Forward to Paganism

This is a talk I gave at the Unitarian Annual meetings in 2012 - title 'Forward to Paganism'



Introduction
    Short meditation
    Imagine yourself outdoors - in your garden - or in a favourite place.     Feel the sunshine, feel its heat and the breeze gently blowing around you.   See the growing things and the colour of the soil; see the dew on the ground or feel the gentle rain.    In this outdoors place notice where the sun rises and where it sets - where the moon rises and where it sets.    See the stars on a clear night.   Which way is north and which way is east?
    What time will the sun rise in the morning and what time will it set in the evening?    What is the phase of the moon?   Is it waxing or waning.
    Look at the trees round about you - what age do you think each one is?
    And listen to the birds and their song.
    Spend a moment in this special outdoor place - and wonder about life and time - and reverence and peace - and beauty - and time.
   

    I was brought up in the religious culture of my country - which was Christianity.   It was an indoor religion.    We attended a building called a church and at school we attended a Chapel.    This was where our religious activities mostly took place - at school grace would also be said before and after each meal.  
    We worshipped a God who came from the Middle East and who was very threatening.   We were told that we were sinners but the way out of this sin was believing that God had a son who had lived in the Middle East and who had deliberately had himself executed on our behalf.    He had taken responsibility for all our failings.
    In our church or Chapel, we called the God - ‘Our Father’ - we had to live in awe of him - for he could be a terrifying God - whereas his son was meek and gentle.     It seemed only the gentle and meek son could speak to the father god on our behalf - so we addressed all our prayers through him.
    But Jesus had an arch enemy - called Satan.   Satan wanted us more than Jesus did, we were told,  and he had a kingdom called hell - where we were all going to go unless we said our prayers indoors at church every Sunday.
    Hell was a pretty awful place - all fire and brimstone - poets had written about it and painters painted visions of it.   I didn’t want to go there - and actually didn’t think I really would as I went to a public school.
    I found it very difficult to see Jesus as my hero - I preferred John Wayne - and the stories I liked reading were written by Leslie Charteris. There were stories about about a Saint
    My Christian upbringing led me to believe that anyone who was not a Christian was not worth much.    There were heretics - Those who had been the awkward squad had met their comeuppance - either burned at the stake or imprisoned for years.    There were infidels who had conquered the Holy City of Jerusalem.    They got their comeuppance from the crusaders and Lawrence of Arabia.  
    Anyone who was not a Christian was a heathen.   Heathens  were not to be trusted.   I had seen pictures of the heathen attacking missionaries in America and Africa and they looked a blood thirsty lot.   Heathens were not civilised people.   They gave missionaries and explorers - Christian missionaries and explorers,  a hard time.     Luckily the explorers and missionaries were made of stern stuff and they usually won their battles and put the wicked heathen to the sword - or threw them over cliffs.      Heathens worshipped the sun and statues etc - they never dressed modestly - and they were probably cannibals too.
    I didn’t complain about being a Christian - after all - it meant I had presents at Christmas and we all loved decorating the tree and singing carols - mind you I never quite understood why we sang about decking the halls with holly - even dressing the Christmas tree.    We had yule logs too and Christmas cake - and presents - so Baby Jesus was very popular in our house and I remember we once asked him to say Thank You to God for Father Christmas.
    Easter was good too - a time for Easter eggs and chocolate - and school holidays.   I once asked the school chaplain why Easter was called Easter and he said he didn’t know - it was a traditional name - from the Latin.    He did explain that Easter was always at a different time each year because it was calculated from the first full moon after epiphany - or something - and that was good enough for me.   He also said that everyone should plant their potatoes at Easter - on Good Friday of course.
    My mother was a good Christian.   She hardly missed a Sunday at church.   She felt that people would talk if she started missing too many services.     She was actually in awe of some of the  great and good who went to that church in Liverpool - and some of them were in awe of her - because the church had been built specially for my great great grandfather.    From what I read of him, he hated heathens - and pagans - and catholics - and Unitarians - almost in equal measure.    He said the Irish famine was God’s punishment on Ireland for having so many catholics.
    - so Liverpool put a statue of him in St George’s Hall - it is still there.   I try to stand like him sometimes.

