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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in christianity

Women all over the world are tired of being treated like third class citizens. Even in cultures that traditionally worship the divine feminine, grown women are granted fewer rights than a male infant and are punished with mutilation and death if they display personal initiative or act in accordance with nature. Three world religions blame females personally and vindictively for a mistake supposedly made by the very first woman ever created! By what logic should the ancient misjudgment of Eve be held against our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters today? This is a classic example of masculine propaganda: if we men say that women are inherently flawed, we can blame them for all of our problems. We can even make the outrageous claim that we were made in the image of God—but they were not!    

It is shocking how many women have bought into this mind manipulation, and actually believe that they are inferior. But this is not universally the case; these days many are seeking a different sort of religion that will give them equal, if complementary, status to their brothers.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • gary c. e.
    gary c. e. says #
    hi re: "There is an important difference between the Christian conception of Satan and the Hindu or Buddhist notion of Mara, the
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    This is so lovely, Gary! Thank you so much for sharing it. Tolkien has long been among my favorite wordsmiths, and now I see that
  • Stifyn Emrys
    Stifyn Emrys says #
    I enjoyed the article and agree wholeheartedly with your conclusion, but I don't see where the foolishness comes in. The headline
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Thank you, Stifyn - and you are absolutely right! I think it WOULD have been foolishness personified if I had presumed to supply

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Rebelling against Christianity?

I have met several young adults who became witches as an act of rebellion against Christianity. I am not one of them. In fact, I would have become a pagan years earlier if it hadn't met so many pagans who hated Christianity. I have no interest in a religion that exists primarily as a negation of another.

I didn't rebel against Christianity. I discovered paganism as a wholesome religion, on its own terms. The draw to paganism has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. I used to interpret it as a calling to bring Christ to the pagans, i.e. the light to the darkness. But looking back now I know that the richness of mythology and the magic of nature has always beckoned to my spirit.

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  • terra gazelle
    terra gazelle says #
    sorry about the double post.
  • gary c. e.
    gary c. e. says #
    hi again Annika you quoted Kahlil. may i share a poem that was a kind of resolution to that "seasonless world" for me?; Love Af
  • terra gazelle
    terra gazelle says #
    I did not make some transition from Christianity to being Wiccan..I was Wiccan, I was just raised as a Christian. I did not carry
  • gary c. e.
    gary c. e. says #
    well said terra gazelle! yes, i do think it is better to be centered on one path and then if one wants to add or appreciate cert
  • terra gazelle
    terra gazelle says #
    Yes Gary, the Tao is said to be the Pagan part of Buddhism. I have a member of my group that also has a taoist world view. Taoism

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Help! Recently I went into a new age store looking for some supplies for my Wiccan altar, and a woman at the store told me Wicca was dangerous and I should stop practicing it right away. I’m new to Wicca, and this woman really freaked me out and got me worried that I could harm myself or my family. Is Wicca really dangerous?

Wicca is a life-affirming, celebratory path. Its focus is on understanding our place in the natural world and living better lives by being more in harmony with nature. In my opinion, it’s a path that can help seekers with self-empowerment and self-improvement. Most of the negative ideas about Wicca are born out of fear and lack of understanding, rather than knowledge.

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  • Greybeard
    Greybeard says #
    Wicca is dangerous to Christians because we are non-Christian. Wiccans don't attend church and obey their ministers or Priests.
  • Joseph Merlin Nichter
    Joseph Merlin Nichter says #
    If we only had a nickle for every time we were told it's bad, we could all retire. Great post.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

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Since we walk two different paths – my husband follows the Norse path, and mine is a mixture of several Latin American paths (mostly Venezuelan Spiritualism and Umbanda) - we celebrate both Yule and Christmas. In the last post, we created a very talismanic Yule Tree; in this post, we'll move into the creation and history of a Nativity Scene.

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Look, we all know that in most Western countries, Christianity is the major religion. This means that for many people in Western countries, 'religion' is synonymous with 'Christianity'. I suspect that in the modern Pagan movement, a lot of anger towards Christianity comes from this blatant disregard of two thirds of the world's religious people. In general, I can deal with the dominant Christian worldview. I may not like it, but I respect it. In my day-to-day dealings with those of the Christian faith, I can usually find the things we have in common within our religions and we make it work. This, however, does not mean that Christianity is the same as Hellenismos, and that a Christian chaplain--by origin a word applied to a representative of the Christian faith, now applied to men and women of other religions or philosophical traditions--could accurately guide me if I should ever end up in a hospital, the military or a prison.

While I'm usually very positive about Canada, I am not so positive today. CBC reports that the federal government is cancelling the contracts of non-Christian chaplains at federal prisons across the country. This doesn't mean just the 'fringe' faiths like Buddhism and Sikh--the Wiccan chaplain that got hired, got fired right away back in September--but also Judaism, Islam and the First Nation spiritualities. Why? Because Public Safety Minister Vic Toews isn't convinced part-time chaplains from other religions are an appropriate use of taxpayer money.

I would love to go caveman batshit over this, but Hellenismos has this thing about ethics and eloquent speech, so I'm going to try and actually formulate my opinion instead of reducing my power of speech to a Lolcat.

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Crossing the Sacred Threshold: The Gods of Small Things

 

I am a Latin teacher currently (and laboriously) working my way toward a PhD in Classics. I read a lot of Latin texts (in Latin and usually with quite a bit of cussing along the way as I attempt to untangle classical Latin syntax). Fortunately, for the most part, I enjoy this and one of the tangential elements that I find particularly satisfying in my studies is occasionally coming across an interesting reference to ancient Roman [polytheistic] religion along the way.  It happens a lot and for all that I am Heathen, not a practitioner of Religio Romana, I find that every time I read about how a man or woman, raised in Roman culture, steeped in its religion honored his or her Gods, I find my own practices enriched.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Galina Krasskova
    Galina Krasskova says #
    Anne, I"ll try to write something on that soon.
  • Joseph Bloch
    Joseph Bloch says #
    I've been pushing for a re-recognition of the spirits of the land and household for years, now, both in my personal practice and e
  • Anne Newkirk Niven
    Anne Newkirk Niven says #
    I'd love to hear more about *how* to connect with the small gods of place; although I'm quite well acquainted with the larger deit

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