By Our Anthropologist
Oracle - Sulis-Minerva Literarure, Astrology Soothsayer update. We have managed to obtain the services of a Celtic Oracle who serves Sulis Minerva, which readers will have heard of as being in Bath, the United Kingdom.
Most major religions have failed humanity, hence "suicide bombers" and the deep interest in that which is casually, and incorrectly, called "pagan belief." Pagan or pagus, means countryman or countrywoman, it doesn't mean belief in any particular godhead. But we must face that many people, mostly from the USA, have gone overboard for what they see as a truly "spiritual" belief. Problem, they do not know what is meant by "spiritual" anymore than they know what "pagan" or that other buz word, "Wicca" means.
What is Truth? Pilate asked of Joshua bar-Joseph, Jesus to those who do not know the classical language. The fact is, and it is rare one can state a FACT with regard to any kind of religious belief, truth in this case is that our small planet, circulating a minor star, harbours human life. That life is technically pretty bright, it has produced medicines like penicillin, but it has also produced weapons of mass destruction. Maybe it would be good for our Mother if humanity destroyed itself, certainly life, other than humanity would benefit from our destruction. DO NOT think that the Good Goddess or Father God will prevent us from killing ourselves, they possess a kind of love for us, but not the "baby-love" taught by Judaism, Christianity and, to some extent, by Islam. Even the Bible, Torah and Koran, tell us, "We have free will." And down the years we have used it extensively, but let no one ascribe to the Good Goddess or rather God the "intervention concept on our behalf." If we kill ourselves, the Deities will wipe the slate clean and say, "Oh well, that experiment failed." Then they will try again.
Paganism in this Century
by Llystyn Jones
For many people Paganism mean superstitions, witchcraft, maybe even Satanism and many other very hazy ideas, but almost all indicating something bad. This is, of course, totally wrong, in fact nothing could be further from the truth. And to quote Julius Caesar, ‘He who wins the war is the one who writes the history.’ And in the long drawn out discussions, and for most of the time it was discussion nothing more, Paganism lost out to an embryonic branch of Judaism called Christianity and later other religious that followed a Singularity where all Pagans believe that there are two Creators, the Universes were created by a Duality.
In fact for the first hundred years of the existence of the sect, it was not called Christianity at all. To the Romans, who ruled the known world in the West, it was just a sect of Judaism, one that was a bit of a nuisance but only as much as the followers of the Maccabees, who also came from Galilee by the way. The person who gave the sect the name by which we know it today, was Pliny the Younger in writing letters to the Emperor Trajan about conflicts between Christians, as Pliny called them, and ‘other Jewish Groups.’ He asked what he was to do with them. Trajan replies that if it is ‘the Jews who start the trouble’ then he is to punish those. That, in effect, is what Pliny did. This laid the seeds of conflict between the Jews and Christians that was eventually to develop into anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Of course many Arabic nations do fully realise that Hitler, had he won, would have anyone belonging the Semitic Races a target for his vengeance.
It is generally considered that the Roman Empire underwent a total change when Constantine ‘became’ a Christian. Actually very little changed at all, Constantine delayed his baptism into the Faith until he was on his death bed. That said, it was about the same time that the Council of Nicaea decided which of all the writings and stories about Jesus, or Ieshua bar Ioseph to give his correct name, were to be included in what we now know as The New Testament. One of the things that happened at the same time concerned the Goddess Isis, who had millions of followers and represented women, where everything that Christianity taught, largely because of Paul, told against females. It certainly appears from his writings that Paul did not like women very much. Isis was therefore changed into Mary, the Mother of the Jesus figure. I put it that way because within a very short space of time the ‘real man’ the ‘real Jesus’ had been lost in a web of mystical tales that had absolutely no basis in fact.
Modern Pagans have no argument with the Jesus figure, in fact the miracles he performed, healing ones and others, are very much in the tradition of Great Figures who through their Gift of the Spirit, are of the God and Goddess. Pagans recognise Jesus as Blessed of the Duality that make what we know as the Creative Force which made everything, from a leaf to a supernova.
What do Pagans believe? Well, I suppose the principle difference between ourselves and members of the three religions which have dominated belief in the lands West of India for the last two plus thousand years is this: we take the Feminine Aspects of Reality far more into account than they do. We are at odds with their Paternalistic, narrow, Deterministic belief. To all Pagans the three seem to be largely negative and overflowing with ‘Don’t Do this or that,’ and far less with real Love. Although all three ‘say’ they believe love is All, none of them actually practice it, at least it does not seem that way to us. To most Pagans, Christians Jews and Muslims spend most of their time almost shouting ‘thou shalt not’ rather than concentrating on the Spiritual Love given by Father God and the Good Goddess. Oh they all say, ‘God Is Love’ and such like; but to illustrate my point, I well remember walking past a classroom where a Religious Knowledge lesson was taking place, as it was called then. The teacher was standing over a young lad and snapping a pencil on his head and saying ‘God IS Love boy, Remember that, God IS Love.’ I have to say that from where I stood it did not look as though the teacher really believed what he was saying.
Today, watching extremists of all denominations and religions across the world, fighting and killing each other, it would appear that their beliefs are based solely on the idea, ‘do what I say or we’ll beat you to death.’ For Pagans, who have never throughout history ever killed anyone for not believing or worshipping the as they do, it is very sad. I am sure it is sad for large numbers of all three religions as well, for I am sure they know it runs contrary to what their founders really wished. Certainly to what the Founder of Christianity taught.
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