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Thursday, February 13, 2014

Pagan Progressive Patriot


   Most of us are spiritual  sojourners, and we never pull into any one religious port for very long. Like the Druids or Unitarian Universalists or the Buddhists, it is about the path we are on, not any conclusive set of truths.
    I was researching the roots of witch craft, trying to trace back how traditions could have started. I was going to find my own truth and went back to the days of the Cave Painters, 10 to 30 thousand years ago.  Coincidentally around the world, 25,000 years ago, Venus figurines appear. Cave art is all that remains after bones and bark and homes and fire altars have weathered everything else back into the earth.
            The Cave painters were also known as the reindeer hunters. In Solutre France there is an archaeological site that has uncovered millions of bones of reindeer and mammoth and horses, indicating it was once an ancient meeting place.  20,000 years ago the reindeer migrated northwards as calmer and warmer weather prevailed, and the Reindeer People migratedwith them. In time they crossed paths with the wanderers from the Caucasus Mountains who settled much of Europe.
            Then we get to the period between 10 and 20 thousand years ago, of which we hear nearly nothing. Archaeological discoveries need to fit into this little box scientists call conventional wisdom. According to Marija Gimbutas, the pre-goddess societies made pottery and built small houses. Presumably they built the first small towns. Agriculture didn't arrive suddenly, 9,000 years ago in the so called 'cradle of civilization', as we are led to believe, but small fields and experimentation by hunter gathers added to the already bountiful earth for thousands of years previous.  
            As noted archaeologist Gimbutas writes, "this was a long lasting period of remarkable creativity and stability, an age free from strife. Their culture was a culture of art. Cultures filled with Goddesses.

   Arthur Versluis from his book, The Philosophy of Magic, “Our pagan religion is not the evil you portray it to be in the past thousand years plus. At the heart of ritual lies the feminine component, the kindness and intuitive empathy. The seed, the ultimate compassion is the emerald stone of magic, the source of strength is the heart of magic.” (3) This is what the bloody warrior elite has lost, compassion.    It is gone from their traditions and their institutions and pagans are poised to put passion and compassion back into the culture as the replacement for violence and war. Difficult as it may be in many so called free countries to be an out of the closet Witch or Druid, people will try.
The Propaganda lately from fundamentalists and Dominionists, is that Goddess worship is Satanism. According to Pastor Buddy and others, Satan is a rebel and witches are rebellious, so witches are actually following Satan, GET IT?
               Do you fully comprehend that this nonsense about witches is being spoken by TV evangelists, and people believe it? In 2014! Not a very sophisticated spin, but the result will be the same; continued discrimination and marginalization of women, and also ostracization for those who believe in Goddesses.
             The American Revolution started with the 'despicable rabble' of Boston Towne; the rock throwing, stamp collector confronting, effigy hangin, bar room debating, restive roughnecks. Not to mention the many young apprentices and stout hearted,  independent thinkers WHO STOOD UP AGAINST TYRANNY and were the ones who finally outsmarted the Christians politically.
Critics of our founding fathers today say they were an elite ruling class. I tell them that the evolution of personal liberty ‘had to begin somewhere and it had to begin somehow’.  How could justice and equality suddenly arrive fully blossomed out of nowhere?   It would be like complaining that Alexander Graham Bell should have invented a message machine too.  There was further work to be done.
            The Patriots of the actual Greatest Generation of 1776 laid down a framework, whose basic structures survives intact, which is something no other large group of people have  achieved .
         Alcohol Prohibition is an example of how hysterical fringe minorities can get their way. It created a constitutional amendment that made alcohol illegal, and 15 years later it was revoked, an aberrant misuse of the constitution, giving birth to new forms of crime.
            Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Sam Adams, along with many other progressive and independent Enlightenment thinkers, were the primary progenitors of American independence.  On the night of Paul Reveres ride, he emerged from a Masonic hall to get on his horse to warn his neighbors, or was it a Masonic meeting in a tavern? Or a meeting of Unitarians. In Paris, Benjamin Franklin talked to Thomas Paine convincing him to come back to the colonies in 1774, while gathered in a Masonic Hal in France.
            And yes, I see quotes about how George Washington called upon God in some of his famous statements implying the Christian God. I’m here to tell you my friend that George tapped in the Capitol Cornerstone with his Mason apron on, okay?  He was paying lip service to the pesky clergy of his day with gratuitous quotes about god but mostly discussed "Providence". His beliefs had more in common with the local Natives than some city clergy, some piffy preacher Christian.
      Masons basically believe in a God, a great architect of the Universe. Primarily, they believe in the duality of male and female in their higher degrees along with a lot of Egyptian mysticism. Isis and Minerva and Liberty; and muses such as Clio were among their gods and goddesses.

Remember it was only 50 years previous to our revolution that it became illegal to kill witches.  Till then the Puritans got away with murder. The Colonists went a long way sociologically in a short amount of time, because of Enlightenment Thinking. It appeared the Dawn of Civilization was near at hand with the Colonists in 1776.
 Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and her story is at the heart of the Eluesian mysteries, and is the source of the Oracle at Delphi. She is also on the roof of the Capitol building giving advice to Ben Franklin in a painting. As Masons, our founding fathers had secret ceremonies invoking the oracle at Delphi which was a place where the spiritually nimble debated, and its well was considered the navel of the world. The umbilical cord of liberty with its intertwining with the Tree of Life...
            The Founding Revolutionaries of the United States created Washington D.C. much like a giant mason lodge, and the Capitol building like a Goddess temple. The masons were the people most known for their stone work; they were the architects of Chartres Cathedral, and most other ancient structures made of stone.
The Ancient Free Men Masons became the freemasons, and ritual was added as time went by, and then was tweaked by the idle rich with nothing better to do. That’s my Cliff Notes version of the Masons. They are a social group, but there is a constant faith based insinuation  in all media that Masons are evil.

