Paolo's reflections

PAOLO's REFLECTIONS

"In this section of Neopagan.com I will take a deep look at various issues that were and are objects of long debates, and I will disclose my thoughts, for which I will take full responsibility.
My thoughts, for their own personal nature, don't necessarily represent other Neopagans' views, that can may or may not agree with me. It is just my desire to dedicate this page to my personal reflections and visions on the various issues that I will examine." - Paolo Rustichelli

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"Monotheistic Religions vs. Neo-Paganism"

"Is Paganism Polytheistic or Monotheistic ... or what ?"

After coming across various articles like this one on the site www.catholic.com, some considerations are absolutely necessary on a basic repetitive misconception about Neopaganism, as is intended in my opinion.

Through the ages it was and still is a usual custom of the so called revealed monotheistic Religions ( belief in one God ), like Christianism in this case, to consider Paganism and the new Neopaganism as a polytheistic religion ( belief in many Gods ) in opposition with their own credo. Notwithstanding Paganism was represented by a huge amount of different religions-cults-philosophies and co., creating an overwhelmingly huge panorama of different styles and levels of dogmas and rituals, it is also undeniable that many of the most outstanding thinkers of all time were Pagans.
Then is it wise to take as a only trustable reference a lonely Druid lost in the forests of ancient Britain or a brutal Roman Archigallo offering in honor to the Gods his genitals in a bloody mess ? ... I don't think so ...
As we reference "non Pagan" works of the most influential thinkers like Saint Paul of Tarsus or Saint Augustine, we need to take as a model for Paganism those Pagan brilliant minds like the ancient Greek-Roman philosophers.
Otherwise do we need to use the catholic monk-inquisitor of Spain Tomas de Torquemada as a reference for Christianism or other secondary obtuse figures as usually the most primitive of Paganism are chosen ...?
For love of justice then I will advocate as representative of Paganism belief the Greek and Roman ancient philosophers like Plato, Plotinus and Proclus.

Now the question again : "Is Paganism a polytheistic religion ?".
ANSWER : NO !!
Plato spoke about the supreme Good , meaning that the supreme being of the universe would have been a supreme principle represented as the ultimate Good !
Plotinus spoke about the One, the supreme source of all things, clearly describing in his vision a transcendent God !
Proclus went further in also describing with enormous detail this transcendent One-God, already described previously by Plotinus !!

FINAL RESULT : NEO-PAGANISM and PAGANISM are monotheistic-polytheistic religions too and they do believe or consider the presence of one supreme transcendent Principle-God with His emanations called Gods !!!!
I don't want in this brief comment to talk also about the major influence of the pagan religions and philosophy on our contemporary religions which is also undeniable ...
We need then to re-establish the right proportions and to do justice to the evidence : Paganism was the perfect melting pot of different traditions and was the originator of all the other religions that followed.

MORE EXCERPTS from Jim Akin article on www. catholic.com and my replies. Akin's assumption are in red, my replies-reflections in black:

The Nature of the Gods
Many neo-pagans advance the claim that there should not be a single world religion with a single deity or set of deities to be worshiped by all mankind, but rather each group should worship the gods of their ancestors or of their preference.
This claim creates a problem for the neo-pagan understanding of the gods, and it is fair for the Catholic apologist to point it out. Consider the implications that arise, depending on how the gods were interpreted. There would seem to be four basic ways of making sense of the claim that different people should worship different pagan pantheons: 1. The gods of different peoples really aren’t different but should be identified with each other (e.g., Zeus = Jupiter = Odin). 2. There are a great many individual gods governing different peoples. 3. The gods are projections created in some sense by the peoples that worship them. 4. The gods are merely symbols or aspects of something else.
1. If the gods of different religions are to be identified with each other, then it would not seem that there are meant to be different religions among peoples but only different rites used to worship the same set of gods.

REFLECTIONS : Like Christmas is celebrated in slightly different ways in different countries, even Santa Claus has different names in different countries, notwithstanding it's embedding the same attributes. The same situation applies for the Gods, that under different names represent the same natural energies, and are being worshipped in different ways following the particular national differences and language cultures.

