So, a few questions, now ...


  1. "Do these Pagans (of the sort you mention) worship the devil?"


    Why do so many people ask them that? Probably the same reason that many others have been asked this - the promotion of bigoted hostility, and those seeking an excuse for their conduct.

    The devil, of popular Pauline Christian conception, is noted for his scorn for the rights and well being of others, an attitude in diametrical opposition to the values they would endorse. If anything, they would have stepped FURTHER away from devil worship, than has Mainline Christianity.

    Mainline Christian churches will often sanction the act of attempting to talk someone into a hardship, or even harm's way, if it is done so to benefit someone else, on the basis that one is merely making a request, which the one being persuaded is free to refuse. Apparently, forgetting their own injunction



    "Thou shalt not place a stumbling block before the blind",


    a good (though unfashionable) piece of moral advice for anyone. Pagans of the sort we mention, however, would NOT be tolerant of the abuse of another's trust, no matter how "well intentioned" someone believes the abuse to be. Nor is this just anger confined to one particular circle, or even one particular brand of Paganism. Consider the Wiccan Rede (*)



    "An ye harm none, do as thou will".


    Read that one twice. It isn't an archaic way of saying "anything goes", as we see looking at the first part:



    "An ye harm none ..."


    In other words, you don't have the right to hurt anyone, including yourself. This is not a weaker form of the golden rule,



    "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."


    but rather an addition to it, one which closes a troubling loophole in it, often exploited by those who approach it in a legalistic fashion, indifferent to the spirit in which it was made. The problem was, that callous individuals would evade criticism, by saying that they expected no better from others, than others had come to expect from them. This became especially easy, if they felt no fear of losing the upper hand, or had driven the fear of their own demise, from their consciousness. Thus, we saw the paradoxical phenomenon of piously Christian thugs arise. The Wiccan Rede, popular in many varieties of Neo-Paganism, puts an end to this, reminding us that there is more to benevolence than a refraining from hypocrisy.

    Neo-Pagan ethics, often, are far less a rejection of Christian ethics, than an expansion on them. This should be no cause for wonder - we all dwell in the same reality, even if our momentary conceptions of it should vary wildly. But, if we allow the truth to draw us in, we will often be drawn together, of necessity, when that the definitive grasp of that truth we seek, is attainable. But we should never imagine that we have reached our final goal. Any finite set of rules - and in our finite time in existence, could our finite minds have come to understand any other - will almost certainly have an unintended gap, that will have to be dealt with, and raise issues that we haven't thought about. To live morally, we must seek to live morally, and to think about what that calls for, is a crucial part of the effort to do so.







    To answer the question ...

    No, none of us - not Jews, nor Catholics, nor these lately bashed Pagans worship the devil, and if someone did, any of us would ask him not to come. You know, based on how often I hear fundamentalist Christians ask that question, in so fearful a fashion, I find that the only conclusion that I can come to is that they don't think too highly of Jesus. That they don't so much love God, as view Him as being an all powerful sociopath who must be appeased at all costs. I would think that if anything would qualify as "blasphemy", it would be that - and the fact that the attitude is merely hinted at (rather than openly expressed), if anything, makes it more insulting to the diety that they profess to worship.

    I am told that to serve any but the God they believe in, is to serve the devil, His enemy. It doesn't matter, in their eyes, whether the values promoted by that diety are just or unjust. If one guesses wrong, in matters of theology, before there is any reliable way of telling truth from falsehood, one is condemned to an eternity of torture so inhuman, that the human mind can't imagine it without being there. When one asks some of these "true believers", if it would be just to punish an honest mistake in this fashion, the usual reply is that given human depravity, salvation is a free, ever undeserved gift, received through faith alone. I would respond to this, by saying that faith is exactly what these "worshippers" have refused to invest in their God.

    True, none is righteous in the eyes of an all just God, but who could be expected to be? Was this God unaware, at the time that He made His frail creatures, that He had not endowed them with an infinite strength of will, and that it would be inevitable that they would have moral lapses from time to time? Did He not know us when He made us?

