Rewilding and Paganism

Regenerative Culture Spiritual Technology
#41

i see paganism as an “umbrella” term for nature based spirituality. like some1 else said b4 i too respond to “whats ur religion” as “pagan” . But i have found that there seems to be a rather “narrow” view on paganism in the general public. Since (to most ppl i know) pagan means something wiccan or wiccan-ish. (Try looking for a book that not related to wicca under ‘paganism’ or ‘new age’ section in library or book store). Although i do share SOME ideas with wiccan religions, my spritual path lies elsewhere.

Animism as i see it is a term used to describe a specific belief. I AM an animist, which means that said belief is part of my spiritual belief system etc.
sad tho. I am through and thruough a shaman, as far as i can tell.

now getting down to rewilding, i really dont see paganism or animism as a tie in to it. But as far as i can tell that must be a big driving factor to a lot of people who decide that “rewilding” is what they wanna do. I have always wanted to go and live in the wild, due to my love of a simplistic life, and more than anything my pagan/animistic beliefs.

I mean, i see everything as a part of the “great spirit” we are all just individual parts of a whole, all equal in that way. So a modern life is really a BAD thing to me, i mean we suffocate the earth, kill of animals, and really a modern mans respect for a tree makes my cry.

-tj

#42

Taught Native American (Apache) beliefs alongside those of Southern Baptist Christianity presented me with some very contradictory information and lead me to do a lot of soul searching and research regarding spirituality.
What I discovered is that humans as a whole have a need for some form of spiritual guide in their lives. Not everyone mind you but the vast majority of people look to something above or beyond what is part of everyday life.
A god or spirit is given control for a natural occurance or event, this then leads to an even stronger god or spirit that controls or rules the first one.
Within a specific area or region this forms the basis for a religion and all the trappings that come with worshipping something.
One of the terms used to express people with no spirit belief system is Pagan in English. Therefore I am a Pagan in that I hold no worship system and follow a path of self belief/self guidance.
Despite many attempts to clarify the Native belief systems into some semblance of order, I have found that none of them truly promote any one lifestyle of living with the earth as being better or worse than another.
Many Native American tribes are veiwed as being strictly hunter/gathers which after further research is shown to be not true. Even the most nomadic of tribes cultivated fields to better the tribes chances of survival.
The Apaches wandered all over the American southwest yet they still utilized certain areas to grow certain types of foods and medicines that were difficult to find during their travels.
The Navajo and Hopi tribes also raised extensive flocks that had become more or less domesticated by the time Europeans started to land on the East coast of the Americas.
Trying to place a spiritual meaning to a lifestyle choice perpetrates a system of beliefs that leads to the conclusion we humans can CONTROL what happens, wether thru our own actions or thru those of some kind of diety or god.
Just my 2 cents worth. :slight_smile:

#43

A point against other pagans:

I’ve basically been verbally attacked in every conceivable way for suggesting that corporations negligence of animal deaths is murder. Not just argued and debated with, but violently and angrily called rude names and having many aspects of my personal character attacked.

Most pagans are just as likely to be entrenched in civilizations’ dysfunctional memes as people of other religions. Many ‘pagan’ philosophies are just as mired in hierarchy and oppression as Judaism and Christianity.

Sometimes I feel like someone needs to draw a line between factions of civilized and not-so-civilized groups of pagans.

#44

Re: incendiary dan’s last comment: How about we try to establish the distinction as something like “Heathen” - one of the wild religions, “Pagan” - one of the rural religions. Ai think this distinction is etymologically accurate, as heath grows in wild places - hence a person who dwells in the wild and latin “paganus” means roughly, citizen (and comes from the largest empire in that region).

#45

Some communities already try to make that distinction, mostly Asatruar and other more traditional heathens. It seems to work pretty well, too, since most of those groups are much more tribally focused, and less concerned with their new-agey, fluff-bunny powers of awesomeness, and their awesome “majiks”.

