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Over the last five years or so, I've veered from identifying as a chaos magician – with all of its attendant theories around maintaining fluidity of belief, approaching belief as a working tool, regular paradigm shifting to maintain independence from dogmatic beliefs, etc – to my current position of identifying as a follower of a religion.
I find my current model of reality far more rewarding, fulfilling and transformative both in my everyday life and in terms of the magical practices I engage with, than the previous model I subscribed to. I arrived at this perspective having experimented with adopting several beliefs until one of them clicked massively, and it became apparent that I could get a lot more out of total engagement with this one perspective than I could from maintaining the fly-by-night approach of juggling multiple perspectives.
I didn't find this transition easy, as it went against many of the core principles of chaos magic I had filled my head with over the preceding years, and which I had quite a strong attachment to and investment in. This conflict was in itself paradoxical, as my resistance seemed to be coming from a dogmatic attitude about trying to avoid anything that could be considered a dogmatic attitude. Over the course of a few years, I eventually faced up to the likelihood that what I was actually afraid of was commitment to something, and decided to fully embrace the religious aspects of what I was doing.
I found it incredibly liberating and empowering, and I discovered that the word "religion" does not automatically have to imply an imposed belief system, or a complete dictated system of instruction that discourages individual thought. Quite far from it.
Granted, the religion that I came to follow does not have a central text like the Bible or the Koran, it isn't a religion of the book, it doesnt have a centralised priesthood, or organised heirarchical structure, such as the major organised religions of the world. But it is a religion, and if you consider all of its sister religions and offshoots under the same umbrella, it probably counts as a major world religion.
Interestingly, many of its followers refer to it as "The Religion", which has always amused me because it seems to imply that there is only really one "Religion" (with a capital R) in the world. Only one God, one set of Spirits, one reality. All the multiple conflicting world religions (with a small r) are considered reflections of this central religious impulse. All that really differs is that they tend to call things by different names, and place a differing emphasis on certain points due to cultural and socio-geographical factors.
In this sense, the word religion does not mean the act of abiding by the differing creeds, dogmas and systems of instruction written down in a book or dictated by the priesthood, but the actual day-to-day process of personal engagement with spirituality through religious practice.
That's how I've personally come to define the word religion, and how I've come to reconcile some of the issues that seem to be raised in this thread myself. I have a relationship with various Gods and Spirits which is religious in tone and practice, I filter all information recieved through my senses through the lens of that religion, I live my life according to it. It is however a dynamic living religion that is constantly developing and being redefined on a day-to-day basis. The Gods I speak to are thought of and interacted with as Living Gods, and my relationship with them is very much a two-way process. Religion does not automatically imply subservience to something greater than yourself, it can mean an integrative co-operative mutually supportive relationship with something greater than yourself.
Additionally, my religious beliefs tend to be both inclusive and open to further syncretism, so that I do not approach other religions as somehow competing or contradictory to how I look at things, but something that will help me better understand religion as a universal concept. I try to focus on the similarities and find common ground, rather than dwelling on the differences in written dogma - which are often determined by cultural factors specific to the period in which those texts were written down, rather reflective of some universal truth. My religion does not give me easy answers to anything, but provides a context for seeking to understand more about the mysteries of reality, consciousness, spirituality and the day-to-day events of my life. This context is, more than anything, a solid starting point from which to explore these areas and is constantly being broadened, modified and enriched as it is exposed to new information, new experiences and new perspectives.
The word 'religion' can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To right wing neoconservatives etc... the Bible might well be a conveniant instruction manual that can lend some level of divine authority to something they already believe in. But it probably means something completely different to, say, a 12th century monk, or a Haitian Mambo who considers herself as much a Catholic as much as she is a Voudoisant, or presumably to the various people that wrote the text in the first place. |
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