heathens will inherit the earth.

i too love the moon and have studied its cycles for years. It is a real test to get your head around its motoin in the sky. I was lucky enough to witness the major north rise full moon standstill near winter solstice a few years back from the cove at avebury and also its major full southern standard rise of the same year near the summer solstice from an ancient alignment of two long barrows. Each over 5000 years old. A sight that wont be seen for another 16 years when the cycle starts again.

We ritually observe the full moon every time at avebury, like pagans all over the world.

I watch it because "here comes the cliche", every full moon i lose my mind

Pagans recognised the importance of the moon in the cycle of life.Menstrual cycles follow the moon, oestrus.Christianity made thirteen unlucky because of the 13 lunar months,the thirteen month kills the sun at the winter solstice.Thirteen at the last supper and one killed the son of god.Oester is the new year,indicated by the moon, when pagans where called April fools for celebrating the new year at Easter, rather than the christian new year.It has a reflection thats light gives a clarity the sun can never convey.It has the power to influence our emotions and we all feel its transit across our paths.

Damn you Christians! Taking an arbitrary worship practice, trashing it, and replacing it with another! Curse YOU!

Fear not when the spirits return our old gods will vanguish these upstarts.The oak groves,the holly and the honesuckle will grow again and we will feast on christian bones and nectar from the gods.Ayye upum.

there seems to be a growing discussion of the pagan roots of the christian church. In fact some US christian scholars are claiming that the catholic church and many churches that splintered off, are actually pagan.

For example the bible clearly states that the day of rest and worship is the seventh day ...... which is saturday, since SUN day was the first. Thus they interpret Sunday as the day of worship due to blatant pagan influence. Further, the date of christs birth is not mentioned in the bible, but the death/rebirth of the sun at winter solstice is well established as pagan. Christmas day is three days after the solstice, just as jesus rose from the dead after three days. Easter itself by the catholic church is defined as the first sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This is a strange way of celebrating what was presumably a fixed date for christs crucifixion, (ie like his birth). The pagan new year is often recognised as samhain, which is november the 1st. Since pagans celebrate night before day, it is 'halloween' that is recognised as the start of the cycle, where the veil between the spirit and physical world is at its most open and celebrates the feast of the dead. The catholic church portrays this date as evil of course, but the next day is all saints day or 'the feast of all saints'.

The parallels go on and are very many. Many believe that some early pagans were more than willing to 'recognise' christ precisely because the dates and myths of the pagan religion were included. Even so, many resisted and after a failed attempt to destroy the pagan sites (stonehenge?) the catholic church adopted the policy of building their churches on top and next to pagan sites instead. ....... It is ironic that some modern christian churches are turning their backs upon the catholic church for being too pagan.

There are some interesting geometries too. eg the 5, 12, 13 pythagorean right angled triangle is well known. If you take a 3, 12 triangle instead the hypoteneus is 12.369. This is very close to the number of synodic months in a year. This number of course is the square root of 3squared + 12squared = 9 + 144 = 153.

153 is the number of fish caught by the disciples when jesus tells them to cast their nets. Fish, water and the moon are strongly linked to jesus, as is the sun.

To true Pagan, Mythras the Roman pagan god shadows christs life,his priests where instrumental in converting their pagan followers into christians.Its not a coincident that there are many hidden messages in christianity.The pitty of it was, the christians of later period failed to recognise the similarities and destroyed many pagan relics and then killed the druid priests.
Nothing is new, we are united to our spiritual ancestors more than we can ever know.Thanks xris.

Of course Christianity drew from pagan influence - religion evolves, folks. This is true of every religious tradition, including the modern resurgence of paganism. All fingers pointing at the same moon.

well yes 'of course' from our perspective ..... but many christians would strongly reject pagan influence, let alone evolution!

The majority of the modern pagans i know would openly admit they are on a path of discovery and rediscovery. Moreover evolution is seen as another aspect of the rich complexity of 'nature'. As such the antithesis of a threat or spiritual problem, (unless couched in the 'excluding' reductionist language of biological determinism). But Christianity is a god creates man top down theism, with 'here is the word of god'. Both the pantheon of natural spirits and the theory of evolution are explicit problems to many christians.

There exist delusional people in all faith traditions - and delusional people outside of faith traditions. Ignorance knows no religious affiliation.



Which makes only perfect sense. I'm glad to hear that pagans typically embrace such a sober and reasonable understanding of evolution. More Christians should adopt what their brother pagans, and many of their brother Christians, have already come to understand. After all, the earliest Christian scientific endeavors were supported by the Church because they thought such learning, by giving man a better understanding of God's creation, would help man better understand God (recall, Galileo's largest supporters were Churchmen, and his greatest adversaries were other scientists). I think it's time more Christians embrace this particular conservative element - and I say this being a person about as liberal as can be imagined.



To many Christians, evolution is seen as a threat. Evolution is seen as a matter of science to all reasonable Christians.

