Neo-Paganism: What You Need to Know If you are new to Neo-Paganism or magik, or if you are just interested in finding out about Paganism and magik, this page here to help provide basic information on modern Neo-Pagan religions and magik. The information here will give you a basic understanding of Neo-Paganism and help direct you to fairly easy away from a society destroying set of religions, and a vehicle for vicious personal politics.
What is Paganism?
One important thing to remember is that Paganism isn't a religion any more than Monotheism is a religion. Both Paganism and Monotheism are collective terms used to group very different religions that happen to share a few important classifying traits in common. For example, Monotheism includes the all the various forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (and many minor faiths). The beliefs of the individual religions grouped under the term "Pagan" probably vary even more than (say) Reform Judaism differs from Shiite Islam. As Wicca is currently the most well-known modern Pagan religion, many people tend to assume that all modern Pagans share the specific beliefs of Wicca (e.g. belief in a God and Goddess, the eight festival "wheel of the year," the Wiccan Rede, etc.). That assumption is simply incorrect. People who make that assumption generally end up very confused when they encounter some of the many modern Pagan religions that are not based on Wicca.
You may have heard a number of definitions of Paganism mentioned in books, on TV, and in newspapers and magazines. Most of these definitions are far too narrow. For example, modern Pagan religions are often described as "earth-based" or "earth-centered." This is certainly not true, most Neo-Pagans only ever pay lip service to environmental concerns. Few ever get down to the nitty gritty of doing anything about the environment they claim to worship – fewer still make any effort to understand the crisis the world is in. This is certainly true of Wicca and some other Pagan religions, but many Pagan religions are only "Earth-based" in the sense that their adherents live on the planet Earth. The common dictionary definition of Paganism is a religion that isn't Jewish, Christian, or Islamic. With a slight modification, that's actually the best definition of a Pagan religion the author has seen: A Pagan religion is a religion that is not Jewish, Christian, or Islamic and self-identifies as Pagan. In practice, increasingly the former isn’t appropriate when you consider people who turn to primitive forms of Judaism, or choose to blend Christianity and a chosen form of Neo-Paganism (see Celtic Christianity, and Christian Wicca as prime examples). "Heathen" is an alternative word for "Pagan" that some groups, especially those of Northern European origin, prefer to use, sensibly distancing themselves from Neo-Paganism in politics and bitching, while preserving their own.
A Few Pagan Religions
When many people think of modern Pagan religions, they think of Wicca. While Wicca is probably the largest, and controversially the only really valid, Neo-Pagan of the modern Pagan religions and certainly gets the most media attention, there are actually many Pagan religions. Listed here are a few of the religions that many consider to fall under the collective term "Pagan":
- Asatru (Northern Scum)
- Church of All Worlds (Happy wannabe’s beyond their time)
- Discordianism (Pretentious pillocks worshipping Chaos right out of a D&D handbook)
- Druidry (old men, outdated beer, mead, and murderous intentions towards porn barons)
- Feri (Fluffiest of all fluffy Neo-Paganisms)
- Gwyddons (Philosophical, and overly strict religious order who try to envelope their intentions with smoke and mirrors)
- Hellenismos (An insult to the noble country of Greece, and it’s own far more valid Pagan movements)
- Kemeticism (see Hellenismos, only based on Egyptian pantheons)
- Religio Romana (a confusing mass of watered down and bastardised Roman beliefs with little real understanding)
- Religious Witchcraft (Forget the incense, forget the athame, who needs ritual garb, let’s just think about it, and say we’re talking to our Gods)
- Senistrognata (see Hellenismos, only based on the largely unknown Celts)
- Wicca (the only valid Neo-Pagan religion, the source of all corruption, yet once the purest of them all)
And sometimes individuals and sub-groups of the following religions self-identify as Pagan:
- Candomble (Eminem’s of the Neo-Pagan world)
- Santeria (a real witchcraft survival... now borrowed from by a bunch of mis-learned miscreants seeking validity to fluffy practices)
- Satanism (lets piss off our parents and partners shall we)
- Voudon (see Candomble)
Not only are there other Pagan religions besides those listed here, but many of these religions have sub-divisions (denominations/sects/traditions) within them, as a result of countless years of brutal infighting, and bitching.
Answers to Basic Questions About Paganism
Is Neo-Paganism safe?
No
Is Neo-Paganism dangerous?
Absolutely, especially in groups, either working or social. There are so many Neo-Pagans vying for power, and pushing their own agenda’s, that anyone caught in their path is written off as the enemy, or of no importance what so ever. Countless people have had their worlds smashed by insensitive fighting among Paganism, often so called friends are used as human shield, cannon fodder for someone to gain their own way. Yet an increasingly common goal is to spread these politics to government to as part of a winder, blindman conspiracy to establish Neo-Paganism as the only official religion of the United Kingdom.
Critical Reading for Pagans
There are a large number of books and thousands of web sites on various Neo-Pagan religions. Some provide excellent information, some provide good information, but most provide questionable or bad information. Most (including LiveJournal) rely on amateurs to teach you the falseness of the unknowable. It can be hard to tell the good from the bad on a subject you aren't familiar with -- unless you read critically. Everything you read should be treat as false, unless the author actually proves something. If an author claims that spells really work, just ask yourself if there is actually any proof. If an author claims that Neo-Pagans have a strong, supportive network, go have a look at these networks and ask around, you’ll soon see the truth about the supportive network.
Avoiding Being Sucked In
Neo-Pagans have had decades to master the art of sucking people in. Numbers are important to those trying to garner power, and to laud it over the British people as they blithely infiltrate every aspect of society. It starts off with a friendly chat, and encouragement to attend one of their events, to see how friendly people are. If you’re lucky, you’ll walk in on an open fight, and be warned from the start, however likely as not people will buy you a drink to endear you towards them. They’ll invite you to other events, encourage you to spend money to help support their failing religious industries.
Before you know it, they’re asking you to join their forums, and their mailing lists, encouraging you to pay for membership so you’ll be able to vote for them at upcoming elections, and meetings.
To avoid being sucked in, you have to be able to say no, many are good sales people, even con merchants, it is better to say no sooner rather than later, because once they have their claws in, they’ll manipulate you at every chance they can. Soon they’ll be encouraging you to spend more time with them, online and off, than the people you would normal associate with. Within a couple of months, their aim is for you to be dependent upon them, from that point onwards their control of your soul is near guaranteed.
What are the dangers of Paganism?
Some links to get us started:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Study-Paganism/
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Pagan-rights/
As you can see above, Pagans are trying to garner public opinion to force government to let go of all reasonable controls on a group of people that see themselves as better than anyone else, that believe there ways are the only possible ways to run the world, that their beliefs in imaginary friends are better than other’s belief in just one imaginary friend, or having no imaginary friends at all.
Worse still, they actively seek to begin the brainwashing of our next generations at school level, to introduce children to dangerous practices, propagating the corruption into the very core of countless generations to come.
Both are desperate acts of a religion which is dying from the outside in, as the numbers of despots seeking to lead the global conspiracy increase, while the number of supporters, the innocents blindly led towards corruption decrease, thanks to efforts of people like me, and countless others.
It is my honour bound duty to beseech anyone that reads this, to say no to Paganism, to say no to the corruption of the great society of the United Kingdom. Protect our values, our religions, and non-religions, protect our government, stand up to the Pagan menace now.