendderwen
PaganFM! 051712
Musical selections:
Velvet Hammer, We Do Not Die, The Best of Pagan Song
Heather Alexander, The Witch of Westmereland, A Gypsy’s Home
Gaia Consort, Oracle, Vitus Dance
Annwn, The Trees They Do Grow High, Come Away to the Hills
Gwydion Pendderwen, We Won’t Wait Any Longer, The Faerie Shaman
Omnia, Jabberwocky, Wolf Love
Jaiya, The Green Man, Beltane
Amanda Komisarek, Herbs for Life
Lisa Thiel, Sacred Ancestors Chant, Invocation of the Graces
Laura Powers, Dance ’till the Rain Begins, Legends of the Goddess III
Wendy Rule, Under the Willow, World Between Worlds
The Reverend Rat, At the Standing Stones, Imbolc and Ice
Donna Summer, Last Dance, On the Radio
PaganFM! Prayer List Priscilla, Athostan, Ian, Greg, Joseph and Tim
We started the show off with Donna Summer’s Last Dance. Donna passed on today at age 63, after a struggle with cancer. I only hope that this last dance leaves her singing and dancing in the Summerlands.
A hat tip to Jason over at the Wild hunt for this article, Slate.com this week, in the Dear Prudence video by Emily Yoffe tackled the question of a Christian woman who had married an atheist, that has since decided to embrace Wicca. The woman described her initial reservations of marrying an Atheist, but she was in love – she describes her husband as sweet, attentive and loving. He would occasionally accompany his wife to church. She said the first four years of the marriage were bliss. But then Kent, her husband began to study Wicca, and now she has problem with his beliefs.
In the video, Emily does the face we all know so well when she says the word “Wiccan” – it’s that “ooo – this is a spooky word” sort of look. The video, as the woman describes her relationship is filled with images of goad-blood and parodies of religions that people don’t understand. Really, it looks like a modern version of bits from the 1922 silent film Haxan – or as it’s known today, Witchcraft through the ages.
Anyway, the distressed wife goes through her tale of woe – a Christian married to a Wiccan. But then comes the problem. Prudence decides to give advice, which it seems she’s not entirely qualified to give. While I understand that her videos need some entertainment value, it’s poor form to do so at the expense of someone’s legitimate belief system. Speaking of “Eye of Newt” in relationship to Wicca makes as much sense as speaking of cannibalism when discussing Christian communion. You don’t bring healing to a relationship by belittling the religious choices of one of the partners.
I would have appreciated it more if Emily had asked this wife some rather pointed questions – why is it that Wicca is more threatening to her than is Atheism? Is a husband who believes in a different religion than you more difficult than a husband that thinks you still believe in fairy tales? If you were willing to disobey your religion and become unequally yoked with an unbeliever, why are you suddenly worried about a husband who is simply a different brand of … unbeliever?
Jason, in his article at The Wild Hunt blog points out some very pertinent facts. The simple truth is that Pagans divorced from Christians have a much more difficult time retaining custody of their children. There is still a tacit assumption that Pagans are somehow Satanists or evil, or, at the very least, really weird people. Pagans have been prohibited from allowing their children to come to their religious services, while the opposite is rarely true for the Christian parents. In short, the view of Pagans by society still influences greatly what will happen to them in divorce proceedings. This “advice” by Prudence, does nothing to mitigate the misconceptions – rather, it reinforces them.
PaganFM! Almanac
Moon void of course data provided courtesy of www.drstandley.com
Today is May 16, 2011. It’s the 138th day of he year.
The waning moon is currently in Aries, and will go void just as we’re winding down the show, at 11:59 pm, tonight. It will enter Taurus, tomorrow afternoon at 12:10 pm.
We’ll have a New Moon on Sunday, that will go void at 1:00 pm, and which will enter Gemini on Monday, May 21 at 1:11 am.
