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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in core paganism

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Are the Gods Archetypes?

If I could zap one word from the pagan vocabulary, it would be “archetype.”

Don't ask me what it means. When I press people for a definition, they're mostly hard-put to provide one. So far as I can tell, archetypes seem to be something like Platonic Ideas.

If so, what does it mean to say that the gods are archetypes?

Me, I'm an Old Style Pagan. I worship (to name only some) the Sun, the Moon, the Storm, Earth, Sea, the Winds. Whatever it is that They may be (when asked “What is a god?” the poet Simonides replied, “I find that the more I think about the question, the more opaque it becomes”), it doesn't seem to me to be in any way meaningful to say that they're archetypes.

Whatever that may be.

Craft historian Michael Howard has contended that the reductionist tendency to regard the gods as archetypes—essentially, as parts of ourselves—has actually stood in the way of entering into any sort of real relationship with Them.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Anne Forrester
    Anne Forrester says #
    I also love this posting and agree with everything that Shiri says above. I was going to write a lengthy comment until I read her
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Thanks for your generous words, Shiri; I'm in full agreement with your observations. I continue to be astounded by the simultaneou
  • nolongerhere
    nolongerhere says #
    Thanks for this. I've been finding a lot resonating in your microposts about the profundity of basics and the ancestors. Modern pa

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Are There Pagans on Other Planets?

Are there pagans on other planets?

For now, of course, there's no way to know. But my guess would be: Yes, there probably are. Wherever there is intelligent life, there will be pagans.

In fact, I'd be willing to go even farther. Since the Old Gods, the great Powers that give rise to, and sustain, life will necessarily (so far as we know) be constant from planet to planet, I suspect that the paganisms of the extraterrestrials may well bear something of a family resemblance to our own.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    The "Orange Man"? "Jack in the Indigo?" Curiouser and curiouser!
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I remember an article in Science News magazine that said yellow dwarf stars; like our sun, favor the development of chlorophyll as

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