Naturalistic Paganism
It’s hard to overstate Ozzy’s massive legacy and his impact on making our world what it is today (especially regarding music and religion). To even give an overview would be a massive undertaking, far beyond a blog post – it would be a book – and it’s already done, anyway, with many books out there already, including one by the Prince of Darkness himself (I Am Ozzy). Perhaps a tiny, manageable piece of all that is to look at how Ozzy is related to Naturalistic Paganism itself, along with some of my own memories.
Ozzy Helped Me
Unlike Ozzy (who was raised in the Church of England), I was raised Catholic, and I was so devout as an altar boy, that the priest expected me to go into the priesthood myself. Our family wasn’t fundamentalist or anything (Catholics and Catholic families span the whole spectrum from conservative to liberal), and I was raised with an interest in science and an openness to people of all religions and cultures. Still, there was a lot of fear and hatred in my family for things identified as “Satanic” – and still a suspicion of non-Christian religions (and of course of Atheists). For some context (especially for those without a lot of gray hair), Christianity ruled our culture back then (~1970) even more than it does today. Much more, in fact. It was assumed that everyone was of course Christian, and also assumed that our culture was openly Christian, with other religions generally not allowed to be open. Similarly, being openly LGBTQ was not safe – not safe for employment, for daily life, for buying at most businesses, for getting housing, for police protection, for being safe from attack or even murder. Of course marriage equality was a silly pipe dream that no serious person supported – it was completely off the table of reasonable discussion. Before the 60s and 70’s, women couldn’t get a credit card, buy a house, or often feasibly get a divorce, without the permission of her owner (husband or father). Men could legally rape their wives (“marital rape”), because after all, you can’t steal your own property, right?
Sure, the 60’s had made a serious dent in the absolute rule of 1950’s conservative patriarchy – but even that dent was usually in the context of liberal Christians. Progressives of the 60’s had tried to paint Jesus as a hippy type guru of love (ignoring a lot of scripture), which helped to free our society a bit while still fully endorsing Christianity as the one true path. This made it more possible for the progressive message to gain some traction in a Christian dominated culture, but it also had the effect of strengthening Christianity’s hold on our culture. And of course all of that varied a bit from place to place (and plenty of places in the United States are still back in the 1950’s culturally). Ozzy, along with Rock Music, was part of that whole shift. 
Ozzy was one of the first and biggest challenges to Christian Cultural Rule
In a world where saying anything about Christianity except praise was absolutely not allowed – neither on the right nor the left – and even the mention of Satan, demons, etc. was frowned upon unless it was within a threat, Ozzy bravely spoke up. As the lead singer of Black Sabbath (the name itself a direct and open challenge to that social censorship), he belted out song after song about Satan, demons, and so on. He instantly became perhaps the most hated public figure by Christians, and yet kept it up. The debut album from Black Sabbath had of course their blasphemous name itself, an oddly disturbing cover, and lyrics which again and again glorify what Christians consider unspeakable blasphemy. One example of many is NIB, which not only describes a person being drawn into a love of Satan from the point of view of Satan himself (humanizing the villain never goes over well among believers!), but also goes so far as to say that all of creation wasn’t made by Yahweh, but by Satan!
Album after album filled with forbidden blasphemy followed, with Christians howling with greater rage with each album. As we’ve seen time and again, the fall of a unstoppable rulers starts when someone speaks out against them, out loud, and doesn’t meet an immediate end. When the oddly disturbing, suggestive and enigmatic cover of Black Sabbath didn’t result in the instant blackballing of the band, the album covers which followed, and the songs they contained, could be even more openly blasphemous, even more openly in rebellion to Christian social censorship, and even more shocking to Christians (and to think that today, *they* are the ones who complain about “cancel culture!). Just a few years earlier, one could hardly imagine a record company having the bravery to even publish an album titled, literally, “Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath”, with a cover (at left) so shocking that it’s hard to describe (it includes a person being strangled by a snake, while 6 naked humanoids & a rat gloat over him, on a bed with a skull and “666”.
The Backlash
Christians tried to stop the normalization of being openly OK with things that Christians found abhorrent. Christians had many, many protests, including at Ozzy/Black Sabbath concerts (Ozzy joined a protest against his own concert once, never letting on that he was The Prince of Darkness himself). Christians had rallies where they burned Ozzy and similar records in bonfires, tried to get his music banned, tried to take him to court, and so on (and Ozzy continued to refuse to bow to Christianity – the upside down cross on is Diary of a Madman album cover is from 1981). As other musicians and others saw that Ozzy and bands like him still survived, many more joined Ozzy and other early heavy metal bands. Motley Crue, Judas Priest (another openly blasphemous name), Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath with Dio, Dio himself, Rainbow, Motorhead, AC/DC, and many more sprang up. Dungeons & Dragons appeared at the same time, allowing people to (in the game) cast spells, summon demons, and more. Christians threw D&D books into fires along with heavy metal albums, and yet the game only grew.
