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I've never really thought of myself as a pagan as the term seems loaded with so many connotations that I'm not really comfortable aligning myself to. As someone said above, whilst the word 'pagan' really just means a non-Christian, it's modern usage seems to refer to a very specific post-1960's cultural phenomena of re-constructed and re-imagined 'nature religions' such as Wicca, modern Druidry, some of the Northern Trad. based religions, and sometimes even some of the Golden Dawn based traditions by some odd extension of the term. Neo-pagan is probably a more accurate term, but this almost refutes the imagined lineage that followers of these various modern forms of 'alternate' religion are literally or metaphorically claiming for themselves.
Obviously I'm making vast sweeping generalisations here, and in actual practice I imagine that no two Pagan's beliefs are quite alike, but I'm talking about 'Neo-Paganism' as a broad cultural phenomena rather than at an individual level. I'm not trying to diss any individual pagans or wiccans or whatever. There's just something about this kind of modern paganism that doesn't really sit well with me. I can't quite define what it is exactly, but there's an observed tendency for a lot of received knowledge to be taken as fact, without personal experimentation and questioning, and a tendency for all sorts of very different things to get lumped in together. Most of this is quite common to 'New Age' thinking as a whole, and I really think that Neo-Paganism is just the more respectable end of the New Age movement.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, as my general standpoint on these things is that if, say, Wicca is working really well for someone then that's every bit as valid as practising something like chaos magick. I think I'm really just trying to nail some of odd connotations that I tend to attach to the term 'pagan', and why I don't like using it in connection with myself.
But all that's kind of veering away from the subject a little, so I'll talk about nature stuff for a bit. I think going outside to practice magick is pretty essential to a healthy magickal life, and you're cutting yourself off from a lot of stuff if you perform all of your magick inside a fairly controlled environment such as a flat, or designated temple space.
From a shamanic perspective all of these things outside are alive and packed with energy that can be worked with in a magickal sense. Granted, all the synthetic objects in your house can be considered as 'alive' in a similar shamanic sense - but perhaps not to the same extent as those that are living, growing and breathing such as birds, plants, trees, animals, insects, and so on.
I think one method of connecting to this is to find a quiet spot (if you're in the city, maybe a park or garden which might not be overly busy in winter) and do an exercise such as Chi Kung or maybe Rune stances. There's the thing in Chi Kung of drawing in 'Earth Chi' from the ground and 'Heaven Chi' from the sky, which can lead to an incredible sense and understanding of yourself as a small part of a vast cosmic eco-system. Drawing 'energy' from both the planet Earth that you're standing on, and from the solar system and larger universe which both you and the planet exist within.
Jan Fries talks about the importance of establishing 'nature contacts' in one of his books, which I think is on the mark, as getting out in the open does seems to have a replenishing effect on me. I live in the city, but I was brought up by the sea, and whenever I go home I always take long walks and just soak up the place. Gives an incredible feeling of being energised and alive. There's something undeniably magickal about jagged cliffs, crashing waves, ruined castles, and ancient graveyards - and to ignore all of this and focus on little drawings on post-it notes doesn't sound like any kind of option to me. A part of me really yearns for this kind of environment, and I sometimes wonder about what kind of magician I'd be if I was still living there, scrying in rock pools, working sorcery with the Spirits of the Sea, constructing strange totemic devices from found objects washed up on the beach, etc...
But this is not to say that you can't approach living in the City from this same magickal perspective. London is an incredible magickal terrain, and it only takes a bit of research and effort to unlock a fantastical forgotten city that most inhabitants seem completely oblivious to. There's a phantasmagoria of city sights and sounds and colours and tastes which can be read as direct communication with the Spirit world. It's different from the wildness of 'nature contact' in the above sense - but it's no less magickal. Soho has its own distinct magickal personality in much the same way as any secluded forest grove or cliff top. I think it's all about being able to tune into the language of these places in such a way that you start to receive information, and perhaps some of this material might be usefully incorporated into sorcery, or it might be divinatory in nature, or it could just be considered a communication with the Divine manifesting itself as the formation of trees, the movement of cats, messages on a discarded newspaper, or graffiti on the walls of an abandoned building. |
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