Text of a sermon entitled “What do Pagans believe, anyway?” delivered 12/19/99 by Debbie Huffman at Unitarian Fellowship of Houston, Texas, a lay-led congregation largely humanist in orientation and viewpoint.

When I noted to [the Worship chairperson] that I had written a sermon concerning what Pagans *do,* she asked me, rather, to discuss what Pagans *believe.* I had a crisis of perspective. It’s a daunting amount of material to try to cover in a half hour. The simple truth is, Pagans are very much like Unitarian Universalists, particularly in two ways: If you ask 3 Pagans what they believe, you will get 4 answers; and, it is far easier to define Paganism in the negative – what it is not is more concrete than what it is.

Scholars will make certain obvious definitions. Extant systems with a continuous heritage are often termed Paleo-Pagan and may include Native American, African and Oceanic religions. Classical Paganism usually refers to the Graeco-Roman mythologies, but may also include Mesopotamian and Egyptian beliefs. In casual use, Pagan usually means “modern Neo-Paganism,” a belief system inspired by the "old religions" but typically a re-creation or revitalization rather than a directly inherited, continuous tradition. In a strict Western Civilization sense, Pagan as a generic term is anybody who doesn't follow one of The Big Three – the religions of the Book. The paganisms are not primarily rooted in Middle Eastern monotheism. But within that strict sense, you have room for Atheists who practice Ceremonial Magick, devout Yorubans, and innumerable other practices and levels of understanding on many often-contradictory paths.

Within this larger context, the entire question of placing any label on a system of belief is a simple absurdity. The term “Christian” covers everything from snake handling to our own Unitarian and Universalist ancestors. If we could transcend the labels, it would be far more meaningful to break the issue of belief into a series of questions: Does God exist? If so, does God possess gender? Selfhood? Singularity or multiplicity? Is God present in or absent from Creation, or merely on a leave of absence? Given the array of creeds one finds among humankind, there are no simple yes or no answers to these questions, and they can equally be answered with a Zen disinclination to consider them meaningful.

Many Pagans, and from here on I usually mean modern Neo-Pagans, are aware of this paradox concerning “belief”. When questioned they will note, roundabout, that the “People of the Book” – Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sometimes called “the JCI” – think in terms of orthodoxy – the ‘right teaching’ of a system of belief. Pagans are in contrast more easily identified in terms of orthopraxis – the ‘right performance” of a system of ritual, usually identified as “the Wiccan norm.” The pagan religion of Wicca originated in this century, but its ritual forms draw from much older traditions. For that reason, a good many assumptions about belief are packaged in the iconography and trappings of the ritual. But in order to discuss the assumptions, and to look at the questions and answers which identify one as “Pagan,” a foray through the older sources is in order.

Christianity emerged in a world that was philosophically torn between the ideas of Logos and Gnosis – the Orthodox and the Personal, the Revealed Truth and the Experience of Mystery. Here is one of the first characteristics of Paganism: we are Gnostics, we believe that one can directly experience the ineffable Mystery and be transformed by that experience. In this at least, we can claim great antiquity of belief; Gnosticism was deemed heretical but was never completely suppressed in the West. The forces of Logos prevailed, and much of the Glory That Was Rome and Greece – science and philosophy of every stripe – was lost, in some part destroyed. The world is fortunate that while Orthodoxy deemed any writings of non-Christian origin to be heretical and disposable, Islam deemed that all knowledge comes from Allah and is conformable to the Quran.

In 1099 Common Era, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem. For some 200 years the Templars and their fellow orders of monastic knights held the Crusader Kingdom of Outremer as next-door neighbors to Islam. From this event, the Hellenistic ideas of Europe’s Classical past began to trickle back into the minds and hearts of the Western intelligentsia. The science alone would have been a sufficient battleground of ideas, but much of the philosophy directly contradicted the teachings of the Imperial Church. It is to the unfolding of this philosophy that we may look to discern some of the ancestry of modern Neo-Paganism.