All of this fed into the 1980’s “Satanic Panic”, when Christians whipped themselves into a frenzy, seeing (imaginary) Satanism everywhere, and lashing out both directly and in attempts to use the force of law against whatever and whoever could be identified as a target. I remember a presentation of scare tactics at my Catholic church, about how D&D was luring kids into Satanism, literally causing demons to pop into people’s living rooms, and how it must be stopped. My friends and I (most who were Catholics at that same church) all had to convince our parents to let us keep meeting to play D&D. It was a tough sell. From that time, here is what the Christian organization trying to stop D&D said about it:
B.A.D.D. described D&D as “a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings.”[6]
(Anyone who actually plays D&D may be a bit perplexed by that description, as most of those things have never been in the many games of D&D I’ve played over the past 40+ years, while many that have are innocent anyway, like “blasphemy”, divination, and gambling.) Many innocent lives were ruined (or ended) by false accusations of Satanism or child abuse (wrongful convictions, prosecutions of childcare businesses and workers, lifelong mental damage, and much more). These false stories, conservative media hype, and damage to real people are echoed today in the same accusations from conservative sources like QAnon, feeding from similar fears of Christianity losing it’s ruling position (in the 1970s and 80s) or longing for Christianity to regain it (today).
Taking our Freedom for Granted Today
I’ve realized that I owe a good portion of my own personal freedom, and my own escape from Christianity (after realizing it didn’t have a real threat, and was simply false), to Ozzy and those like him, who helped break the iron grip that Christianity had on our culture prior to the late 70’s. After all, I, like many Christians, was raised to have a thought destroying, mind chilling, morbid fear of Hell and of anything that could send me there. But Ozzy and others like him brought those fears into the open, and in the light of examination, showed that they are nothing to fear. That ray of light in the prison of fear is often the first step needed before one can even start to look at things logically and deconstruct the whole system from there.
Today, we are seeing Christianity reasserting it’s control over all of us. I appreciate both those who, like me, know what it was like earlier and shudder to think of returning to that, and I also appreciate those many new voices in the fight for freedom who may not have lived through the world Ozzy helped us escape from, but who know how bad that could be. Still others don’t realize the threat we face, and seem to think that for some reason our freedom is guaranteed, and not in danger at all – and hence don’t help us against those people who actively want to see us return to a de facto theocracy in the United States.
But Hey – What about Whether or not Ozzy was a Naturalistic Pagan?
OK, it’s in the title of this blog post, so I have to address it – even though, in reality, whether or not Ozzy was a Naturalistic Pagan is less important than his impact, described above. After all, Isaac Newton was a solid Christian, and his scientific discoveries greatly helped the Enlightenment happen.
Was Ozzy Naturalistic?
Perhaps a good place to start is just after Ozzy’s birth as John Michael Osbourne, when he was baptized into the Church of England. Ozzy has pointed to this, his upbringing as a Christian, and his belief in a god of some sort (“nature” see below), and has often said that he’s Christian (especially during the many times he was accused of worshipping Satan).
Sadly, a Christian evangelist has claimed that he got Ozzy to convert to Christianity just before Ozzy died. Even if true (unlikely, it seems to be just a story the Christian made up), then that’s of course still silly because you can’t “convert” someone to Christianity who has always said they were Christian. Worse, it’s the age-old practice by Christians of targeting people when they are most vulnerable, be that prison “ministry” or other similar grifts, like claiming deathbed conversions (which are simply using a dying person to make an advertising tool). We saw the same thing with Voltaire, Paine, Darwin, and many more – fake claims of deathbed conversions, used immediately for advertising. In the real world, Ozzy describes his beliefs clearly in the quote below, from his book I Am Ozzy:
“The funny thing is, I’m actually quite interested in the Bible, and I’ve tried to read it several times. But I’ve only ever got as far as the bit about Moses being 720 years old, and I’m like, `What were these people smoking back then?’ The bottom line is I don’t believe in a bloke called God in a white suit who sits on a fluffy cloud any more than I believe in a bloke called the Devil with a three-pronged fork and a couple of horns. But I believe that there’s day, there’s night, there’s good, there’s bad, there’s black, there’s white. If there is a God, it’s nature. If there’s a Devil, it’s nature.”
