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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in theology

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
News and Updates

 

I'm currently working on a new article (after way too long a hiatus, I know) and if all goes well, I'll have that for you next week. There are a number of issues and topics that have caught my attention, I have a few projects in the works,  plus I still owe the final article in my 'honoring city spirits' series.  That's all in progress and i'm hoping to post weekly  now that my school term is nearly finished,  but in the meantime, i wanted to make a brief announcement.

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This post started as a discussion of whether some Pagan traditions are more “privileged” than others.  It rapidly became deeper than this.

When I first became a Pagan and began thinking about the deeper implications of my spiritual path, my first major insight was that since Spirit is everywhere, every spiritual tradition, including those made up from whole cloth, have the potential of carrying someone closer to harmony with the Sacred. For example, even if Gerald Gardner simply made up Gardnerian Wicca (which I do NOT believe), that the Gods come in our workings is all the proof I need that it is a valid path – at least for me.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • D. R. Bartlette
    D. R. Bartlette says #
    Thanks. I try to tread very carefully, because I do NOT want to add fuel to the "culture wars" that seem to be brewing between ecc
  • Gus diZerega
    Gus diZerega says #
    Thank you D.R. We all carry what we once were with us when we change on anything, and many either try to stuff what is new into o
  • D. R. Bartlette
    D. R. Bartlette says #
    Lovely post, as usual. As one who has learned and lived an ecclectic path for almost 30 years, it has always been my experience (n
God’s Boredom or Why we are not Enlightened. . .

Why are we not enlightened? In this case I mean why do we not experience ourselves, from the moment we are conscious, as an inalienable part of the Divine, with all Its resources and presence? Our fears and worries tell us that we are not immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, etc, etc. . .even when we know we are part of the Divine. We don’t feel it, at least at first. I think there is an explanation, and it’s a good one, if a bit weird. But, it requires a suspension of our assumptions to understand it. So, please give me a chance to lay it out. You see, God was bored. . .

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Diotima
    Diotima says #
    Sam, you make this "Lonely God" argument well, and it’s one I’ve considered carefully. It certainly gets high marks on my list of
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Great article; loved it.

Posted by on in Studies Blogs
The Gods Themselves

What of the Many Gods? Are they really all One? Are they distinct individuals? Is it the same deity in many cultures? We continue our development of a Pagan Systematic Theology by addressing the Gods Themselves and some thoughts on how to think about our work with Them.

 

One of the really great questions humans have been working on for literally ages is “Is the World One or Many? You can find a long tour of this process in McEvilley’s “The Shape of Ancient Thought” [The kindle edition is cheap!]. We can see even in stone age mythologies efforts to express the general intuition humans have of the unity of the world. 

 

Philosophically this is called ‘monism’ and all the great religions that develop deep self-critical literature have some form of this stance. The One of the Neoplatonists, the Tao, Shunyata for the Buddhists, are all very different ways of apprehending that unity. It is possible to confuse monism with monotheism as some scholars are doing today. (See Athanassiadi’s "Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity".) But as soon as you have other Deities in the system, as did the ancient Neoplatonists, it can’t be monotheism, which is specifically the rejection of all deities, except one. Indeed, in the ancient world Christians were considered and referred to as ‘atheists’ because they denied the Gods.

 

We discussed the world from the viewpoint of its simplicity and unity in my last blog-post, now we need to turn to its divine multiplicity. Gnosis published an early effort of mine on this subject in 1993 (What is Polytheism and how I became Polytheistic). Those were not bad ideas, but I would like to take a different tack today. . .

 

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Scott
    Scott says #
    A couple of thoughts on your proposed structure here: First, I'm not sure that your chain of progression here accurately represen
  • Sam Webster
    Sam Webster says #
    Scott, Thank you for your comments. There are a variety of understandings about the nature of the Henads. My interpretation is fa

Posted by on in Studies Blogs
I Am Am I

 

This is part two of a two-part blog that tries to move beyond the binary distinction of life and death. Please read the first part if you have not as you will get more out of this post if you do. To break out of the dichotomy of life and death we need to introduce identity as another measure of the attributes of existence. In order to explore how identity helps us to expand our understanding of life and death, let's start with the very large and then move down into the very small.

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  • Hec
    Hec says #
    I've always liked the notion that existence here on Gaia is like the drop of water thrown into the air when a wave breaks upon the

Posted by on in Studies Blogs
More Than Life & Death

 

This is a closely packed and idea heavy blog post so please read slowly, and chew slowly so you can digest it. This is also part one of a two-part blog that tries to move beyond the binary distinction of life and death.

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Posted by on in Studies Blogs

(Dissolving*Becoming by Jan Betts)

As promised, I’m beginning below the process of building a positive notion of the Divine, a constructive, systematic, theology. Of course, this is built on my own thoughts and views developed from my studies of science and the humanities, informed by the various theologies and narratives I have been exposed to. It is the output of that internal discussion and so I’m not constructing this as an argument, rather as something of a discursive story.

I presume your milage will vary, and well it should. I’m not writing this for you to agree with me (although you are welcome to), rather as an expression of my thoughts on the matter and as an example of one way to do this. We can debate forever, but at some point we need to make and here is my current product, ever subject to change. Frankly, you should do this for yourself, based on your own foundation. Nor do I claim the below is complete. I expect to be adding to it as time goes on and this is just the first layer. There are many issues with the Divine that need to be discussed but that won’t happen in one blog post. For now I simply invite you to read, reflect, and if you wish, respond.

 

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