The Europeans who were rediscovering their past were concerned with implementing their new knowledge -- putting philosophy into practice. The discipline of Alchemy is the most directly pertinent. It was not enough to perform simple laboratory experiments, as a contemporary chemist might. A material substance was not only its manifest nature and interactions, it was also a complex of unseen spiritual influences, and the work of the laboratory connected the mortal student to the vast hierarchy of the immortal Powers. This hierarchy had a Christian façade, but many of the concepts were derived from the Jewish Kaballah.

Here is another element of Pagan belief: the idea of Emanation, a kind of personified Big Bang in which the Ultimate Ground of Being is a Nothing which becomes many Somethings through a series of manifestations. It is with the manifestations, the 10,000 Things, that we interact. The manifestations comprise what we call “God,” because the Ultimate Ground of Being is beyond our mortal comprehension and only myth and metaphor can suffice to indicate it. The concepts and formulae of Kaballah and alchemy persist through the centuries and become the Western Mystery Tradition or Ceremonial Magick, which directly and by way of Freemasonry is one of the primary roots of modern Paganism.

Another phenomenon of this same era is The Burning Times. We do know that the Roman Church was in competition with Christian Gnosticism and waged a Crusade in Europe against the Albigenses, some of whom survived. But beyond the scholarly disputes over the death count, and regardless of whether a surviving pre-Christian religion was systematically attacked by the Church, the idea of persecution has become an element of belief. There are certain parallels to the Jewish experience here: we are the ones who survived, we have a duty to the past. We must be strong and resist further persecution, further destruction, so that their sacrifices will not have been in vain. The cry of “Never Again the Burning Times!” rallies us to view our lives as having a larger context.

The vagaries of history are such that documentation for any of the foregoing is sketchy. As the Witch-Hunt era of heresies gives way to the Enlightenment, we begin to be on firmer ground concerning the historic sources of belief. In the 19^th Century, under the auspices of the European Neo-Platonists and American Transcendentalists, the West made its first significant acquaintance with Buddhist and Hindu mysticism. Since our own Unitarian saints, Emerson and Thoreau, are in their number, I note with some glee that Zondervan Press, bastion of Southern Baptist orthodoxy, blames the Transcendentalists’ fascination with Eastern philosophies for the whole of the modern New Age Movement.

These Eastern philosophies figure as a strong undercurrent in Paganism. Although they will insist that the beliefs come directly from the Irish Druids, many Pagans believe wholeheartedly in Reincarnation [but probably not in Transmigration]. The Law of Karma is frequently invoked as a point of belief, as is the worldwide existence of some form of what we commonly term “the Golden Rule.” In fact, Pagans will say that our version is stricter than some – your actions rebound upon yourself threefold, in physical, emotional and spiritual form. The effect is not limited to your actions; your intentions matter, and even your random thoughts, regardless of action, may have an effect outside yourself. The implicit distinction between the shape of the Universe and the shape of your Personal Fate goes beyond the question of free will vs. predestination, because the universe is impartial – even the gods are subject to the way things work.

We are at last in the immediate bloodline of Modern Neo-Paganism. At the turn of the late 19th/early 20th century, two major groups studied occult practices and ideas from around the world and throughout history. The Theosophical Society and its offshoots such as Anthroposophy looked mainly at the theoretical side, the question of "Why?" They continued the Transcendentalists’ fascination with Eastern Philosophy, and figure more directly into the New Age Movement. The Golden Dawn and its offshoots such as Aleister Crowley’s O.T.O. looked mainly at the practical side, the question of "How?" They drew upon the Western Mystery Tradition, directly and by way of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Several esoteric religions have come out of each of these two movements, but the neo-pagan movement draws equally from both schools. I’ve mentioned some of the elements of Eastern Philosophy which come forward by way of Theosophy. On the side of the Golden Dawn, while few people will admit or discuss it, significant portions of the normative Wicca-form ritual are recognizably identical to Masonic practice.

