Why would you worship something that is not aware of your worship?
I guess it's a slight variation on the 'worship of inanimate objects' question sometimes asked, since I'm happy enough to concede that everything is alive, in a sense. But to be clear I'm certainly not telling anyone they should worship anything.
I'm more trying to understand intent. Near as I can guess, for some people worship is about reminding oneself of their place in the universe, and perhaps doing so in a communal fashion (at least, ideally...obviously some pagans are self-reliant these days).
Am I close to the mark? Or missing the point?
Any insights welcomed to round out my basic understanding.
Hi lewisnotmiller,
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This is my personal Pagan view, let no one take offence of it]
You ask why? The why is most of the time a reason we invent after the event, and then we assume it as having always been the cause. Rationalisation is for 99% a process of explanation and justification in hindsight. But we are not aware of that.
A Pagan has a different mindset (way of thinking) than over-rationalizing modern man from early age educated in monotheism or/and science, which are thought constructs, logical models superimposed on real experiences, reality.
A mindset is not about ideas. We can take over the ideas that come from a way of thinking, but we can not acquire the mindset. For instance Christians taking on Pagan ideas and lead them into churches remain Christians, not pagans. But to the average person they may look like Pagans. Ideas are simply a dress you can put on, but it does not change the mindset.
A pagan does not superimpose a rational model on the world, in stead has a direct connection to things that bypasses rational thinking. A connection is always an interaction, and is always two-sided. You will know from physics that one-sided interaction can not exist in Nature. The very fact that you can feel something is because the thing reacts to you.
The difference between you an me is the awareness of it. If you live in rational thinking, thinking overrules feeling and blocks it out. You see something and in stead of purely experiencing something your mind immediately starts creating rational connections with memories. Rational thinking suppresses feeling.
It is easy to demonstrate that. We go to a restaurant, you make a remark to the waiter for having to wait so long. You are served a delightful meal and you want to start eating. I come back from the toilets and before you can taste your meal, I say, be careful, I saw the guy spitting in your meal. The question is: Can you still taste the meal in the same way? Does it still give the same experience?
The answer is no, you can not. Emotional experience caused by thinking takes over from the experience of the senses. We can see that clearly with monotheists who live in strong emotions through their indoctrination about things in the world. That is why they can be so hurtful to others, they do not feel them any more, they live in their own emotions of things. Their book stories are created to invoke these strong emotions.
Before Mankind developed this strong rational causal thinking, people rather lived in the direct experience. In Nature you are living in an environment where everything is alive and interacting and survival depends on the connection and respect of each being and its inborn Nature. Respect can mean keeping a healthy distance or develop close ties, cooperation, friendship.
Cooperation can take the form of worship. Pagans being dependent on and very sensitive about Nature studied Nature to invoke the things they needed. That is how Natural science evolved. Many things we now call science, used to be magic. The difference is only the rational explanation. When I bake a cake from ingredients the transformation is magical, but nowadays also scientific. You may say, it is not longer magical, but for me the experience still is. But rational explanation takes away that "wonder", because you are no longer "wondering". You now have a rational explanation, you experience becomes covered with that. You live in an mental idea world rather than in the senses of the body.
That is why you want to hear from me a rational explanation, something you can weave logically into your already existing knowledge of things. You do not want to feel it, you want to understand it. Because understanding is experience enough for you.
But for the Pagan it is not. There aren't many Pagans left because Christianity has been methodically rooting them out, and science is doing the same. They do that by an education system that brainwashes children from young age in their particular rational thinking. They start imprinting their rational models on the developing human brains. Thus formed he can never experience his environment in the same way as his ancestors. Only a minority of people reject this rigid thinking from young age and start seeking a life in direct experience.
Back to worship. Pagans do not worship like a monotheist. Please, do not confuse us with people mingling with Pagans that bring their Jesus in through the back-door, those are proselytisers. Pagans are polytheists, not monotheists. They do not have a supernatural. Everything is nature.
Yes, there are also spiritual phenomena, we can sense them as well. We all do that to a degree. For instance we can sense the mood when we enter a room. We can sense the spirit of other beings. If your are very sensitive you can even sense the spirits of the dead.
Nature is true wondrous and has infinite subtle phenomena we can experience. The difference between a rationalizing person like you and a intuitive person like me, is that we use different instruments. You will want to create more sensitive equipment, while I will try to become a more sensitive receptor myself. The difference lies in the experience. You will have a emotional experience of excitement about finding something new, while I will have a direct experience.
Putting it extreme, a very rational person looks at tree and sees a biological system converting energy into biomass. He distinguishes all the parts and their functions. If he is commercially inclined , he will see the amount of wood that can be extracted from it and the profit that can be made from it. While I feel the presence of a living being. Such living beings have a subtle direct beneficial effect on our minds.
