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So What Does It Really Mean to be Pagan Now?

I was just accused of being a “fake pagan” and a “fraud”. Here is why. On cursed social media, I came upon a post which was about how dudes like “John” scream and whine that certain groups are offended by everything, but how about how offended John is, right? He can’t see the words “feminist” or “vegan” or “trans” etc. without getting offended. I made this comment: “Well, to be fair, there are a lot of people in a lot of those groups who are indeed triggery snowflakes who are indeed offended by everything.”

And THAT, apparently, meant that I am a “fake pagan” and a “fraud”. Why exactly, though? What did I miss? So I’m a fake and a fraud, huh? My dedicated, decades-long spiritual practice comes under attack by an anonymous stranger because I point out that some groups do indeed contain very easily triggered people. Was that false? Was I wrong? These are rhetorical, of course it was not false. And it DEFINITELY did not make me a fake pagan or a fraud.

So I asked myself a question. “What does it mean, then, to be pagan?” Especially in this incredibly woke and delusional and backwards world. Everyone knows everything and everyone is going crazy, yet no one thinks THEY themselves are the crazy one. But anyone who disagrees with them, even if it’s the majority, is a bad guy. Is fake. Is a fraud. Is an undeserving human being. Who decided that one has to be woke to be a true pagan?

What’s a pagan? “Pagan” is nowadays defined as “(especially in historical contexts) a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main or recognized religions.”

I fit that definition, except I wouldn’t even call them “religious” beliefs, so much as spiritual. I am very anti-religion. And I have been a devoted practicing pagan for almost half my life now.

So what made me a “fake” pagan? Am I fake because I don’t kowtow to delusions? Because I’m not especially “PC”? Because I eat meat and I think that some feminists have actually made things worse for women? Because, and here is potential blog suicide but I just don’t care anymore, I know that men are not women and women are not men?

White people aren’t allowed to “identify” as black, and white people aren’t shouldn’t wear Native American war bonnets, right? So why the hell, again rhetorical, is it ok for a man to identify as a woman? To appropriate, in fact, MISappropriate true womanhood and femininity? It’s not. It absolutely is not. The feminine is sacred, the divine feminine is real, and I don’t understand why it’s now so ok for our abusers, rapists, murderers etc. to misappropriate us, to wear our bodies and gender as a costume. I’m allowed to be disgusted by it. Most of us sensible pagans and feminists realize that men shouldn’t be able to make laws about women’s choices and bodies, but apparently it is A-OK for men to tell us what womanhood even is, that THEY can be just as much of a woman as one actually born with the parts. Care to explain that massive hypocrisy to me?

I don’t need a MAN to tell me, no matter what he has done to himself. I am a woman. A real woman. A real, bone fide, natural-born, happy-to-be-woman woman. I will not bow down to men who tell me they are women. They are not. No amount of mutilation or drugs or delusion will change your male genetics.

Now back to the fakeness. Can one only be considered a real pagan if they kiss every delusional ass in existence? Is this what it means to be pagan now? To cater and pander to delusion, to illness, to what actually is verifiable fakeness? I’m supposed to honor and respect fake women when I know the truth of the divine feminine? No. Never.

None of these social issues really has all that much to do with paganism anyway. Granted, there is a lot of overlap between spiritual/religious belief and social beliefs, there always has been. In fact, one’s religion breeds the rest of their beliefs in every other area. This is why we need a separation of church and state, something else that is desperately lacking along with logic and common sense. I can easily say that no one is a true pagan if they just live with their head up their ass and hate all facts and reality.

I said it once, and I’ll say it again...many of these minority groups are indeed very filled with very loud, delicate snowflakes and it’s a problem. And it’s becoming a problem for paganism. What kind of pagan are you? Do you understand and respect nature? Do you accept nature? Do you love and honor yourself as you are, as what you were naturally born? If you bow to the trans discourse, do you still have respect for people, especially women, who do not and will not bow to it? Do you vilify meat eaters? Are you the kind of feminist who thinks that men and women are the same and that everything and everyone should be/get/do the same? Well I’m not that kind of pagan. I’m not woke. But I am awake, and I am a true pagan. Always have been at heart and always will be. And so is every pagan who sees, knows, and accepts truth and reality.

