relevant to this community's interests

[bohemianeditor]

This Witchvox article has been making the rounds:

The Pagan Secret

... it has been bothering me for a long time that pagans have this idea that nearly anything you can conceive of as being a pseudo-religious experience is real and irrefutable as long as the person claims they believe it happened.

[...]

I'm talking about the New Age, fantastical world in which every animal, rock, dragon, Otherkin, and anything else JRR Tolkien could come up with lives on some astral plane and they've all got super magical secrets to tell you and treasures to share. It's not true, and it's time we called people on it.

Me, I like some woo in my spirituality and some spirituality in my woo, but it does help to keep them separate. One doesn't necessarily follow the other.

I also think it's helpful to look critically at the woo-woo bits, rather than do what this writer is railing aganst: uncritically accepting the least sparkly thing as a Profound Religious Experience.

What do y'all think about the intersection of woo and [your spiritual path here]?

Comments

[jenett]

Curious, if you don't mind: when you identify as a non-religious pagan, what does that mean for you? (I've seen people use it before, but not anywhere I could ask them easily directly what that meant.) If you've got something somewhere already that I can read instead, feel free to point me, too.

[rainbow]

for me it encompasses a lot of things, including recognition that the moon, the earth (and everything on it) is alive, even if it's not the sort of "alive" we tend to think of; that everything contains a bit of the divine; honoring the seasons and the changes of the moon; recognising that physical reality and spiritual reality can be at odds with each other at times and yet both be "right" for what they are at that time; use of intention and energy to accomplish things; recognition that the energy i put out will come back to me multiplied, for good or bad.

what for me some of the things that make it non-religious are there isn't anything about belief or faith, only about what i experience myself; while i recognise that gods/goddesses can be entities, constructs, or ways to commune with the divine, for me they aren't things to worship; no rituals or tools; days that i celebrate as holidays aren't "holy days", they're days that are meaningful for me that i enjoy celebrating.