/snark

#46

Hi, I’m writing this on my cellphone, which restricts the number of letters I can put in a post, so I hope you wil forgive me for double-posting:)

Me being Norwegian I feel I should chip in here. First of Norse mythology still resonates with us here, we hear these stories growing up, and Thor get’s mentioned in an off-hand sort of way almost every time lightning strikes. However
I do feel like the giants of the mythology represents a much older, more animistic and in many ways more genuine religion.

#47

I base this mostly on the fact that atleast around here where I grew up every large mountain and impressive natural formation has a story explaing how they came to be, and in these stories they always start out with being giants of some form or other. However, and this is the animist part, they are NOT seen as humans! Anthropomorfic(sp)yes, but the stories never gives you the impression that it’s simply giant humans they’r talking about. They are basicly other-than-human, yet possessed of personality.

#48

i think that most of our native european traditions, there are beings other than human. the dwaves, trolls, and giants in your norse traditions, and the sidhe in irish traditions being but a few.
they have all the human virtues and vices though, mirrors of ourselves.

#49

Could you tell us some of these stories? Please? (maybe in another topic) I have some Norwegian ancestry, so it is important for me.

#50

Yeah I’l type one up for you guys when I get the time, think I’l try to add pictures of the mountains and formations they’r about to:-)

#51

Labels are labes, most mean differnt things even among those who usem them.

I dont have a faith… I Believe…

I believe that consousness is a drop of water. Our subconsous (soul?) is a cup of water. When we die, the cup of water is thrown back into the ocean. When a new life is born, a cup of water is dipped from the ocean. This new cup can hold molecules from the cup just returned, but will also hold molecules from a billion other cups.

repeat this process for every living thing (and some that are not “living”?)

Ever wonder why you dream about something you never knew anything about??? Was it a memory held in a single molecule?

We are all connected… every one and every thing… because we are all of the same water.

  • My Gramma
#52

And that is the scientific basis for Animism! As physics will tell you all parts once part of a system will remain connectet at a quantum level even though they are sptially separated.

We have the ONLY scientifically proven belief system in use:-)

#53

and that’s coming from the anti-scientism-ists. !

#54

Oh, kvedulf, I think I finally get your point. I characterized “farming gods” as “gods of ____”, filling in the blank with “the harvest”, “smithing”, “weather”, etc. Your point involves the god Freyr as separate from his associated area of influence (agriculture); meaning, if conventional agriculture didn’t exist among the Norse peoples (or, at the time that it didn’t), Freyr still would/did in some form.

I think I have two responses to this; one, the act of “associating” an area of control with a god sums up my point on the difference between animist and hierarchical/farming relationships with the natural world. So when the Norse peoples did choose this, this affirmed the relationship they lived in the world. But even before then, as a human god “who bestows peace and pleasure”, as a specific role, that indicates the same thinking.

For example, Godzilla attacks Tokyo, Godzilla saves Tokyo. Godzilla doesn’t embody a god of anything - Godzilla embodies the natural forces of hurricanes, tsunamis, and fruitful weathers that the animist humans of the place either suffer under or receive blessing from. But they don’t look to Bob, god of weather - they speak, fight, and relate directly to the force itself. In so far as the weather has become a “Monster” (rather than a weather person), and hasn’t yet become a human god “of” weather, I think you can see the linear progress from animism to paganism at work.

First, nature peoples. Then, mostly Titans, Giants, Monsters (perhaps with some nature wights left), as separate from Human gods with whom they deal with. Then, human Gods that subjugate and deal with Giants and Monsters, the nature peoples now wholly missing from the ethos.

That Norse gods stay more involved with nature Giants by intermarrying and relating with them I think does speak to a more animistic relationship than, say, Greek or Hindu, which categorically expel them from the world of the Gods.

I don’t see it as an either/or thing, but as a slow progression and rationalization, a feedback loop of subjugation of the land.

[weather people, rock people, deer people] -----> [now mostly nature giants/monsters consorting more or less peacefully with emerging human gods] ----> [human gods expelling repellent giants and monsters from the surface of the earth]

What do you think?