    My God fearing mother taught me that if I spilt salt I must to throw some over my shoulder.     If we gave flowers we must never give lilies.   Green was an unlucky colour.   Never to cut our finger nails on a Sunday - and always to crush egg shells - that would stop the witches using them as boats.   She also told fortunes by reading cards and tea leaves.   She used to make money at church fetes doing that - but never at ours.   Certain people could give certain looks, she used to say.     We once suggested that this was a bit of a pagan activity - and she was furious, saying she was always a God fearing woman and wore a hat in church.
    She had a total prejudice against Catholics and used to cross herself whenever she passed their church - but she let me join their scout troop.
    It was much later that I learned that all the Christian festivals were actually planted on top of much older festivals - they said it was the only way that the old Brits would accept the Christian faith - if they could keep their holidays.    And the Brits at the time were said to be Pagans.
    Pagans according to my history books were fond of getting undressed and dancing round trees.    They also dabbled in casting spells - and worshipping the sun.
    The Christian missionaries swamped the Pagans with their new religion - and the Pagans  accepted it either because the newcomers had power over them or they feared resisting them.     So the English became Christians - but they were able to keep their traditional holidays - at spring, at summer, in autumn and in winter.
    So Christmas festivals and saints days also followed the seasons of the year - which the Pagan had always followed - they just had different names.   
    The word Pagan became a pejorative word - but it didn’t really matter - because we unconsciously followed the old paths anyway - we celebrated each season of the year - and some of them were renamed after Christian saints.
    To call someone a Pagan was like calling them a heathen - or an infidel.
    The Catholic church has a web site which explains why Pagans are heathens - because they do not acknowledge the one God.
    The word Pagan actually means ‘country dweller’.     Country dwellers were more in touch with the natural world - they knew the seasons - they knew the best times to plant - and what to plant when - and much of it depended on where the moon was and what it was doing.   Waxing moon pulls the leaf and stem up; waning moon allows the roots to dominate.
Country dwellers knew the best time to sow seeds and they watched what the animals did - and followed their patterns too.   But all that was absorbed into Christianity too.   Plant your potatoes at easter.
    Those who kept to the old crafts were looked on with suspicion - especially those who were said to have powers of healing - and cursing.    Well, they must belong to Satan - they musts be witches - and had to be eliminated.    The Christians thought up some good ways to test whether a person was a witch or not - ordeals by water - or fire - if they survived they were, if they didn’t survive, well, maybe they weren’t but the threat had gone.
    If the Christians had ever read one of the books in their Bible - the Book of Enoch - it wasn’t allowed into the Old Testament books we knew as Children.  
    In the Book of Genesis, they give these long lists of who begat who and how long each lived - all of them over a thousand years - except one, Enoch.   He lived for three hundred and sixty five years, it says.   He didn’t die either - like Elisha and Jesus, Enoch was taken up into heaven.      In his life he made several trips to heaven and saw the angels - good and bad - and learned that it was the bad angels who had taught the people on earth about many things - rather like Prometheus, I thought.  They taught them about mining and making things of metal - ploughs and swords;  they taught the people the secrets of roots and plants that could heal; taught the women about making jewellery and how to make their faces and bodies look more pretty - but they never got round to telling them anything at all about ‘implants’.     He wrote all this down in books for his son.
    And in the Bible we read about divining the future by throwing the runes;  King Saul consulted a witch about the outcome of a battle - and then there was the mysterious ritual of  Abraham taking birds and animals, cutting them in half and laying them out in an avenue one part on each side - eventually to be consumed by a magical fire.   And we read about human sacrifice -  Isaac and then the daughter of Jephthah.
    Country dwelling and magic - we were never far away!    But Pagan was a dirty word.     However I feel that as Christianity began to lose its grip on the population - as people became freer to think for themselves about life and death and purpose, that long dormant gene switched itself on again -and there was a return to the spirituality of the country dweller.   More concern about wider the questions of why we exist and what for - and where to search for the answers.
    It passed me by of course.     It was only when I began my ministry training at Manchester that I came across a real pagan network.    I wasn’t sure what to think about it at the time - because I had gone to the college not knowing much about the true story of Christianity - let alone about other faiths.   I turned up with my history of attending the family church and a Christian based boarding school.   I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from ministry training.
    One of the tutors at the College was Peter Roberts - and he had started what was then the Neopagan network.   It was a sort of secret society of Unitarians - who had an interest in Paganism.    Even those who were members felt a little embarrassed about it.   There was an expectation that they would be criticised by the rest of the Unitarian Movement - so they used pseudonyms when writing for their journal or contacting each other.     I must admit I was surprised that such a group existed.
    I suppose I had the idea that they must have danced naked around oak trees in the moonlight every equinox and mid summers eve.  That they might even be casting spells and foreseeing the future.  A good one for me I hoped.
    It wasn’t like that at all - though there were some who were keen on tree hugging.
    What I did find was a greater awareness of nature, of the natural world - of the damage being done to the earth.    There was an awareness too of the spiritual nature of paganism - of mother earth and the goddess - and the green man.
    It all seemed very new and strange - I had heard of Druids and witches - but didn’t know we had any within the Unitarians.
    I talked often with Peter Roberts - we students became used to Peter’s version of a communion service where we saluted the elements that sustained life and poured  wine from our ceremony onto the cherry tree in the college quadrangle.
    It was the Rev Arthur Long who told us that when the new Unitarian hymn book was published - that was the old blue book - Hymns of Worship Revised - one reviewer had said that he was surprised that many of the hymns were nature based.
    When the Green Book came along - Hymns for Living - there were some beautiful nature based hymns in it.   My favourites were No 9 - So simple is the human heart -
“So simple is the earth we tread,,
So quick with love and life her frame,
Ten thousand years have dawned and fled
And still her magic is the same

