Pray to the Moon when She is round,
Luck with you will then abound,
What you seek for shall be found
On the sea or solid ground.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

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.
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?



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