Neo-Pagan?
I dropped by On Gaien Higashi Dori, where Setsunai had posted his results to a “What Philosopher Are You?” quiz. I decided to try it out as well, but was dissatisfied to find myself classified as a Determinist, so I took a detour over to the “Belief System Selector”.
I was surprised to find that I was pegged as Neo-Pagan, as I had never thought of myself as such, but the shoe seems to fit. I also scored pretty high for Unitarian Universalism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Taoism. I was really not too surprised to see the scores for Buddhism and Taoism, as I have a shelf or two of books on these. I guess that I am going to have to go out and get a book on Neo-Paganism and see what this is all about.
By they way…
pa·gan (n.)
1. One who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, especially a worshiper of a polytheistic religion.
2. One who has no religion.
3. A non-Christian.
4. A hedonist.
5. A Neo-Pagan
Notice that these definitions all boil down to ethnocentric labeling of “outsiders”. “They don’t live like us, they don’t pray to OUR god, they will burn in hell unless we demonize their “gods” and force them to think like us.” That was the basic plan, and it pretty much worked out for the Pope. Thanks to the religious cleansing, when most of us think of Pagans today, we picture masked men in goat leggings dancing around a fire sacrificing livestock and copulating beneath the full moon. Here were people who saw gods in the trees, in the sky, in everything. People who danced beneath the harvest moon to thank the gods for their crops, people who respected their surroundings and the creatures that they lived with, people in touch with the balance and rythyms of nature.
Why is it alway “Us and Them”? Why is conformity so important? Why is it so difficult to accept things as is, and to appreciate the differences rather than attacking them? My God, your God, her God… who cares?
I am starting to think that I should not have taken that quiz… I am going to have to start pulling some books down from the religion/philosophy shelf in my office and do some re-reading…