It was either on May 21 or 22 that Gwydion Pendderwen was born. Gwydion was a student of Victor Anderson and a high priest in the Feri Tradition. Gwydion felt himself to be a Druid and spent a great deal of time in seclusion. With a great love of trees, he chose his last name to be Pendderwen, meaning “Leader of Oaks”. Gwydion was an actor and a musician, recording some of the first modern Pagan music. He died in an automobile accident in 1982 at the age of 36.
And on Wednesday, May 23, the moon will be void at 1:33 am, and enters Cancer at 1:30 pm.
Practical Pagan
So this week saw a few different discussions in a few different venues. On one side, was an individual who posted a video on our PaganFM! Page. He’s a Christian evangelist – and maybe he was thinking that his talks might save some of us. I can’t blame him at all for that – asking him not to try to share his faith would be akin to asking a bird not to fly. Sure, we’ve got Penguins and a few other flightless birds, but for the most part, birds fly.
In another venu, someone suggested that as a Pagan, I have a baseless faith. That discussion turned even more interesting when he suggested that I believe, because I’m a Wiccan, in the Wiccan rule “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”. Of course I pointed out that Thelema is not Wicca, and that he did miss the second part of that particular passage, which somewhat tightens that meaning up a bit. I also pointed out that suggesting that someone is Wiccan because they claim to be Pagan is a lot like suggesting someone is a Mormon because they happen to be Christian. There are conclusions that follow, and there are conclusions that do not follow. This man’s conclusions were almost all of the later category.
In any case, I was about due to give a Paganism 101 talk again, and while a few weeks ago I had a different topic in mind, I’m thinking right now that it might be worthwhile to talk a little bit about how we can talk, specifically to Christians, about what it means to be Pagan.
One of the first hurdles we need to get over is a really simple question, with a not-so-simple answer. That is, what does it mean to be a Pagan? When I tell people that I’m a Pagan, I’m met with a number of different responses ranging from “So you don’t believe in God?” to “You’re an atheist?” to “You believe in Satan?” Many people have a great many ideas as to what it means to be a Pagan – even among Pagans there can be some disagreement. But then again, among Christians, there is absolutely no unanimity as to what it means to be a Christian – so we’re not at all alone. In any case, the three responses above will represent most of the misconceptions that Christians have about what it means to be a Pagan. They might be somewhat nuanced – they might know that Wiccans are Pagan, but believe that Wiccans are witches and witches worship the Devil. But really, the three comments above will define, in some way, almost all of the Christian misconceptions regarding Paganism.
But we’re still left with the question “What does it mean to be Pagan?” Let’s look at that first.
My own definition, and this is by no means the authoritative definition – is simple. To me, a Pagan is any person who believes in the Deities of nature. All the rest of it is trappings or adornment. If you worship the Gods and Goddesses of nature, you’re a Pagan. If you worship the God of the Sun, the Goddess of the moon, if you revere Mother Earth as deity, you’re a Pagan. Pagans revere the Earth as sacred because it is imbued with the life, the divinity of the Mother. All is sacred, and we cannot separate the divine from the physical or the mundane.
Christianity is quite different. The Creator is separate from the created. In Christianity, the Earth is not sacred – it is a created object, here for our use. Christians speak of Jesus dwelling in our hearts, but Jesus, and God and the Holy Spirit are still separate. God may be omnipresent, but God is still separate. And I really find this idea of separateness a very curious aspect of Christianity. Jesus prayed to the Father “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” It really seems to me that in these verses from the Gospel of John, that Christianity should know something about seeing the Divine in other people. How can a person be “in God”, yet a Christian not see the Divinity of God in or through that other person?
In Luke, someone told Jesus to silence his disciples. Jesus replied “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out”. It seems that Jesus saw life in the Earth just as well as any Pagan would. I often wonder how Christians who value the words of Christ can look upon the Earth, which Christ himself said could rise up singing, as just an object to be used.
