paganism

The word pagan has been used by Christians to mean anyone who is not a follower of one of the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Anyone else can be labelled as a pagan. But the origins of the word pagan are to do with people living in the countryside, a country dweller, people who do not live in a city.

This is significant, for Pagans are really those who are still in touch with nature, who have not become separate from it. They can still feel the natural rhythms of the day and night, of the seasons as they pass, of the phases of the moon. Pagans are still part of nature. In these times of environmental catastrophe, of climate change, global warming, the one thing that humanity is most in need of is to reconnect with nature. We have gone astray, we have become urbanites. We live in cities, we have developed technologies and we have tried to control nature. In doing so we have separated ourself from Her. Ultimately, that separation is an illusion, we are still part of the same great system, we are still part of nature. If through our actions we change, radically, the whole balance of the natural world then, like a boomerang, it will come back to us and affect us in ways that we did not expect.

So in our modern day, paganism has much more to offer than we might suspect. I’d encourage you to play with being a pagan: No need to be too serious about it but go out into nature and see if you can feel Her, feel the soil, touch the trees, sleep out if you dare. Allow yourself to feel the weather, the sunshine warming your body, the wind and the rain. Feel how we are still at the mercy of these forces of nature.

If you spend enough time in nature, slowly you will become a pagan, you will once more begin to feel yourself as part of nature, not separate from it. At the same time you will be feeling everything as God, a manifestation of God. You will have a deep gratitude to the sun and the moon, the wind and the rain. You will fall in love with the trees and the grasses. It will be an intense love affair with God here on Earth. In this way, you will come to feel not only that you are part of nature but that the whole of existence is one and you are part of that. This is what paganism has to offer, it is a natural way, a way where we humans are at one with nature not against it, not fighting, not struggling. We are a part of Her. It is time that we remembered this. It is time that we all remember that we are, deep down, pagans.