I'm not sure how the pantheon of natural spirits is a problem to Christianity - that pantheon is simply the preferred metaphysical outlook of pagans, whereas Christians prefer a monotheistic outlook. Neither perspective is inherently more right or wrong than the other.

Evolution is an entirely different matter; being science, we are then dealing with demonstrable evidence. The preferred god beliefs of a particular person are not demonstrable; at best, they are the ways of expressing in language an ineffable experience that most resonate with the given individual. Just as there are many ways to aptly express in language what beauty is, there are also many ways in language to describe that ineffable experience called by such a variety of names, including the name God. It's that universally recognized connection with the rest of reality, overcoming the childish conception of being specially individual and separate from the rest of reality.

well yes we tend to agree, but the monotheistic outlook (whether theist or atheist) is different in character to pantheistic.

And i think 'character' has a lot to do with it. Or perhaps identity is a better word. Some people feel very uncomfortable with relativism and intrinsic diversity. They need to believe in a grand narrative and to share it. It is the point of security of their community. Else the world appears hopelessly chaotic and frightening. Increasingly i recognise that people adopt philosophies and beliefs that suit them. But on the other hand if we have been brought up to recognise one scheme over another, that in itself is character and identity forming. Fortunately none of this is fixed. We can change with time and experience.

But it seems to me that we will always have this diversity of views amongst us. Personally i dont feel like trying to convert people, let alone argue with them. This is just a personal choice of the moment. In the past i argued the toss to the last word lolol ...... and thats cool, entertaining and creative too.

Unfortunately an 'each to their own' outlook is intrinsically not shared by many grand narrative types in particular. But hey thats life and our own insecurity when faced with the contrary and perfectly understandable mono types. .......And besides, even liberalism can be extremist and a strong combatitive force of identity.

Yes, nice.

Its a question of security and freedom, as much as truth. We want them all, but sometimes one threatens the other. I cant see a way out of conflict can you?

Well, remember: a person can be a monotheist and a pantheist at the same time. Though, you're right to point out that there is typically quite a difference between the two as pantheist monotheists seem to be, historically, rather rare.



And I think most people do change their views over time based on experience, for good and for ill.

But I do not understand how the monotheistic perspective is inherently more comforting for people than a polytheistic view, whether the polytheism is pantheistic or otherwise. Both polytheism and monotheism seem to serve the same basic human need, that of spiritual perspective. Both monotheism and polytheism typically have comforting elements as well as elements that serve to remind practitioners of some cosmic responsibility which is not always the most comforting responsibility to have.



I argue, but I have no interest in trying to convert people. My only aim in arguing is to dismantle misleading and false claims regarding religious belief, regardless of the faith tradition being slighted.

Evangelism never made sense to me. It is one thing to offer an open discourse in order to properly explain one's beliefs to others, but an active, aggressive attempt at conversion strikes me as counter-productive. If, through open discourse, we can better understand one another then aggressive attempts at conversion are useless - people will naturally tend toward whatever tradition most suites their individual sense of reason, and if we have right understanding of one another, we should then be able to accept and celebrate the diversity of spiritual tradition rather than condemn whatever is different from our own tradition. Evangelism creates a dangerous tension between different perspectives.



Honest attempt at understanding. That's the way out of the dilemma. It seems to me that the more one studies other traditions, the more one recognizes the essential, universal similarities between the various traditions. Once we begin to recognize that these various traditions have the same goals, and that their differences are the result of cultural differences, then we can shed this layer of disdain and disrespect so often seen between people of different spiritual backgrounds.

Understanding is the key to tolerance. Once we properly understand a given faith tradition, we should be able to see through to the essential goodness of that tradition's teachings. Once we recognize that essential goodness, we can then separate the corrupted elements of any given tradition from the honest elements of the tradition. Making this distinction allows us to recognize that the spiritual tradition is not the problem, but contemptible, greedy people are the problem. Once we realize that the larger tradition is not the problem, we stop seeing the traditions as threatening one another, and we begin to see that selfish people are the threat to all traditions.

Christianity, paganism, Hinduism, ect... these are all right and wonderful traditions. People often blame the whole tradition for the errors of selfish elements within the tradition. This is a mistake. For example, Jesus never called for a Crusade - blame Pope Urban II, not Christianity, for that tragedy, you know?

well we are singing from the same song sheet .... but you only have to look on this forum to see that others do not

I agree. And therein is a problem. That which we find relatively easy to take and tolerate and that which we dont.

lol well yes, and again for us. But many monotheists would at best adopt a patrionizing attitude to other traditions, and at worse outright aggression out of a need to defend the 'honest' truth and rid the world of dangerous misunderstanding. eg Richard Dawkins who i consider a mono-atheist. Of course i am not saying that he is incapable of making excellent criticisms and observations within his general tyrade against the likes of religion and astrology.

I am sure he believes he is being very honest in his attempt to understand other traditions.