― I Am Ozzy
The last two sentences sound Pantheistic, or perhaps Deistic. Is that close to naturalism? Perhaps. Remember also that one can be both a naturalist and a Christian (sure it’s tricky, but humans often hold various views at the same time). For instance, Michael Dowd was an open and outspoken Naturalistic Christian.
Perhaps Ozzy was closer to naturalism than Christian fundamentalists who believe in a human like god who directly intervenes in our world and sends non-Christians to Hell for eternal torture. That last part is probably a place where Ozzy most clearly differs with much of Christianity. Plenty of his songs and quotes express the belief that no one religion is correct, including Crazy Train (“millions of people living as foes, maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate”), or even more clearly in his more recent song, Dreamer, where he says “Your higher power may be God or Jesus Christ – It doesn’t really matter much to me”.
Also, Ozzy has also consistently poked fun at Christian television evangelists, at one point devoting a whole song to it “Miracle Man”, where he uses a dollar sign staff to herd pigs around inside a church. Ozzy was clearly quite aware that Christian preachers on television are scammers who exploit gullible followers.
Was Ozzy Pagan?
Maybe the hardest part of that question is not so much deciding where Ozzy was (that’s described above), but rather defining what “Pagan” is.
Is “Pagan” decided by self-identification? I would say “yes” – if someone says they are Pagan, then it’s reasonable to say they are Pagan.
Is it decided by practice? Whether or not someone practices Pagan rituals?
By clothing?
By environmental or Earth-centered beliefs or actions?
Any of these could be important, if not definitive (aside from self identification, which is definitive). And of course, at the end of the day, it’s not critically important to decide if anyone is Pagan or not. It’s just a point of curiosity or discussion – because no one is going to a hell, because hell’s not real.
Self-identification is important in any discussion like this, and Ozzy was clear on many times that he identifies as a Christian (even if that’s more of a cultural, progressive, or even pantheistic/naturalistic Christian). Ozzy has never (as far as I know) said that he’s Pagan or anything other than Christian.
What about practice? Similarly, Ozzy has also said that he doesn’t do “black magic” or such in response to the many accusations of Satanism. Ozzy does have a whole song about the famous Pagan Aleister Crowley, but of course that doesn’t make Ozzy Pagan himself (Rush has a song about a car, that of course doesn’t mean Neil Peart is a red car). His appearance is very often Pagan/Goth/Satanic – but that’s clearly a huge part of his stage show and the rebellion against conformity to the Christian overculture described earlier. I guess one could suggest that an Ozzy concert is, in some ways, a Pagan ritual in itself, if you want and Ozzy certainly led Ozzy concerts.
Is Ozzy Earth Centered? Here we at least have a clear and resounding “Yes!”. Ozzy has many songs that express care for our Earth, starting as soon as his solo career began. The song “Revelation Mother Earth” is a good example, and contains this:
I had a vision, l saw the world burn
And the seas had turned red
The sun had fallen, the final curtain
In the land of the dead
Mother, please show the children
Before it’s too late
Another clear example, and much more recent, is his song “The Almighty Dollar”, which is an environmentalist power track from start to finish. And of course we also have his life itself. Ozzy was even vegan for a while for environmental and ethical reasons, and just earlier this year worked with “Save the Chimps”. Ozzy’s clear Earth Centering is probably the closest he comes to being Pagan itself.
Ozzy’s legacy is impossible to fully describe. He undoubtedly helped millions of people escape a controlling Christianity, as he did for me. He made it culturally OK to openly play with ideas, images, and words that Christianity tells us that we must use only to promote Christianity. He was a beacon of freedom and of living live out loud, with enjoyment. As when Carl Sagan died, I’m reminded again that times like this speak to us all, urging us to pick up the torch, and carry it into the future.
Starstuff, Contemplating: We are assemblages of ancient atoms forged in stars – atoms organized by history to the point of consciousness, now able to contemplate this sacred Universe of which we are a tiny, but wondrous, part.
Dr. Jon Cleland Host is a scientist who earned his PhD in materials science at Northwestern University & has conducted research at Hemlock Semiconductor and Dow Corning since 1997. He holds eight patents and has authored over three dozen internal scientific papers and eleven papers for peer-reviewed scientific journals, including the journal Nature. He has taught classes on biology, math, chemistry, physics and general science at Delta College and Saginaw Valley State University. Jon grew up near Pontiac, and has been building a reality-based spirituality for over 30 years, first as a Catholic and now as a Unitarian Universalist, including collaborating with Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow to spread the awe and wonder of the Great Story of our Universe (see www.thegreatstory.org, and the blog at evolutionarytimes.org). Jon and his wife have four sons, whom they embrace within a Universe-centered, Pagan, family spirituality. He currently moderates the yahoo group Naturalistic Paganism.
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