On the face of it, paganism sounds pretty easy.
You pick some god or goddess from Long Ago and Far Away. You buy a statue, you light some incense. Voilà: paganism.
But, of course, that's not paganism at all. Go ahead, buy all the statues and light all the incense that you want to.
Long Ago and Far Away, statues and incense: that's not paganism. That's a cartoon of paganism. At best, it's a place to begin.
Real paganism? Oh, that's much harder.
Real paganism means Here and Now: This Time, This Place.
Real paganism means This Land, These Hills, These Prairies.
These Winds, These Plants, These Animals.
This Mountain. This River. This Tree.
These Seasons. This Sun. This Moon.
This Thunder. This Mound. This Standing Stone.
These People. These Stories. These Songs.
That's the real paganism. Learning it all is, of course, the work of a lifetime.
But that doesn't matter. We are the pagans; we've been here all along. We've been here from the beginning, we're still here, and we'll be here long after the others have gone. My friends, we don't have to do it all now.
We are the pagans. We've got all the time there is.
Above: Mike Deodato, Jr, "The Mighty Thor"