Naturalistic Paganism
The HPedia: Deity
Your help is needed! Please critique this entry from the HPedia: An encyclopedia of key concepts in Naturalistic Paganism. Please leave your constructive criticism in the comments below.
In myth, a deity is typically portrayed as a figure of supernormal power and importance with some deep connection to the natural, cultural, or moral order.
Deity has been conceived in myriad ways. Naturalistic concepts are admittedly less common than other kinds, but they have been known throughout history.
A classic depiction of the variety of views of deity in Contemporary Paganism can be found in Margarian Bridger and Stephen Hergest’s Pagan Deism: Three Views. The essay presents views according to the three primary colors of red, blue, and yellow, more or less resembling hard polytheism, soft polytheism, and naturalism, respectively. Cast as the three points of a triangle, the merging of colors between them illustrates the dynamic spectrum of beliefs available in Paganism. In Bridger and Hergest’s model, Naturalistic Paganism would cluster near the yellow tip.
M. Jay Lee, in a post in the yahoo group Naturalistic Paganism, provides a different breakdown of different views of deity in Paganism:
Here is how I would categorize the major positions on theism:
1) anti-theism – No gods period, symbolic or otherwise
2) symbolic theism – uses gods as symbols, metaphors, allegories for natural phenomena/forces, abstract concepts, unconscious drives etc
3) soft theism – views gods as a manifestation of a real (external) but somewhat nebulous higher power which is usually seen as leading us into some higher state of being (the particular gods/goddesses may be human-created metaphors but behind them is a real immortal power)
4) hard theism – the view that the gods (and other such beings like faeries and angels) really exist as literal, conscious, immortal super-beings.
Category 2 is the most typical mode for HP. Categories 1 and 2 are generally compatible with Religious Naturalism.
Seemingly absent from this category scheme is a view of deity as a directly-experienced mental phenomenon, similar to a dream image. The dream image is not necessarily “symbolic” of anything, but is a real, direct mental experience. In the same fashion, deities appearing in the mind’s eye would not be symbolic either, but real as such (though without implying any kind of objective reality external to the individual mind).
See also “Day/Night Language.”
Check out other entries in our HPedia.
Care and feeding of your atheist Pagan, by Jeffrey Flagg
“We are among you.”
I’ve been meaning to write an article like this for a while now, and in my mind, I’ve done it under a number of different titles. It started life as “What is an Atheist Pagan, Anyway?” Over time, though, I’ve realized that’s really not the most satisfying tack for such an article. Nobody elected me Emperor of Atheist Pagans, so I can’t make statements about what we all are. Finally, a series of email exchanges with one of my fellow mystic friends brought the structure of this article to its forefront, because I’ve noticed that there is a predictable mutual confusion in our interactions. The reason why I feel something of a “care and feeding” style article is better is that the theme is a bit more fun, casual, and personal. I can’t speak for others, but I don’t require actual care and feeding, though I do sometimes enjoy being a pet. Read More
Upcoming work
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Next Sunday
Do you consciously bring science into your spirituality?
How important is science to your spiritual practice?, by B. T. Newberg
Appearing Sunday, March 24th, 2013
Recent Work
How important is myth to your practice? by B. T. Newberg
Magic services: Taking money out of the equation, by Drew Jacob
The HPedia: Ritual
This entry is from the HPedia: An encyclopedia of key concepts in Naturalistic Paganism. Your help is needed to critique this entry! Please leave your constructive criticism in the comments below.
James Croft of the Humanist Community Project gives a simple but workable definition of ritual:
By “ritual” I mean any reasonably regular practice that an individual or community engages in which has a primary or significantly symbolic purpose.
Halstead summarizes four levels on which Neopagan ritual may be experienced:
1. Exoteric: Celebrates the changing of the seasons and connecting with the Earth.
2. Symbolic: Employs the changing of the seasons as an outward metaphor of inward personal changes, including the changes of the human life-cycle or the ebb and flow of enthusiasm that we experience psychologically.
3. Spiritual: Facilitates the process of individuation, by incarnating, consecrating, and integrating the daemonic/shadow elements of our psyche.
4. Mystical: Instead of the integration of the psyche, a (controlled) dis-integration of the psyche or sublimation of the ego.
Ritual might be seen as a form of embodied cognition. Dr. Adrian Harris writes:
Bell claims that ritual is a “bodily strategy that produces an incarnate means of knowing” (Bell, 1992: 163), while Grimes (Grimes, 1995) makes the provocative suggestion that ritual is a bodily way of knowing designed to move consciousness from the head to the body. Though Grimes doesn’t elucidate, Asad applies Mauss’s notion of the habitus to problematize the distinction between religious ritual and more general bodily practices. Asad concludes that the role of ritual is not to express a symbolic meaning but to influence habitus, thereby helping to create district subjectivities (Asad, 1993: 131). Crossley makes a similar argument that rituals “are a form of embodied practical reason” (Crossley, 2004: 31). Drawing primarily on the work Mauss, Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu, he concludes that rituals are “body techniques”, that is to say “forms of practical and pre-reflective knowledge and understanding” (Crossley, 2004: 37). As such they can “effect social transformations” through transforming our “subjective and intersubjective states” (Crossley, 2004: 40).
Cognitive scientists have also worked out technical theories of ritual. For example, see Alcorta and Sosis’ 2006 paper Why Ritual Works.
See also “Embodiment.”
Check out other entries in our HPedia.
How important is myth to your practice?
In what way is your practice rooted in ancient Pagan religions, if not by myth?
– by B. T. Newberg
Do ancient myths play a large part in your practice, or only a minor role? Perhaps even no role at all?
By myths, I mean historical traditions of stories that have come down to us from specific cultures, and which typically involve pantheons of gods and sometimes other fabulous creatures and beings. For example: Greek myths of Dionysos and Persephone, Norse myths of Freya and Odin, Irish myths of the Dagda and Cerridwen, etc.
Please take part in the poll, then leave a comment on the issues discussed below.
One thing I’ve noticed in the Naturalistic Pagan community is that myths get much less air-time than in other Pagan circles. They may be talked about indirectly, i.e. as the abstract phenomenon of myth, or not at all. Here at HP, most of it has been of the indirect variety. This makes me wonder how central myths really are to Naturalistic Paganism.
On the one hand, the issue is almost certainly a bias effect resulting from the nature of our community: what distinguishes us is not the myths but our beliefs about them, so we tend to dwell more on the nature of myth than myths themselves.
On the other hand, I can’t shake the feeling that for many of us, such as environmental types and perhaps other varieties, myth may be minor or even absent entirely.
If that is the case, and the poll above ought to give some sense of whether it is or not, then that leaves me with a question:
- In what way is your practice rooted in or inspired by ancient Pagan religions, if not by myth?
Please leave a comment with your reply.
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