At this point in the timeline, this ongoing countercurrent to mainstream Western religion appears as several different, overlapping strains. We can speak of 19^th Century “spiritism” and 20^th Century “mysticism” and “esotericism”. The term “occultism” carries considerable baggage, whereas “parapsychology” elicits a spectrum of reactions and “metaphysics” tends to imply either fringe or leading-edge beliefs. All of these terms fall more and less within the umbrella of the New Age Movement, but most Pagans will emphatically deny that they are “Newagers.” The pronunciation is deliberate….

In the midst of this milieu, Margaret Murray’s 1921 book, Witch Cult in Western Europe, paved the way, but in 1949 Gerald Gardner, a British civil servant, published a novel entitled High Magic’s Aid. Over the next decade this and his two other books revealed the Religion of Wicca to the world. Come the 1960’s, several elements coincided to popularize pagan ideas. In 1961 Robert Anson Heinlein published Stranger in a Strange Land, which indirectly gave rise to the neoPagan Church of All Worlds. The counterculture movement of the 1960’s saw a fresh influx of Eastern ideas and The Age of Aquarius grew up to become the New Age Movement. Feminism re-emerged from its post-suffrage dormancy, and many Westerners discovered the idea of the Goddess for the first time. From about 1970 the Pagan movement began to diversify into dozens of contemporary traditions, and the first conventions occurred. By way of the Festival Movement, the religion of Wicca has broadened into the more diverse NeoPaganism of today, of which decentralization and antidogmatism are hallmarks.

Who, then, are these neoPagans? I re-emphasize the wide range of beliefs and the dangers of generalities, but let me attempt to describe a mythically “pan-average” all-encompassing generic pagan. If this sounds at times like I am stringing together a series of aphorisms, well, some of this is. I have already enumerated the ideas of Gnosticism, emanation, persecution, reincarnation, karma, metaphysics and feminism. A few terms borrowed from Christian heresiology also pertain. Philosophically we are both Monist and Pantheist – we believe that all is one and all is God. [Some of us will be panentheists – all is God but the all is contained in the divine, which exceeds it.] We are also hylozoist and panpsychist – we believe that everything is in some literal sense intrinsically both alive and aware. This cluster of belief goes naturally with animism and immanence, and leads to the common greeting [borrowed from Heinlein] “Thou art God/dess.”

Despite our philosophic embrace of unity, we will in practice tend to be polytheistic. We recognize the diversity of our ability to perceive the archetypal FORM and POWER inherent in each deity. There is no paradox here, although we do embrace the idea of paradox, because we hold to intuition, the subjectivity of truth and the existence of multiple realities, whether in the real or the metaphoric sense. This in turn leads to a considerable tolerance for diversity and an eclectic syncretism of belief – we Build Our Own Theologies. Politically we are antiauthoritarian, holding to individual and local autonomy. Our interactions are governed by an ethos of minimizing harm, honoring conscience, and building consensus from our individual, immanent relativities.

Despite the belief that there is no ultimate dichotomy between Matter and Spirit, in practice we interact with the world in terms of polarity. The Mystery is manifested as both Goddess and God. The Goddess holds primary place here; the God is both Her Son and Her Partner. Since we are a Nature-Oriented Religious Movement, we believe that The Earth is the Sacred Manifestation of Divinity – our vehicle for experiencing mystery. We are connected to nature and the earth, and so we try to interact with the world in all its elements, rather than trying to dominate and control it. The Earth is our Mother. Our physical bodies are made of earth. The bodies of our ancestors, who made our bodies possible, have rejoined the Earth, but their essence is in some form still present among us, still available to us for counsel and guidance, and we will join them in the Summerland. The Afterlife is a good place for everyone.

This idea of polarity is quite different from the idea of dualism. We believe that time is a wheel, and moves in a spiral. Summer follows Winter, Day follows Night, the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. The only concept approaching that of “sin” is the idea of imBalance or disHarmony. So we have no concept of “salvation”, for there is nothing from which we need to be saved. The earth is our schoolyard and incarnate life is a gift which allows us to grow in mind and spirit and experience All Acts of Love and Pleasure which are the Goddess’ preferred worship. We oppose unmindful living, for to do so is to waste this great gift. Some of our lessons here are to take responsibility for our deeds, to act true and honest, and to be self-reliant.

