The Endless Knot

By Yvonne Aburrow

Paperback, 49 Pages

Price: £5.99 

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Poetry of place, experience, the seasons, and the sacred. 

Written over many years, these poems are the distillation of experiences of ritual, landscape and mythology. 

Lovers of landscape and nature will enjoy this collection. 

Also available as an eBook (suitable for Kindle and other formats)

Unitarian Earth Spirit and Paganism

Recently Tony McNeile gave a talk at the Unitarian Earth Spirit Network at the General Assembly meetings in Keele, entitled Forward to Paganism.

My thoughts on Tony's article (as a Wiccan and a Unitarian):

Gerald Gardner was not a loony, whatever people might have thought at the time. He had some ideas which were based on erroneous history (such as the idea of an ancient witch cult, which he got from Margaret Murray), and his ideas about women and homosexuality were a bit off, but he tried to give women respect and equality. And very importantly, he contributed to the return of the idea of the Goddess.

What Tony describes as Paganism is more like Pantheism. But it doesn't really matter what label you give it.
I don't think worshipping the Goddess (or goddesses) is a prerequisite for Paganism, but I do think that being aware that the Divine (or deities) includes both genders, and transcends gender, is important. Women have been disadvantaged by being regarded as second class citizens because of not being reflected in the Divine, and the return of the Goddess has been incredibly important for women.

Very few Wiccan covens are women-only (only a few lesbian separatist groups exist, mainly in the states, and they are not really Wiccan). Men are welcome and equal.

Ritual nudity is liberating.

Magic does not have to be part of Pagan spirituality, but when it is, it is usually used for healing, and it is not irrational. People who practice magic usually have an understanding of it that they have squared with their rational side.

The pagan origins of Easter are now regarded as rather dubious. There is only one reference in Bede, and it's very likely that he got it wrong.

Pantheism quiz

I just took the "Are You Atheist, Agnostic, Pantheist, Deist, Pagan or what?" quiz.

Here are my results:

Dualist Pantheism (100%)  
Literal Paganism / New Age / Animism (100%)  
Naturalistic Pantheism (80%)  
Agnosticism (75%)  
Idealist Pantheism (72%)  
Deism (65%)  
Panentheism (57%)  
Atheism / Secular Humanism (45%)  
Regular Monotheism (44%)


The trouble is, I don't know what a dualist pantheist is...  but there's a Wikipedia entry on it.

Actually, I find it really hard to classify my beliefs under any of these names. I think animist fits me quite well, though.

I'm a non-theist

... or, why I don't call myself an atheist even though I am one.

• Atheists are pretty strident about how much they dislike religion. And they have a pretty narrow definition of what religion is (usually, "belief in the supernatural"). I find religion fascinating and frequently inspiring (that is the liberal and mystical varieties of religion)
• I consider myself a spiritual person - in other words, I get feelings of peace and joy from feeling connected to nature and other people, and I get those feelings in places where people have practised religion (possibly because of the beautiful architecture)
• I like doing spiritual practices in the company of other people with similar values. That's what I call religion
• There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, atheists
• I am open-minded as well as sceptical
• I am not a reductionist, and certainly not a logical positivist
• I like Paul Tillich's definition of God as the Ground of All Being
• I pray (into the Void, the Silence, the darkness, the Tao) and meditate, and find this to be a helpful spiritual practice
• I love stories and symbolism and mythology and Jungian archetypes
• I think fundamentalist atheists are just as bad as religious fundamentalists
• The main difference between me and a liberal theist is that they think God is a person and I don't. Otherwise our conclusions about the world are pretty similar.

Hooray for Philip Pullman

I was talking to some fellow Unitarians on Sunday and we all said how much we are looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, as the ideas in it sound very Unitarian. We also remarked that the Unitarian concept of God is far closer to Dust than to the Authority, since many Unitarians are pantheists or panentheists who believe that the Divine is immanent in the world.

Unitarians have been in existence as a denomination since the 1500s in Poland (they were driven out of Poland for their heretical views), the 1600s in Transylvania, and the late 1700s in Britain, and throughout that time have asserted that Jesus was just a man. He may have been special and inspired, but he was just a man.

Unitarians and others in the 19th century learned much from the new Biblical criticism coming from Germany in the 19th century, and realised that the Bible is a palimpsest of different voices and editors. Nowadays atheists and humanists and agnostics are welcome to be members of the Unitarian movement.

Pagans also love Philip Pullman for his positive portrayal of witches, and the wonderful idea of daemons, which are rather like the concept of totem animals which is popular with many Pagans.

So it was with some dismay that I just heard that fundamentalist Christians have been issuing death threats to Philip Pullman because they don't like his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Stupid, ignorant, narrow-minded, bigoted fools. It is fairly obvious to anyone who has read the Bible with an open mind that the Jesus of the gospels and the Christ promoted by Paul are very different. Christ is a mystical entity whose body is the church (and who should never have been conflated with Jesus). Many liberal Christians say that Christ is an archetype within the psyche (or words to that effect).

In any case, even if you think Christ is the supreme ruler of the universe, issuing death threats is not the way to convince non-believers that your faith is worthwhile - quite the opposite. And if Christ really was the supreme being, I daresay he could look after himself. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord"; "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (Goodness me, haven't these people actually read the Bible?)

I am very much looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's new book, and hope that these evil people do not carry out their threats. I am sure that all decent people will be praying for his safety and protection.

Good and bad theology

According to Stevencarrwork, a commenter on the amusing article by PZ Myers, The Courtier's Reply over at Richard Dawkins' website:

There are no facts to decide what is good theology and what is bad theology.

Good theology is what you can sell to the believers.

Bad theology is what does not sell.

Actually this is wrong. Yes, OK, so according to atheists there is no objective reality which theology describes (and as a non-theist myself, I am inclined to agree). But some theology is definitely far more harmful than other theology, and some theology can be beneficial.

For instance, the kind of theology that says that God dislikes LGBT people is obviously harmful; whereas the kind of theology that says God is Nature and Nature is God, or that God is Love and Love is God (and not a person) is harmless, and probably beneficial as it encourages ecological awareness; and the kind of theology that encourages people to be nice to everyone because "we are all made in the image of God" is surely beneficial. Also the kind of theology that says we don't know if God exists or what She wants (e.g. Godless Morality by Richard Holloway) seems like a good thing to me, as it encourages people to be more humble and tolerant of others' beliefs.

Theology can be tested empirically by its effects on people's lives. Bad theology will make people unhappy and cause harm; good theology will make people happy and altruistic.

NB in my book, good theology includes old-style atheism (i.e. the kind that was more tolerant of other views), agnosticism, naturalism, pantheism, panentheism, deism, universalism, unitarianism, a lot of mysticism, and the interfaith movement. Most of these theologies recognise that mythology is a metaphor for the process of living, and is best enjoyed in the mode of fairy-tale. They also show respect for other philosophies and religions.