 

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Thesseli
    Thesseli says #
    You should post on Substack too, where you won't have to worry about being deplatformed or kicked off the site for your views. (Al
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    It is a hollow paganism that needs to flesh itself out with current orthodoxies.
  • David Dashifen Kees
    David Dashifen Kees says #
    I feel it necessary to state, unequivocally, that anti-trans points of view are not an essential part of Paganism. As a trans Pag
Pagan News Beagle: Earthy Thursday, April 7

Conservationists take a radical approach to save rhinos from extinction. The popular webcomic xkcd gets representation in academia. And the nature of reality is explored by philosophers and scientists. It's Earthy Thursday, our weekly segment on science and Earth-related news! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

How do I know the gods are real? How do I know other people outside myself are real? How do I know I am real?

After experiencing the mysterium tremendum during my initiation and dedication to Freya in 1989, I could feel the presence of the gods. Until 1997, there was no question in my mind that the gods were as real as anyone else because I could feel them. I could feel the presence of their minds the same way I could feel the presence of the minds of other human beings. I chose to believe the evidence of my own senses. That which I perceive as having a mind that can press against mine is real: trees and the spirits of trees, animals and animal totems, humans and human ghosts, the sun and the goddess of the sun.

In today's science, it is possible to induce sensation, vision, and hearing by stimulating the brain-- and I know this because I read about it, which ultimately means I chose to believe what a news reporter wrote about a scientific study because, in the final equation, I believe that what my eye saw was in fact words written by another person and not something my brain invented because of false stimuli. I chose to believe that other people exist and that what I perceive is true.

Whether to believe in what I perceive is an existential question. I think that if I chose not to believe that the things I sense with all my senses are real, I could not function as a human being. I would just sit around disbelieving everything, until I starved to death from not eating the food I didn't believe in. I chose to believe that what I sense is real: that food is real, and I can eat it to sustain my body, which is also real. That when I see an object across the room, that object is real. That when I feel sunshine on my skin, that the sun is real, and my skin is real, and heat is real.  I chose to believe that when I sense someone's mind, what I am sensing is real, whether they are a human, animal, spirit, or god.

Where does one draw a line between "real" and "imaginary?" If one draws that line because of social pressure to disbelieve in gods, one must first believe that other people are real for their opinions to matter. If one senses the gods with one's senses, and disbelieves in them because other people do not sense them, that is putting a faith in other people ahead of one's perceived reality.

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On the Darkest Night of My Soul I found My Light

This is the story of how I made the shift from a lifetime of negative thinking to a new life of positive thinking.

What does positive thinking really mean?  I used to think it meant thinking like an optimist.  I considered myself a realist back then, and thought optimists were only able to be optimistic because they had never suffered as I had.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Danielle Blackwood
    Danielle Blackwood says #
    Thank you so much for sharing your deeply moving story. You are brave, you are amazing, I salute you.
  • Ashley Rae
    Ashley Rae says #
    Thank you so much for your kind words, Danielle!

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

It's been a while, but I'm back again, lovely readers! I'm currently hard at work on my second book (amongst other projects, as you'll see below), but I will certainly continue to post here as and when I can. Comments and topic requests always welcome.


At this time of year, it's easy to understand why our ancestors (both actual and spiritual), those wise women and cunning men, were considered remote, unusual, untouchable, even fearsome.

As Autumn moves into Winter here in the UK, we feel our natural, animal pull to dig in, hibernate, take time within the darkness to assess the previous year and anticipate the time to come - but I doubt any busy society has ever really allowed that to happen, except when they have no choice. Stoke up the fire, head to the pub or communal house, light and laughter against the outside world.

(Photo - 'Autumn in the New Forest', from Glastonbury Goddess Temple)

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