The distinguished Unitarian minister Sydney Knight wrote six hymns for that book - and they are all wonderful - In Moods of Summer he wrote:
In the cool of summer evening\When the dancing insects play
And in the garden, street and meadow
Linger echoes of the day;
Then my heart is full of yearning
Hopes and Memories flood the whole
Of my being, reaching inwards to the
Corners of my soul

And from the hymn. Tranquility:
From troubled turmoil seek an inward goal
Tranquility shall make the spirit whole
Be still, and know a presence in the soul,
Serene, alive.

This was a spirituality that spoke to me - about letting the wonders of the natural world heal and lift the soul to heights of joy.  This was better than the continual threat of eternal punishment
The spirit of the country dweller was alive and well.  If Sydney Knight had it - then it must be ingrained in others too.

Now I liked the idea of neo paganism - and if it meant dancing round oak trees under a full moon - I’d love to but I had better practice my circle dancing first -   I don’t think circle dancers go naked and paint themselves in wode.    But thought I should find out some more - and bought a book on practical paganism from Amazon.  (By kemp and Sertori)
   
I found that paganism had been reinvented by a couple of dare I say, charlatans - God bless them.     In essence it was all a reaction against church orthodoxy.   Gerald Gardiner founded Wicca in the 1940s - writing two books - Witchcraft Today and The Book of Shadows.   It emphasised the feminine side of spirituality - worship of the goddess led by a priestess.    The witch’s power was to create the connections between the group  - or coven, and the goddess.   This meant using wands and cords and symbols  and rituals - and dancing.   Gerald Gardiner was both a showman and a naturist - so he liked the idea of members of his coven dancing naked - particularly if they were young women.   He argued that nakedness meant equality - it put you directly in touch with nature and there could not be a hierarchy based on the clothes you wore.     He wasn’t so keen on women with bingo wings and a bit of a belly.  Those who didn’t like the idea of dancing naked in the moonlight down in the oak grove - opted for cloaks - or didn’t bother either dressing up or undressing.
    It set a trend with covens limited to a certain number - and rituals to anoint a person as a priestess.    There were inner circles and outer circles - and usually you had to spend a year in the outer circle first.
The rituals and ceremonies were made up - and you could say their traditional ancestry was bogus - but people like symbols and rituals - and it was part of the process of making contact with the nature spirits.
    These pagan groups diversified - and new groups would form  creating their own meaning for and purpose of the coven - Rather like our own small congregations they could be trust groups, caring for one another, discussing their beliefs and making up rituals to celebrate who they were and the goddess they believed in.     It was mostly women only.
Gerald Gardiner was such a publicist - that he was putty in the hands of the press - and they were happy to exploit the idea of these wicca covens being a bit loony and a bit licentious - and society, as now, was very moral and was happily disgusted by the stories that were printed.

    The Druids on the other hand were accepted in a much more benign way - just as a bit loony and strange.  Their founder was Iola Morganwg - otherwise a stone mason from Glamorgan called Edward Williams.     People had known about the druids from early times, they were celtic poets and song smiths and academics.      And it is said they became absorbed into the Christian church.
    Iolo discovered some ancient manuscripts and revived the druid orders with its gown and insignia - the Gorsedd.   They gathered at sunrise on mid summers day to welcome the sun and read poetry and perform rituals.    It was later realised that the ancient texts he discovered had been written by himself - but the good thing is that his order of druids have helped to keep the welsh language alive.     Druids meet in groups and have an organisation and mostly they follow the eight fold ceremonies of the turning year.

    All the rest are bunched together as Heathens.     They are the based on the Germanic and Scandinavian folk legends of Odin and his court.   They meet in ‘hearths’.
It originated first of all I read in the town and cities where young men wanted a romantic escape from the confines of their environment so they would gather in the country to sing songs and talk about their ancestors and the origins of their folklore.   They were nearly all local groups.    In the United States apparently the idea of Odin worship really caught one - but there were many variations in their practices and beliefs.