In any case, the curious thing is that much what defines my belief as a Pagan is also in the Bible – the stones themselves, nature, can speak. We are, however we would like to separate ourselves, one people. But most Christians don’t recognize these things – even though it’s contained in their scripture.
But much of what Christians believe came to them from far earlier sources. Jesus’ death on the cross – the sacrificed King, is a common theme among Pagan history. Jesus’ resurrection, a virgin birth – all of these things predate Christianity. And the early Christian church was aware of this. They suggested that it was certainly a devious, demonic plot for only the Devil, they said, could come up with a couterfeit prior to the original.
James Frazer, in his book, The Golden Bough, goes through great effort to demonstrate how this sacrificed and risen God is not unique to Christianity. And while some of his work may have been criticized, I’ve not found anyone yet to refute that basic part of his argument – at least not effectively.
In any case, let’s look at the charges that are often leveled against Pagans by Christians and see how the misconceptions speak as much about their faith, as they do to ours.
Charge #1 and Charge #2- “So you don’t believe in God”, So you’re an Atheist. These charges are particularly interesting. It’s very curious in a historical context because Atheism was a charge that was once, after a fashion, leveled against Christians. You see, in the early days of the Church, when Christians were persecuted by Pagans – and yes folks, Pagans were at one time the persecutor – the charge wasn’t that they believed in the Christian God. The Pagan Romans had no problem with Christians believing in their God. The problem was that Christians denied the Gods of Rome. In essence, in denying the Gods of Rome, this new cult, were Atheists.
But Pagans do worship, we do honor the Gods and Goddesses. There are even Christo-Pagans – those who honor Christ and the Christian God in a Pagan fashion. While Christo-Pagans are often looked down upon by other Pagans, they are still there. The charge that Pagans “don’t believe in God” is simply false – we do believe in God – we believe in many Gods and / or Goddesses. What is different is our beliefs regarding the nature of deity. Where to Christians, God is transcendent – out there, to Pagans, Deity is immanent – here, there, and everywhere as the song goes.
The third charge is a little different. “So you worship Satan” speaks volumes about the Christian making that charge. Many Christians might see a statue of the Horned God, and believe that to be Satan. They’ll see the Pentacle and recognize it as a sign of the Devil. How did this come to be?
It’s worth noting that the Christian Satan was NOT the horned God until after Christians encountered Pagans in Western Europe. Prior to that, Lucifer was known as a beautiful angel. He was the angel of Light, and his name was synonymous with light. So much so, in fact, that the chemical that is responsible for bioluminescence is called luciferase. Lucifer was known as the Morning Star, which was Venus when seen in the morning. It’s interesting also that Christianity, while eschewing polytheism, associates even their Devil with a celestial object, just as Pagans had done before – but that’s another story.
In any case, the Devil was not known as a horned God or a hideous creature until they met with the Celtic Pagans who worshiped a horned God. Christians, when they were proselytizing in Western Europe, had, by that time, a powerful empire behind them. And as the empire expanded, so did the Christian church. In Western Europe, they met the Celts, and the Gods of the Celts were Gods of nature. The Stag, the Horned God, the Green man – the Gods of the Celts were very different than the Christian God, and Christians decided that whatever the Gods of these Pagans looked like, that’s the Devil.
At this point though, Pagans were not using the Pentacle as a symbol. In fact, the Pentagram was once even used by Christians to represent the five wounds of Christ – and even today you’ll see Christians find inspiration in the apple cut in half to show the 5-pointed star, or a sand-dollar which has a 5-pointed star at its center.
The actual origin of the Pentagram comes from Mesopotamian writings as far back as 3,000 BC. Pythagoras used the Pentagram in his sacred geometry. One of the great secrets was the construction of a Pentagram using only a compass and a straight-edge. But the idea of the Pentagram as a Satanic symbol probably stems from its use in mystery sects such as the Masons. Many people have this idea that something which is secret must be sinister. The reality is far less entertaining.