For example, in Greek and Roman paganism, the kings of the gods (Zeus and Jupiter) are in control of thunder, but the thunder god in Germanic paganism is Thor, who is not the king of the gods (that would be Odin). Similarly, in Indo-European paganisms, the sky god tends to be masculine and the earth goddess feminine, but this is reversed in Egyptian mythology. It seems impossible to establish a universal paganism treating each individual pantheon as merely a different expression of the same set of independently real, non-symbolic beings

REFLECTIONS : This is false, for example in the Egyptian Pantheon the Goddess Nut is representing the sky and is considered a female entity. Moreover the Gods in reality don't embed female or male attributes but represent a mixed nature. The Gods are represented with substantial male or female attributes to describe a particular cosmic energy or when they are approached for devotional or ritualistic reasons. It is similar to the angels of Catholicism or Islam that don't have male or female attributes but still retain peculiar attitudes and duty. As an example, Saint Michael is depicted with a sword in a typical warrior-male attitude, or the Archangel Gabriel is in charge of delivering messages, as we know he did, following the beliefs of Christianism and Islam, with Mother Mary and with the prophet Mohammed.
Regarding the change of the name of the Gods in the different traditions I remind you of the Santa Claus example. The change of the names of the Gods was also a normal practice of the Romans at the time of the Roman empire, since they liked to give freedom to the various populations of the immense empire to have their own peculiar names, following their own traditions. Unfortunately with the fall of the Roman empire and the advent of Christianism, the church of Rome didn't give the people a similar freedom of choice. Instead they tried really hard to maintain similar names and festivities, in order to unify and control people's habits and to maintain peace through the empire.

2. If the gods of each paganism aren’t to be identified, then there would seem to be multiple deities for every aspect of nature. Each people will have its own thunder god, its own vegetation god, et cetera. This leads to an implausible situation in a many cases. If Thor controls the thunder in Scandinavia, why should neo-pagans of Norse descent in America pray to him? Why shouldn't’t they pray to an American Indian thunder deity who controls the local thunder? Further, our solar system has only one sun. Just how many sun gods can there be?

REFLECTIONS : We already know that under different names still lays a similar power attribute, so that a particular God can be worshipped everywhere, because He represents an archetypal principle. For example the Sun can be a powerful symbol but is also mainly a star. How many stars are in the Universe ? Also, the cult of Aton introduced in Egypt by the pharaoh Akhenaton used a representation of a Sun as symbol, but it also was a representation of an invisible Sun source of eternal power: incarnating our star the Sun, but also representing a spiritual Sun, an eternal source of a much greater power !

3. A theory advanced by some is that the gods are in some sense projections of or creations of their worshipers. If the gods were projections, then today of all days the gods would seem to have only tiny power because of tiny number of their followers. It would be difficult to imagine such beings as worthy of worship.It also should also be noted that no historic pagans seem to have held this view of their deities. It would seem to be a modern idea—some might even say an intellectually desperate, last-ditch idea—introduced to insulate polytheism from the intellectual problems that otherwise arise for it.

REFLECTIONS : The Gods are never projections of worshippers, but emanations from the One-God first principle. Plus we already saw that Paganism is a monotheistic belief with a polytheistic devotional action. So the premise has a wrong perspective.

4. Finally, some suppose that the gods do not have independent, objective reality but are just symbols. The question is: symbols of what?
On the one hand, if they are symbols of nature and natural forces, then it is difficult to see why they should be worshiped. Electricity is part of nature, but if one does not worship it when it comes from a light socket, it is difficult to see why one should worship it when one imagines and names a symbolic thunder god to represent it.
Further, the empirical evidence seems to show that the universe itself does not have a mind or a personality. Only by looking beyond nature—to the God who designed nature—can one find transcendent value worthy of worship.