    It reminded me of the Bolton Whitmanites.   Devotees of the poet Walt Whitman who gather on the poets birthday each year 31st May, wear sprigs of lilac in their lapels and climb winter hill, pausing frequently to read from his poetry and to share the loving cup filled with red wine.    The original Whitmanites just wanted to escape from the smoke of the mill town, enjoy fresh air, read poetry and talk about life.


And last on my list was Shamanism.     This follows from the stories of dancing priests and whirling dervishes - who would go into a trance to be able to heal or predict the future.      They were very popular with some groups who use to take themselves into a trance using psychedelic drugs.

And of course there are many more - goddess worshipping groups such as the Fellowship of Isis and the Druid Clan of Dana.

There is a Pagan Federation - with the same sort of relationship with its members as our Essex Hall Unitarian headquarters - the Pagan Federation  produces a magazine and offers courses in attaining priestess hood and mysticism - and healing.
    The Pagan Federation might say that Goddess worship is a prerequisite of Paganism - it doesn’t have to be.    In my opinion paganism is as much about being religious in a nature way - respecting the earth, respecting one another, caring about the group, recognising the spiritual cohesiveness of humankind and the natural world - and worshipping through rituals and with symbols the divine essence of life which most see as having a feminine aspect.     It is a rejection of authoritative patriarchal hierarchical religions - more do it yourself based on enjoyment and happiness.

    The rituals they offer should only be seen as advice - and they can be starting points for a group to devise their own rituals and worship ceremonies.   They should not be seen as dogmatic instructions on how things should be done.

    There are ceremonies that begin by addressing the quarters - north, south, east and west.   There are ceremonies that address the elements - earth, fire, air and water.

    Each element has a colour : Earth is green or brown,   air is yellow or white,   fire is orange or red,   water is blue or green

    Each element has a property:  Earth is nurturing and strength, air is intellect and the spirit - breath of life, fire is energy, vitality and passion, water is love, emotion and healing.

    To all who feel more closely connected to the earth, there is a strong resentment against the abuse of it by governments and multi national corporations.

    Most pagan groups, base their rituals and their worship on the cycle of the year.   It is said that the celtic cross is the combination of the Christian Cross and the Pagan circle.

    There are four astronomical events - the two equinoxes and the shortest and the longest days - and between them four festivals:
Ancient civilisations and cultures used to begin their year either at springtime or at harvest time.

(1) I like to start the year with Imbolc (or Candlemas).   Round about the beginning of February  The time when life begins to return to the earth - it is the time when the soil seems to give a signal that the seed can germinate, the bird to think about mating and building a nest, the snowdrop emerge.

(2) Then Ostara - the spring equinox - from which we gained the word Easter.

(3)  Beltane is May Day - time for boys and girls to pair off and dance around the maypole

(4)  Litha - the summer solstice

(5)  Lammas at the end of July celebrates the corn harvest

(6)  Mabon - the autumn equinox

(7)  Samhain - the autumn and the dying of the year

(8)  Yule - the shortest day - the winter solstice

    There can be rituals for all of them - they each represent significant moments in the year - they are equated too with the birth, life and death of the deity - the journey into and out of the underworld - there are many folk stories on this theme.

    So that was all about Paganism - I thought it was pretty good - for a country dweller - pretty good for a town dweller too - to put everyone in touch with the natural world, to feel in tune with the cycle of the year - to have a sense of the spiritual - free of any dogmatic authority, to feel a personal freedom in the way you lived your life, to find like minded people and meet together - share in rituals of dance and poetry, and maybe have a goddess in your life.

    Having read all this in my book, I didn’t feel so bad about Peter Roberts and his Neo Pagan network - and I joined it.   Even though the Pagan words was a bit of an anathema to some Unitarians, the group eventually had a meeting at Hucklow to talk about next steps.
There were two questions:
    Do we want to continue as a secret society within the Unitarian Movement ?
   
    Should we out of deference to the main part of the Movement, change our name to something which more reflected our own feelings?

    We agreed we would be an open group and give up pseudonyms.   We agreed that we would call ourselves the Unitarian Earth Spirit Network.

    The name is a better reflection of what we are - it sets up as a specifically Unitarian group - and hopefully it is not associated with the the loony reputation that came about through the founding father Gerald Gardiner.    Furthermore we didn’t feel we wanted to subscribe or be seen as a member of an organisation outside Unitarianism  such as the Pagan Federation.    There is nothing to stop individual members being or becoming members of the Pagan federation - or of belonging to pagan, wicca or any other group.
We are a society within Unitarianism - and even though non Unitarians subscribe to our newsletter - which we call the File - and non Unitarians can come on our week-ends - we emphasise that we exist within Unitarianism.

