What makes a pagan different?
Tuesday, 02May2017 Filed in: modern adult pagans⭐︎ beliefs
☿ Mercury retrograde ≠ ✰ pagan festival season 🌛 waxing half moon
On Sunday one of my guests asked a really good question. It got my philosophical side salivating."What makes a pagan different?"
Now there are a thousand and thirteen pat answers to that question, but that day it got me thinking.
It's not that neopagans are wiser or more spiritually enlightened. It's not that our beliefs are better or more true.
We have assumptions. We have awareness. And we have perspectives.
I'd list the first big assumption as that we are all connected. The rock face over there, that scrub cedar, that gecko, me, you, we'll all part of this same thing. What affects one affects us all. Simply by living we touch everything around us.
That assumption influences everything we neopagans do. Some take it too far, yes, but that's part of the connections too.
Because of that assumption, we have awareness of living things around us. Including some things that most people don't consider living. Specifically we are aware of the connections. We don't necessarily understand them, but we do have awareness. Also sometimes we assume that the awareness of connection extends to other life, and those living things must find it just as important as we neopagans do. This isn't necessarily true.
These assumptions and this awareness direct our perspective. And that's what throws other people off. Sometimes pagans see angles that "normal" people don't, angles that normal people never would have considered.
Now, here's what pagans and especially American neopagans forget.
Just because we perceive it doesn't mean it's right.
Just because we know it doesn't make it better.
Just because it's different doesn't mean we're visionary.
What we have is difference. What we don't have is ultimate Truth.
Short one today.
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