REFLECTIONS : The Gods are not just merely lifeless symbols but cosmic living entities-energies. They descend from the first principle as they are direct emanations of the One-God, in a process of separation of the One during His manifestation process. This process starts with the creation of the Universe, that happens in a continuous state outside time. At the beginning of this endless creation, the Gods are just one indistinct energy emanated by the One-God creator, but through the process of procession or descent into the matter, they become more and more separated into many. So that they acquire different attributes and names, like a Planet's evolutionary life that after time starts in generating different species of living things. The Gods are definitely worthy of worship or attention since they are superior to us, and since they are direct emanations from God, they become a perfect source of divine power. They can be seen by us in the similar way other religions look at Angels.

On the other hand, if the answer is given that the gods are symbols of a fundamental spiritual reality that transcends the physical world, then it would seem (since all independent status already has been denied to the gods by rejecting the three alternatives just considered) that one is left with a form of fundamental monotheism that is only cloaked with polytheistic symbols.
That being the case, why should one use the symbols? Why not worship the Creator directly and explore the question of whether he cares for and has spoken to man, as monotheism has historically claimed?

REFLECTIONS : There is not a cloaked vision : The Gods are pure and direct emanations from the One-God.

If just God is worthy of worship, why do Christians worship Angels, Saints or Mother Mary ? It seems to also follow, or better has been borrowed from the ancient Pagan custom of God and Angel worship !

I don't believe, and with me many of the ancient philosophers, that we can reach God directly. That's why we are using the Gods as intermediary entities...
In other words you cannot go from our plane directly to the outside time plane of the One-God, which translates into an impossible communication between humanity and the One-God. This can be possible only when we will evolve from our human level to a superior one. To reach God directly we need to be at the hierarchical level of the Gods. In fact we believe that everything that came from the One-God will return to Him.
This will happen through an ascent of the soul, thru many incarnations inside the various levels of the multilevel creation-universe. When our own soul will fuse itself in the Gods' energies, then and only then we will be capable, as a God, to reach directly the first principle also called God or the One.

"What IS Paganism?" The brief "elevator definition" of Paganism which I find most helpful is :
Paganism is a general term for all the ancient and modern religions which identify Nature as the body of the Divine. Hinduism is the Paganism of India; Taoism the Paganism of China; Shinto the Paganism of Japan; Santeria, Voudon & Macumba are the Paganisms of the African Diaspora; etc.

REFLECTIONS : This definition is reductive of Paganism, or applies better to certain forms of Pantheistic Paganism. I believe a better one that can embrace the whole Pagan spectrum will be : Paganism is a term to describe all the ancient and modern religions that believed in the concept of the soul for all things generated in the universe.

Pagans often speak of many Gods and Goddesses, but this polytheistic imagery may be meant metaphorically, since many Pagans are pantheistic.

REFLECTIONS : In essence I believe Pagans being monotheists that approach this center of power called God with a polytheist view.
Regarding Landon's opinion, because of their anthropomorphic aspect, it is incorrect to consider the imagery of the Gods metaphorically just from a pantheistic point of view, because the Gods as cosmic energies are real energies, and the multitude of them is for the reason that they are related to many singular particular energies.

Pagans honor both feminine and masculine images of the Holy.

REFLECTIONS : The Holy or The One-God doesn't have attributes, but is capable through the process of separation to generate. During the generation-procession the One-God became sub-divided into many that can embed male or female attributes.

Q: Isn't Paganism a post-modern parody of Christianity, like Satanism?
A: PAGANISM predates Christianity and even Judaism. Paganism is a collective term for all the forms the Old Religion, the indigenous traditional earth-centered religions of Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, and the Americas. These traditions have their own myths and metaphors and sacramental practices, some of which were adapted by the early Christians and later missionaries to make Christianity more comprehensible and acceptable to Pagans.
A parody of Christianity would depend on the perverted use of Christian myths and metaphors and sacramental practices. The Satanic black mass is the classic example, reversing Christian prayers and symbols. As Isaac Bonewits has noted, Satanists must believe in the Real Presence of God in the Eucharist; otherwise their black mass would be going to a lot of nauseating trouble to insult a piece of bread.

