All Those Paganisms. Whew! What Clarity!

Just a quickie because I have been wallowing working in on a bit about patron deities which is to serve as a response to a couple of friends & their patron-related pondering, but, it is taking me much time & I have so little.

Tangentiality is my nature & procrastination my forté. Thus, in lieu of working on that post, I am opting to make mention of a most clarifying article I discovered via Aedicula Antinoi: A Small Shrine of Antinous. The piece is The Three (or more?) “Centers” of Paganism & can be found over at The Allergic Pagan. Basically, this article synthesized years of thought for me -- I have always grappled with these ideas, but could never put my finger on them quite this concisely.


Here's a visual breakdown of the "Three Centers of Paganism," but I highly, strongly, no, must insist that you read his explanation of these centers & what they represent.

Three Centers of Paganism by The Allergic Pagan.

I have always had a really difficult time articulating exactly what makes all the diverse & disparate Pagan groups/belief systems so very different from one another. Sometimes I feel like we're not even using the same definitions for common words. Probably because we are not. Yet we share this umbrella. What to do? In my community, I have witnessed plenty of misunderstandings related to precisely these concepts -- everyone using the "Pagan" label yet occupying dissimilar locations within these spheres. If nothing else, having a common point of reference might help us communicate better.


On a personal note, I was taken quite by surprise when the author zeroed in on my particular location within those circles:

"Some more literalist forms of animism, which might be called “spirit-centered”, might overlap with both earth-centered and deity-centered Paganism." (emphasis mine)

Oh! I do! Really, I do! All of this helped me better understand why I often feel like an anomaly. It also clarified much of why I could never completely embrace (most) Wiccan belief systems. When I finished reading, I felt like my head was finally screwed on straight... & perhaps I am not alone...


"Literalist animism." (Hooray! New nomenclature!) Whoah, really? That's me! So I'm not the only one?