I think that the biggest disagreement between Christianity and Paganism comes from a very fundamental belief of Christians today – they believe that there is only one God, and that all others are false Gods – or worse, that they are some aspect of Satan. Pagans are typically open to the idea of many Gods – and that no human can fully comprehend Deity.
Christians today believe that all that we need to know about God can fit between the covers of a single book. And they believe that the book that they have is all that God wants humanity to know about him. Pagans recognize that no book can possibly contain even the tiniest bit of the vastness of Deity. Many believe it is folly to even try or to begin. That might be one reason why the Druids had such disdain for writing of things of a spiritual nature. If a thing was worth knowing, it was worth experiencing, it was worth remembering, and we didn’t debase it by putting it on paper.
One of the problems I have with many Christians is their fear. While their scripture claims that they should walk in faith, that they should not be afraid, many have a tremendous fear for anything which is different, which challenges their views. Most mature Pagans, on the other hand welcome challenge – it gives us an opportunity to learn, to grow, to understand even more about the vastness of reality. We don’t equate silence or mystery with something to be feared.
Pagans have a vastly different view of sex and sexuality than do Christians. I’m not so sure where Christians today get their fear of sex – it’s certainly not explicit in the Bible. In the Bible, there were many different relationships – there were men with many wives, and men with only one wife. There are relationships such as that between David and Jonathan which suggest something much stronger than mere friendship – though to be fair, the Bible is silent as to whether or not that relationship was sexual. The Bible also suggested that a conquering army could take the women of that country to be their own wives – something we, today, would consider rape. It suggests that if the husband of a woman died prior to her having a baby, that others were duty-bound to see to it that she did have a baby. In short, the sexuality and relationships of Biblical times are very different from how Christians, claiming Biblical support for their positions, view relationships today.
In Paganism, we have a very different view of relationships and sexuality. Typically, we don’t fear homosexuality, heterosexuality or bisexuality. Some of us draw the line at polyamory, others do not. I think that Christianity has been influenced a great deal by asceticism and austerity. Where in the early Christian church and in a number of Pagan faiths, asceticism was practiced as a spiritual exercise, and not as a rejection or an indictment of sensual pleasure, as the Christian church matured, the sensual became more and more rejected as something evil or to be avoided. The spiritual exercise of the ascetic as a personal means to come closer to God became something imposed on all believers. And in so doing, in becoming an imposed discipline, it seems to have lost much of its meaning. Perhaps a good deal of this comes from Paul, who as a Roman soldier, lived a life of strict discipline. But Christ, certainly, never said that life was not to be enjoyed. The Book of Genesis never said “Be fruitful and multiply – but don’t enjoy it too much”!
There is certainly room for ascetic or austere practices among Pagans – and I have no doubt that many practice these things to come closer to deity. The difference is that as Pagans, we view all of our lifestyles, so long as they don’t bring harm to others, as valid. We know that we can come closer to deity while enjoying the sex act with our lover, and we can come closer to Deity sitting alone on the top of a mountain in the bright sunshine. Neither is less valid.
Quite honestly, I think that we, as modern Pagans, are in a unique position to help educate Christians of today – by understanding Christian as well as Pagan history, we can see the similarities. We can see the Pagan roots of modern Christianity. We know the stories of Attis and Dionysus and Osiris and so many others. We understand the resurrection, we know the true meaning of Christmas, and where Easter really comes from. But we don’t need to use these things as hammers – we can respectfully listen to their story, and then remark – oh, that’s just like our God …
I doubt that there will be a day when Pagans fully embrace Christianity or when Christians embrace Paganism. And neither of these is my wish. But it’s nice to think that we can learn about each other’s faith without becoming fearful. Maybe then, Pagans won’t worry about a return of the burning times, and Christians could understand that we don’t begrudge them their beliefs so long as we’re permitted to practice ours. Wouldn’t that be a nice world?