    The Unitarian Earth Spirit Network is an international group.   The editor of the File lives in Sweden and we have members in the United States and Australia.      Each publication of the File has a theme and it is open to all members to contribute to.   There is a strong emphasis on poetry and reflections about the natural world.   Now and again we have a meet at Hucklow for a week-end to celebrate one of the eight festivals - we use material from many sources and quite a lot that we prepare or write for ourselves.

    There are now two local earth spirit groups and we  have had a couple of successful regional events during the last few years.
It is our hope that new groups will start up.  I would like to see groups starting up within congregations.

We manage the earth spirit network without a formal committee - but we do have a secretary and a treasurer in David Arthur.

    When I first came into the Unitarian Movement, I suppose I was much more Christian in my outlook - not surprising as it was the faith I was brought up in and I carried the same prejudices against other faiths as most Christians of my generation did - perhaps not as much as my mother’s generation.   

    Given the freedom to sort myself out, I then came to the conclusion that there was actually little wrong with some parts of Christianity - its basic teaching - the sermon on the mount etc - it teaches a good way of life and respect for all - In the stories of Jesus he never discriminates against anyone - speaks to them all, heals them all - no matter that they are Samaritan or Centurion or loose woman or tax collector etc.   He  is the exemplar for anyone seeking to live a religious or spiritual based life. 

    It was the structure and the power politics of the church as an organisation that had distorted this simple message about values and attitudes.     Nor could I reconcile the Old Testament God  with the New Testament God - but I did feel there was something more to life than values and behaviour.
    If anything I was a fan of Marcion - who dumped all of the Old Testament and said Christianity was also about having a good time, singing, dancing, poetry, parties as well as worship of the God of Love.
    But it is not just about how we life but also why we live.   There is also a sense of life as spiritual energy in the world - in the universe even - where does it come from?    What makes one person aware of it and want to commune with it - and not another ?
- In the end I settled on a form of gnosticism  as explaining much of that and adding an element of mystery to my religion.  

    And next there is a growing awareness of the fragility of the earth itself - what we are doing to it because we really don’t respect it all.     In time we will kill ourselves off by making the environment unsustainable for humankind - and this will happen before the earth itself collapses back into the sun.     Care for the earth and respect for it should be part of our faith.

    I sometimes think, in my gnostic way, that humankind is not part of the natural world at all - if anything we are parasites who long ago were dumped here, or developed here.     We treat the earth as our host - we feed off it, exploit it, ruin it with reckless abandon - and don’t care - and in the end we will kill it - and humanity will die with it or maybe a remnant will find a way to leave and go on to ravage another planet.    
    But some of us - some parasites are alive to the danger.    Either we have been blessed with a different gene, or we have a greater understanding of the wider energy and spirituality of the universe - or simply as a matter of self preservation we see we cannot continue as we are - the parasites have to sort themselves out or one more enlightened group must be more dominant and influential.

    The earth like each of us is not perfect - it is imperfect - that is why it and we are trying to make ourselves perfect - improving all the time but never reaching perfection.   If we were perfect nothing would need to change - it would be stagnation - pretty wonderful stagnation - but that is impossible - there is always a boundary to push against and pass through.

    I know there are eco groups and green groups with agenda to stop this exploitation of the earth and its resources and who try to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable people - but we Unitarians are also spiritual people - we have a wider picture - and our spirituality gives strength.

    We Unitarians are a mixed bunch with many differing views - often going in different directions - there are some who want to restore the Unitarian Christianity of the nineteenth century as our identity - some who want us to be more like the buddhists or the Brahma Camage.

    I want us to develop our earth centred spirituality - to connect our spirits to the spirit of the earth and the overarching godly life force that moves it all along in spite of what is being done to it.    We need to feel the presence of our god or goddess in life itself - and we need to respect it and yes worship it, give thanks for it, promise ourselves to do better for it and for all that lives.   We need to be closer to the earth and celebrate its changing seasons - feel part of it.
    We need to celebrate the wisdom of our ancestors and honour those in our families who have passed on.   We need to honour one another - for we are each part of the whole

    It is not a matter of going back to old rituals just to escape from the busy cities - it is not a looking back way of life.  Dancing naked and putting on wode is not the expression of our identity - nor casting spells with wands -

    It is a way of going forward to become true country dwellers - but the country is the earth itself  not just the local countryside.- the source of our life and the source of our joy in life.

    Based on this I say, Let’s go forward to paganism.


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