This mindset does not bring us closer to nature, it is closer to nature. It is the way beings in Nature interact. Though we now discover that animals have some rational thought too, they are living very much in their senses. (That is why it such a crime to deprive them from using them in a natural way).
For every being goes that his body is his senses. Higher animals happen to have magnificent bodies. Humans are special in that we developed oversized brains allowing to reflect the experiences in our head more than other animals. Thus we start to live in the reflection rather than the experience. And we start to model the world according to our reflections. We start to create our own experience, but those are far less subtle what Nature provides.
What is worship. Worship is an interaction in which one value/worth is giving to a being and another is received (extracted). (worth+ship = worth creating) If you tend for a cow, she will produce milk. If you tend for trees they will give fruits. Worth is created for both by the interaction. In the same way Pagans will acquire value from tending spirits. When they regard these spirits as especially important they are called Gods. But frankly a God can be anything, it can be material phenomena, Earth, Sun, Moon, Wind, Fire, Lakes, Forest. Mountains, Trees, Rivers, etc. It can be animals, It can be Founding fathers. I can be pure spirits, it can be pure qualities.
A Pagan does this transfer of inspiration in a systematic way by tapping into its sources. But as all exchange is two-sided, he also gives something first. What do give to the people that inspire us? We give/express our admiration and our gratefulness. And that is exactly what a Pagan does in the process of worship, he exchanges worth and it make him feel good, gratifying, happy.
We have to be careful though what kind of exchange we go into. People also do this interaction to gain power, wealth, immortality. Such people interact with beings that proclaim themselves to be all-powerful, They are also wrathful, jealous, demand fear, obedience. Their love is the megalomaniac mercy and they demand obedience. They also demand their worship is spread. These religions by their very nature dominate this world and have poisoned us. The most important one can be recognized by the torture sign it carries. These religions have almost destroyed older Pagan traditions. Their first act is to chop down the sacred trees of Pagans and create a building in which the conquered are brainwashed and coerced to worship their God.
They put their symbols on top of high towers to declare their rule and dominance. These religions are based on a doctrine that does no longer allow people to think or feel free. These religions grew from dangerous cults around a cult leader. Do not compare the worship of free Pagans to the worship in these religions.For conversion purposes they may create this idea, but rather look at their history of repression, persecution, torture, murder, genocide, endless wars for their God. They call it "love" and "peace" but they are really power, wealth and immortality worshippers. And they have indeed become very powerful and rich as a result of their worship. They control most of the world. There actions also make many disgusted of religion entirely. That is why they try to enrol kind, spiritual people in their armies to help convert others again. But the rule is always authoritarian.
For true Pagans the difference is day and night. But the average person only sees the surface, ideas that are easily copied or diluted. The have turned everything upside down. Pagan Gods are evil and the Devil, their God of power love and peace. But look how they define this love. Love for their God is obedience, and love from their God is "mercy". And peace is not harmony, but repressing everything they define as evil. And evil is not hurting others, but defined as rejection of their God. etc.
Understand these religions as opposites, even if they cloak themselves by using Pagan ideas, symbols and customs. In these religions only humans have a spirit being an image of their God. If you read deeper in their texts you will find suggestion that unbelievers are not even humans. For instance the Pope officially declared that Indians of America where animals free to be killed. That is why they genocided over and over again. They use the lure of immortality as an excuse to force convert people, using ideas like kill one to save many. This kind of ideology has nothing to do with paganism and their worship is self-serving. A Pagan in his worship serves his environment. Pagans believe that the spirits are strengthened by the reverence. If we all revere Love, Love will become stronger, and we will all feel it in our society. If we all revere justice, the feeling of justice will become much stronger.
The other side is that if we revere power, we will create power structures and leaders will feel power and others oppression. Of we revere Nature as Gods gift to humans alone, we will develop greed and abuse the environment. If we start to live in delusions of immortality in the hereafter, life on Earth will become secondary and the body simply an accessory that keeps us from being free.
We all worship whether we realize it or not, but Pagans do it in a very conscious way. And sane minds do it in a healthy way by feeling what is beneficial to them, and stay away from what is not. But worship can also become very unhealthy in cults where a leader imposes his rule over others, especially if this leader is not sane and spreads insane ideas, and coerces, bribes his followers to believe in them. Some of these cults have grown to enormous sizes, also have divided in new ones, those have come to haunt us.
I hope you understand sane Pagan thinking is not at odds with science, but rather another way to approach reality. Science is rightfully rejecting religious doctrines as unscientific viewpoints that are no longer valid descriptions of reality. Natural science and Natural religions are different aspects of our being. Both are being contaminated by the doctrines of religious cults that mingle both aspects into a strange brew they call belief.
I hope this helps you to understand worship from a personal Pagan viewpoint.