       It is not your imagination that dogmatic authoritarian religious despots have embedded themselves in the American government. Their websites decry the "evil" Masons but the Christians have always had to use Machiavellian machinations to usurp Liberty and the praising of Goddesses. Replacing her with Big Brothers Bible.

                This country was built with an ax, and not the Bible. The Puritans tried to create a theocracy but the independent thinking, roughhewn émigrés from Europe cocked a critical eye towards this violence. The hardy women and the men with sharp axes and big hammers settled this country, and it’s my opinion that the preachers followed these pioneer families and usurped the good labor of these hard working people. Also remember this: by 1700 all mandatory church attendance was dropped in the colonies and by the Revolutionary War, these rugged men and women, Type A rejects from around the world, thrived in the growing light of liberty, and by 1776 only 1 in 7 had an affiliation with a religious group. This is the truth about America.                         
   American concepts of liberty and individual freedom and authority being granted by voters, is completely incompatible with Christian religions and it‘s precise doctrine to live by.  I would hope you can see the deception that religious people use to usurp the authority of this country. It’s invisible leader speaking out of a book told to a goat herder.  America is not a Christian nation. I can only face palm Islamist extremism and how it would never work in this country and it‘s hopeless to even try. Right wing kooks try to scare people with the looming threat if Sharia Law is laughable.
"Don't forget to breathe"

    The Protestant Manifest Destiny and the Catholic-Islamic Holy Rampage of Conquest were keen on reducing forests where all the fairies, elves and pagans lived; where the Druids and Templars hid out and where the witches lived. The ancient forests of America scared the Christians because of the magic of forests and everyone they wanted to kill lived there.
    Is this why they were so intent on leveling the forests? They cheered every improvement in logging, and every new forest reducer that came along. The heritage of the North American continent; it’s incredible forests, were sliced and sold like cheap luncheon meat as a result of this faith based deforestation. It’s said that a squirrel could go from Virginal to Ohio hopping through an unbroken canopy of trees.  What was so very unnatural is that in this obvious presence of Mother Nature and the Great Spirit in North America, this foreign religion from a violent part of the world that had been warring for 5 thousand years became the dominant religion through strength of arms.      .   
Wanna bet that most logging companies, railroads and cattle ranches were owned by Protestants? Wanna bet it was a Christian that owned factories where child workers worked 60 hours a week in dangerous conditions as the industrial revolution began in the early 1800’s?  Wanna bet the owner of the windowless factory was at church, demonstrably dropping a gold coin in the collection basket.


  Pagans, we are the sons and daughters of freedom, the protectors and friends of our American constitution. Think about this seriously, how can this be a christian country when the strict tenets of their religion would not allow freedom of speech and association and assembly and I’m sure they would be taking your guns if they ever have a successful coup. The ironic ending to the stockpiling of ammunititon the last 50 years to "take our country back".
We will be called upon during environmentalisms last stand to at least make our opinions known about predatory capitalism as it invades the cold and frozen north, the last profitable virgin frontier. The rapidly heating northern climates do not need an all-out assault on resources. Drill baby drill sounds like the wrong approach to sustainable capitalism, and it is so important that the Russians suck out natural gas from the artic or Chinese companies drill for diamonds in the Siberian Taiga and remain unhindered in their quest for profits? Shall we just sell Japan the ancient forests in Alaska? We need the money, right? They need the wood.
This article was supposed to be about discovering the goddess           

 My point is that there will be plenty of time in the future to talk to dryads and to call the shaman community because there will be not be just one group that wants to start the new world order. Many will be competing for the power. Technological Theocracies, Mussolini style corporate fascism, international bankers, the super rich    and others will be competing to manage this new world order. This is where the patriot comes in; a patriot wants to protect our freedoms.
There will be a vacuum when good people do nothing and manipulative, rapacious greed will continue to rule the day id left untended. Remember the second principle of witchcraft. “We recognize that our intelligence gives us a unique responsibility to our environment. We seek to live in harmony with nature, in ecological balance offering fulfillment within an evolutionary concept.” The profit mongers will not stop. They would sell every fish in the ocean, given the chance, and destroy every ecosystem if they are not controlled. My point is that pagans and greens and progressives can work together and as a rule they are open minded and friendly but atheist greens need not be contemptuous if I mention the 9 goddesses of the Druddité religion. City slicker progressives need to get a better grip understanding the rural culture and the beauty that many find in our forests.

            Pagans are poised to put passion and compassion back into the culture as the replacement for violence and war during the final blossoming of equality our constitution assures us of.  Till every Druid or Witch can practice without fear of condemnation or harassment, till every Sikh or Janist or Swamp Arab or Taosit or Hopi or Mayan does not fear harassment, we have not achieved Constitutional Equality. Remember to not offend those who have no dieties or invisible friends, who only want to live their life logically.



                         Pagan is as pagan does

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