REFLECTIONS : Ok, I like to add, for love of the truth, that Christianity in particular literally transferred the rituals and symbols of Roman Mithraism into their own. This way we can understand ( not to justify obviously..) why some kinds of sub-cults of Paganism, what I call the primitive Paganism, try to delegitimize the Christian mass with black masses . It is an act of rebellion for them against what is, in reality, a stolen ritual from the ancient Pagan Roman Mithraism. The image of Satan was taken from the horned figure of Pan-Faunus, the God of the fields and music in Greece and Rome.

Q: Don't Pagans believe in the Devil?
A: The Devil is part of the Christian mythos, borrowed from the Zoroastrian doctrine of a war between a Good God and an Evil God, ending in a cosmic battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The Dualistic world view holds that the essential dynamic is revealed in this central story. Theologies centered on this idea are called Dualistic Theologies.
Pagans have our own myths and metaphors. We do not believe that the Battle of the Angels reveals the central Truth. Pagans believe that the concept of the Devil is a human artifact, just like Hitler's fantasy about a thousand year Reich, and just as deadly, because both fantasies were used to justify the murder of millions of people.
Paganism's ruling metaphor represents opposites as the fertile embrace of lovers, not the deadly embrace of enemies. And so, we do not divide the Cosmos into two warring camps: the Good guys vs. the Bad guys, spirit vs. flesh, heaven vs. earth, virtue vs. pleasure, man vs. woman.

REFELECTIONS : The name "Devil" derives from the Greek word diabolos, which means "slanderer" or "accuser" or Satan (from the Hebrew word for "adversary"). This term originates from the Abrahamic religion, being traditionally applied to an angel in Judeo-Christian belief, and to a jinn in Islamic belief.
Starting from archeo-historical conjectures the “Traditional date” for Zoroaster originates in the period immediately following Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BCE and instead according to the Torah, Abraham was brought by God from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. This is thought to have occurred around 2000 BC-1700 BC. So that the Christian myth of Satan couldn't have been borrowed from Zoroastrianism, but from Judaism that was before Zoroaster's birth.
In addition, I will point out that the real originator for Christianism of a concept of paradise and hell, good or evil, was the mystery Roman religion Mithraism with it's concept of good and evil, and Mithras being the moderator between the two of them.
I like to point out that at this time the origin of Roman Mithraism is still in debate ... I'm personally not convinced that Mithraism was imported from Persia as many archeologist historians think, but was a stand-alone belief originated mainly by Italic/Greek earlier traditions.

Finally I will add that thanks to opposites the Universe become balanced and can manifest himself ...

Q: If you don't believe in a war between Good and Evil, doesn't that mean that Pagans have no ethical standards?
A: Pagans believe that everything in the Cosmos is intimately related to everything else, and that the health of the Cosmos, and of each of us, depends on every being having its own place in the sun. Pagans believe that truly Evil behavior arises from fear, ignorance, and self-hate, from rejecting parts of ourselves and the world. Pagans believe that people are free to make meaningful choices, but that we are not free from the results of those choices. We don't believe that anyone else can magically release us from the results of our actions, nor can I claim that the Devil made me do it.
Our ethical law is simple, DO AS THOU WILT, AND HARM NONE. The Law derives from our recognition that all things in the universe are interconnected in a very intimate way; the relationship between you and me is part of what I am, and part of what you are. Process Theologians call this idea the law of internal relations. Magic necessarily depends on this idea. So does Pagan ethics. Pagan tradition speaks of the law of Three: what you do will come back to you 3 times:
~first, as Aristotle said, a crime gives you a bad character;
~twice. because it will cause a reaction from the victim and society;
~three times because I can never escape my internal relations with you.
The unity of all living beings implies a call to mutual aid and liberation from oppressive conditions in the world.