In the area of ritual practice, we observe eight major holy days on the Wheel of the Year. These are the Yule and Midsummer Solstices, the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes, and the four midpoints between these solar dates: Candlemas, May Day, Lammas, and Hallows. Throughout recorded history human beings everywhere have gathered to observe one or more of these festival dates, to dance and drum and sing and tell stories. Some of us will also observe the night of the full or new moon, or maybe both. The moons are the time for working Magick. Magick with a “K” does not mean prestidigitation – one definition is non-mundane change in conformity with one’s Will. There’s nothing mysterious or superstitious about this, because we hold to the maxim that As Above, So Below – any change we wish to see outside ourselves must first occur within ourselves. So first we must have a clear understanding of our own True Will, and then we must state clearly what changes we wish to create, because the deities of Chaos and Laughter will inevitably take the opportunities we offer them. We can change our own minds, we can change our own reality, but we will learn our school lessons in the course of doing so.

Here, at last, I come back to the idea of Gnosis. It has been said that “The Craft is the Yoga of the West.” We believe that we are simultaneously Physical, Mental, Psychic, and Spiritual beings. We Believe that We Experience the Mystery. And how one experiences the mystery is where many of the problems in history arise. Our Western culture contains a certain deep distrust of mysticism. Polls show that many people believe in extrasensory perception, but it remains an object of frequent ridicule. Many people believe in ghosts, but we debunk the idea of communicating with them. Many people seek out altered states of consciousness, by whatever means, but we discount the insights we acquire through them. Many people read astrology columns and tarot cards, but we joke about relying on ‘fortune tellers’. This whole complex of experiential mysticism is at the heart of what we call Magick. Paganism as a set of practices is actually a toolbox for accessing the states of mind in which we can change our own minds and so change the world. We believe that we can learn how to go outside our rational minds and into the realm of the Wholly Other, and return transformed by it.

There’s some sense to this idea of going outside our rational minds, because we as human beings are polar creatures. The two halves of our brains work in markedly different ways. Some of the little formal research that has been done on ESP seems to indicate that people who intuit are simply using both halves of their brains at once. This use of our mystical, bicameral minds shows certain physiological effects, such as biofeedback and trance states, and it does look similar to Eastern Yoga. I happen to think this holds with the idea that we are ourselves divine – we are more than we imagine ourselves to be.

Now, none of this is creedal, and it is really only a framework for belief. It would be fairly easy to find someone to contradict everything I have just said. This is another way that Pagans are very much like UUs. Pagans love a good discussion. We talk about what we variously believe and what we do, and about our cultural values. Like other groups termed “minorities,” we claim the right to define what we are, rather than have this done for us by outsiders. And what we are is many different, loosely-connected things and people. Emphasis on people. People change, beliefs change, viewpoints change. Paganism has changed a great deal since Gerald Gardner cracked the lid 50 years ago, and it will continue to change just as surely as people change.

James Burke writes, in the 1985 PBS series, The Day The Universe Changed [p 337]

The search for the truth, the 'discovery of nature's secrets,’ as Descartes put it, is an idiosyncratic search for temporary truth. One truth is replaced by another. The knowledge acquired through the use of any structure is selective. There are no standards or beliefs guiding the search for knowledge which are not dependent on the structure. Discovery is invention. Knowledge is man-made. If this is so, then all views at all times are equally valid. There is no metaphysical, super-ordinary, final, absolute reality. There is no special direction to events. The universe is what we say it is. When theories change the universe changes. The truth is relative.

This relativist view is generally shunned. It is supposed by the Left to dilute commitment and by the Right to leave society defenseless. In fact it renders everybody equally responsible for the structure adopted by the group. If there is no privileged source of truth, all structures are equally worth assessment and equally worth toleration. Relativism neutralizes the views of extremists of all kinds. It urges care in judgement through awareness of the contextual nature of the judgmental values themselves.