Bear Wild
Well-Known Member
Except that what is occurring in some academic centers and in people serious about recovering a spiritual and religious practice that honors our pre-Christian ancestral wisdom. After a rough recovery realizing there were no unbroken lineages of pagans and there was at least about a 900 year gap between the last pagan practitioners and the contemporary pagans, there is a serious deconstructing of our modern world view and learning from other indigenous societies with their relationship to the land and the spiritual being all around. Although this is a contemporary practice it is now very well founded in archeology, new views of mythology, comparative religions and anthropology, folklore and personal experiential relations with the land and numinous beings. It is no longer new age superficial adopting of what one likes but now years of study of the above topics, Initiation which takes years, and active spiritual engagement. We do look back with what we want to see and know full well what we do is not identical with the past but does share important relationships with the land and numinous beings. In the academic world there are new changes in the way we study and understand indigenous knowledge including amazing research by indigenous people about themselves. This is wonderfully expressed by Tyson Yungkaporta in his book Sand Talk.
I know I cannot say with any certainty that the initial use of an evergreen for Christmas as a symbolic spiritual expression from the past, but it is equally impossible that it was not. My studies of Irish folklore, mythology and history shows just how long the pre-Christian relations with the land lasted. They lasted all the way up to our century and still alive in some isolated areas.