REFLECTIONS : Let's explore more thoroughly the substance of those words : if we really want to point out the real implications of Good vs Evil, we need to realize that the general concept of good and evil even implying opposite attributes, doesn't have a definite barrier between the two of them. It's interpretation is relative to our perspective, as the subject or object of an action, so that eventually something that can be bad for you can be good for me or vice versa.

More deeply, from a metaphysical point of view, Good and Evil, they seem to exist as we look at them only from our material experience, since they are related to the matter. They don't exist outside this material plane or from a perspective of a transcendental God. In addition, ironically, sometimes from the so called bad Karma unexpected "positive" things can eventually happen, which pose further problematic issues on the nature of consequences of so called "good actions" or "bad actions" and so on ....

Finally I will consider that from a God perspective the Good and Evil duality cannot exist ... I think that from a symbolic God perspective a concept of Power can better replace those words meanings.
For example, among other forms, this Power can be perceived by us as Divine Love, a powerful Love that is acting as a real motor of the Universe, attracting, moving things animated and non-animated.

In our hierarchical ascent to the One, the more we achieve a superior status of being thru the expansion of our Soul, the more we can use this Power accordingly to the level of our ascension. Evolving toward the One-God, our actions will contain a higher degree of "Good".

We can also say that the One-God is the perfect Good and only when His unity becomes fragmented we have a lessening of Good that can be interpreted as an increase of Evil, which inversely implies that at the level of God unity, before His fragmentation in the creation, there is not Good or Evil, and neither a perspective.
The ethical perspective of Pagans is like an elastic that can be stretched at will, as their beliefs that can vary. It is usually a good habit to consider that our freedom ends where we can infringe upon others freedom, and if we will want to exercise a magical force on things we need to be ready to accept the consequences of that ( similar to a karmic law )....
So that Pagans, with this level of discrimination, possess in my opinion the highest levels of ethical standards !

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We can find Easter in pagan history.
by www.letgodbetrue.com
EXCERPTS from the article are in red, my replies-reflections in black:

Pagans have always got excited about spring, because they saw the sun increasing in power, animals mating, and plant life.

REFLECTIONS : Pagans got excited about spring because they participated in the rebirth of nature in its material and spiritual forms.

With their minds totally blinded by a holy God, they exalted animal and human fertility, reproduction, and sexual love. Goddesses of love and fertility were worshipped with spring festivals and gross immorality.

REFLECTIONS : Pagans, among others, worship the power of love and the joy of sex, which being part of nature was created by the same principle that creates the Universe. It is also because love & sex are continuously celebrated through procreation that we are alive !!!

The Roman Catholic Church, seeking to "Christianize" the pagans, gave new names and meanings to the old pagan festivals to keep their unregenerated members happy. Any encyclopedia will confirm this brief synopsis, and we have provided some links to help you at the bottom of this document.

REFLECTIONS : It seems to me highly unlikely that Christians made the old Pagans happy and free people with obtuse dogmas based on sexual repression and similarities. To the contrary, Paganism never wanted to make proselytes, like the Roman Church did with the "evangelization" of the world !
Christianism adopted everything from Paganism because it was a political advantage from the Roman Emperors perspective to unify the empire through a single faith based on a universal love. The result was to control people, making them less belligerent and smoothing up inflamed souls ....

But Bible Christians are plainly told to reject any association with pagan religion or any religious things highly esteemed by the world.
Any participation in them is spiritual adultery and highly offensive to the most high God.

REFLECTIONS : Everybody who believes blindly and merely just in a book is at risk of a default error if the book doesn't contain real truths. Because a book is just an ensemble of words, not a living entity, the believer is also relying on a dead ensemble of words. A book can be also invented, manipulated and rewritten during historical appeals.
Also, who can assure us that the Bible is the Book, or superior to the Koran, or to the Gita ... Nobody has the right to say mine is the right religion or the "only" one ...
Less than ever somebody who just relies and believes in a book !!
Finally, unless you consider God as an image of a man with all the limitations included, nobody can even think that our sin or "spiritual adultery" can be even seen or taken seriously by God. Especially by a God which is totally separated from our material world and alien to our mediocre mundane events.