There was a time I railed against Trad Wicca. I fought against that religion for issues of fact. There I endured injustice, bigotry, maltreatment and a host of other things. These are facts. Over time, with the aid of the Helpful Deity, that has faded. I am no fan of Trad Wicca. However, the anger and the need to express it have faded.
However, passing a test and healing are not the same thing.
Now, I am railing against the Abrahamic religions. All of them. Here I have their own words and facts of history. Few but their most ardent adherents can disagree. Instead they try to soften those facts with other facts and their benevolent perceptions.
The point here is that it is the same test. Robert versus religion. So far, I have not passed. However, at least I have recognized the test. Maybe that is something. So the question is here, what do I have against religion as a whole?
11 comments:
I believe that as long you are actively engage in conflict with such things you will never find peace, experience love or achieve your "ultimate goal of unity with the divine."
This saddens me, because you seem to be in the most need of such things, yet don't seem to be willing to allow yourself to have them.
Why indeed.
Well the difference is there is no anger at all in this discussion. There is almost no emotion to it, merely a point of view. So that is a level of progress.
I am actually feeling quite peaceful.
I agree that there is a comparison between your "railing" against trad Wicca and Abrahamic religions. However, I would point out that they simply are what they are--nothing more, nothing less. Your "railing" against them is futile.
I would respectfully suggest that you have not recognized the test. The test is not "Robert versus religion." The real test is that for some reason the very thought of religions sets you off. There is a part of your unconscious--a part you don't yet understand--that has a set of beliefs resulting in behaviors when thoughts turn to religion.
This is the real test. Not you versus religion, but you versus yourself. It is about discovering the very make-up of your being. It is why the ancient mystery schools supposedly had "Know Thyself" above their door.
As long as you're focused on religions exterior to yourself you can have "almost no emotion to it." It's external. In the end it doesn't matter.
Of course you feel peaceful! You've buried your feelings. You're avoiding doing anything challenging and scary like dealing with them.
Yesterday it was railing against trad Wicca. Today it's railing against Abrahamic religion. Tomorrow it will be railing against something else that is external to you. And it's all done to avoid the real challenge.
But keep exploring. You'll get there. Someday. The only way out is in.
Question: How are you managing with your GD work? Railing against the god of Abraham makes doing things like the LBRP kinda difficult I would think.
oddly, not really.
It helps to put ideas away or to be rather schizophrenic when it comes to such things. I think the aspect of the deity reached when one is seeking to evolve is different from the aspect one gets when one is seeking to make others worship your way.
However, I am not fool enough to divorce one from the other completely. The same as your spirits. I assume you do not focus solely on their beneficial aspects and ignore their dangers.
Wow.
Ok. So let me get this straight.
You can call upon YHVH by name but not tap into the war god. Christians however, who mostly all are interested in love and peace and who call God by the names God, Father, or Christ cannot?
huh. ok.
Have you read Greer's "A World Full of Gods"?
I think it is possible that your railing against the Abrahamic religions and Trad. Wicca may not represent a problem with religion itself, so much as a distaste for harmful and false religions. Or do you have similar issues with Buddhism, Hinduism, and traditional Paganism too?
I've found it useful to replace the anger with pity, when focused on people. But righteous anger can be a Pagan virtue against monotheism.
It's surprising that you are still comfortable with the LBRP. Do you tell yourself that YHVH is just an elemental formula, and not the name of a hyperinflated tribal war god? I did so for a couple decades before making a clean break.
The "ultimate goal of unity with the divine" may be a problem. Which divinity? There are many, and they are not one.
I understand how you feel about trad wicca, and i agree with you. I think that there is no balance in it at all. But i still do believe in The God and the Goddess but in a bit different way...my way.
Don't sweat it. If Scientology had a billion followers, and you railed against it, you'd get people in these comments teling you how intolerant or unenlightened you were, or how you needed further growth. Railing against things can be very useful for one's development. It can be a form of inner rebellion against a ubiquitous and harmful type of cultural-social conditioning. Trust your INSTINCTS and not some hypocritical garbage people are selling you about the need for absolute tolerance.
The abrahamic religions are charnel houses. That you might utilize elements from any of them magically doesn't mean you are beholden to respect them as a whole. Judaism took from pre-existing near eastern religions, right down to the sacred chanted names.
Kabbalah stems from neoplatonism. Christianity? lol is there anything original in there as far as praxis? Im not even going to comment on Islam
Regardie ended up with a great deal of contempt for the "big 3" . You're welcome to practice the Golden Dawn. It's not your fault that purer streams of magical development were snuffed out by christianity.
Take what works for yourself and jettison the slave dogma.
I used to rail against the God of Abraham and the claims of traditional Wicca back in my younger days.
Now, I tend to see reality holistically. The God of Abraham (from a Qabalistic GD point of view) is the big YHVH and is less a someone/something to be railed against than a panentheistic representation of All Being. The God of Abraham as represented in the OT is really a small potatoes tribal deity compared to the YHVH of Qabalah.
Read Lon Milo Duquette's Chicken Qabalah to get a real feel for this way of thinking. This makes YHVH akin to the Tao or Brahman. Seeing YHVH in this light allowed me to work with GD magick without internal conflict.
The old stories are just that...stories written by poeople with limited conceptions of deity (as did many during the bronze age..to be fair). Plus, no sane person can take these stories literally anyway...not without turning off their brain. The entire Bible...like all holy books...is an esoteric book full of metaphor but very little in regards to actual history. It's even less useful as a science text...but try to tell that to the 6-day creationists.
Now in regards to trad Wicca. I now consider myself an eclectic Wiccan but I too have real problems with what passes off as history among many Wiccans. Hutton, the author of Triumph of the Moon (the best book on neo-paganism to date) was cursed and condemned by many Wiccans even if the wise among us saw that he was telling the truth.
I may consider myself Wiccan but I find myself at odds with many Wiccans I communicate with especially those claiming descent from a secret fam trad that has lasted through the ages.
See religions as the masks the Divine wears in this reality. See religions as masks of metaphor, allegory and heavy doses of outright culturally moribund bullshit and you will find that all are equally valid in their own right even if they aren't all equally valid for you.
Jason, on this issue, you have continually responded in a way both here and on facebook in a manner that makes me believe you have not processed what I have to say. This is the first time I've seen you do that.
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