Nothing could make more sense than that those who claim to worship Nature should want to live in rural places. Nevertheless, I find myself writing on one of the only two web sites I have found dedicated to this way of life. So here we are.

When I first met Daniel and Datura, the mutual friend who introduced us summarized their path this way: They own a piece of land, and they consider it Sacred. They are building a Sacred Site. They are eclectic, mainly Norse and Celtic because that's their blood line, and some Native American aspects, because those were the gods originally worshipped in this land, but they do a lot of shamanic stuff involving plant spirits and so forth..."

My response (as a Cultural Anthropology student) was a flip "Well, that would be the Right Way to do it, wouldn't it?" The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I had said.

But it's true. The land itself was the first God. All religions started out as people trying to live and cope on the land. All forms of Magick, from ecstatic prayer to alchemy, started out as a real person with a real need in a real situation. When you get close to the land, you get close to the Source of all that, and you become what a friend of mine calls a "Source-erer."

The word Pagan means country-person. People in the Roman Empire used the word "pagani" as a term of derision toward the "uncivilized barbarians of the provinces." The word "civilized" comes from the Latin "cives" meaning "city." "Civilized" means nothing more or less than "adapted to living in the city." In the Roman context, almost everyone who lived in a city was a slave. Roman cities were entirely built and maintained by slave labor. So a "civilized" person was a person who had become adapted to the condition of being a slave, or that of being a master over slaves, either of which I believe to be morally and spiritually crippling.

Where did the slaves come from? From the "provinces." The word province comes from the Latin prefix and root "pro vincia," which means "through conquest." So the word "province," means "a place we have conquered." When urban sophisticates accuse rural people of being "provincial," what they are saying is "you sound like one of the quaint little people we conquered, raped, and enslaved." Which is to say, "When are you going to get used to being a slave and act like the rest of the civilized Romans."

end for now

Next: Where Christianity plays in this schema.
 

Conclusion:
 Religion and reality must inform each other. The macro goal is to re-invent culture, or at least to collect data in that direction. The micro goal is to claim for ourselves what Joseph Campbell called the "experience of being fully alive," and live the Magikal Life.