    Some would say that as we fall short of the glory of God, any reward for this life better than the eternal infinite torment of Hell is a free gift that we couldn't possibly deserve, and so which God may, in total justice, give or not give in any manner that He pleases. But if an architect should place a wooden beam in a building, in a place where only a steel girder could withstand the strain, and the building should fall down, is that the beam's failure, or the architect's? If their God has made us in such a way as to be incapable of the perfection that He would desire, is that our choice, or His, and would an all loving, all just God ever allow himself the choice of torturing others, for the inevitable consequences of the choices that He freely made - and those infinitely malleable creatures that many Christians imagine us to be (capable of being made morally perfect, without loss of identity) had no power to alter?

    Would one set fire to a newborn puppy, from a litter that one has just breed, because it had disobeyed an order to fly up to the treetops? Would we not imprison anyone who did so, as a dangerous madman? Yet how many of us think nothing of attributing an act no less capricious, and no less cruel, to a diety that they claim to be all loving, and all just? I do not see how they can do this in sincerity. If they do so, even in their thoughts, out of pure fear, do they imagine that an ommiscent being can be so easily fooled, or that He would be pleased by the attempt at deception - especially given how often hypocrisy is railed against in His scriptures? If such a powerful demon were to rule the world, we would indeed be lost. It would be pure folly to seek salvation, by any means short of a lobotomy, for full consciousness would leave us with the very knowledge of His injustice that this irascible being would damn us for.

    If one would call himself a Christian, let him read the gospels he claims to hold holy, and ask himself if such cruelty characterised the life of Christ. Is it God's capriciousness that he witnesses, when he views human existence in his mind's eye, or his own, projected upon the almighty?

    So let us acknowledge that any truly just diety is as bound by the moral law in His dealings with us, as we are with Him - not creating the moral law by fiat, but leading us to it through the sharing of His wisdom.

















  1. "But by worshipping others, do you not deprive the lord of the glory which is His due?"



    If you were to step out onto your lawn, and see the squirrels bowing down in homage before you, would you feel honored or amused? Imagine a race of beings so brilliant that it keeps pets, who have pets, the dullest of whom is more brilliant than Einstein ever was. Would you expect a member of such a species to be especially interested in having honors paid to it by one of us, any more than we would seek to be worshipped by rodents? Then why would you expect a being far more intelligent (than even those we imagine here) to crave that which would be so far beneath the notice of those who themselves are so far beneath Him?

    In no meaningful way could we ever hope to add to the glory of a God such as all Christians profess to worship, nor could we detract from it, no matter how hard we tried. What would you think of a man who sought the praise of mice? Would he not be pathetic in your eyes, for his pursuit of such a petty goal? Well, then, if you are a Christian, do you mean to tell me that you imagine yourself to possess a greater sense of dignity than your own Lord? Again, you have projected that which is worst in you upon Him, and imagined that it was others who blasphemed against your God.

    A god as great as these "Christians" pretend to believe in could be involved in our world for one reason, and one reason alone - the compassionate desire to help those living within it. In leading us to a deeper understanding of how to live in a moral fashion, He would would be teaching us how not to hurt each other, and ourselves, the aim of any caring lawgiver.

    But, if another being should lead one of us to this truth, why should this offend a diety whose aims would thereby be met? Such offense would reflect the action of a bruised ego - a petty human frailty, that one would expect their Lord to be above - not the desire to help. Indeed, what would one think of a volunteer, who savaged one of those he came to help, in a jealous rage, because that less fortunate one accepted the help of another volunteer? If one truly imagines God to be so far above us, how can one imagine that He would ever be capable of doing things so far beneath us? If you would claim to love your Lord, perhaps you could begin by trusting in Him.

....... Click here to continue.

(*) For a variety of reasons, we did not embrace the Rede as a foundation principle at the Shrine. However, we felt that it was important to note that it doesn't mean "do your own thing".

How naive we were. Our initial thought was that the Wiccan community didn't appreciate how complex a task making that principle into a practical moral guide would be. What is harm? Which practices do damage, not only to individuals directly in the short run, but also indirectly in the long run, by damaging the fabric of society? How is one to make timely moral decisions with the Rede? One could spend a hundred years studying that question of what "harm" is, and not come close to a definitive answer.

Our naivite was to be found in our belief that many could be found in Wiccadom who would care enough to bother, or even be very tolerant of those who would. Given how we have seen said religion put into practice, we would like to emphasize that no current endorsement of Wicca as a living religion should be inferred from the contents of this article.

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