Siusaidh Ceanadach - Lets Talk About Rites of Passage, Deity and the Afterlife

I would like to say right from the very start that not all pagans hold exactly the same pagan beliefs, especially when it comes to deity. Some will see deity as a power within all of nature, a naturalistic approach. Some see a soul within animals. Not all will personify their gods at all, but I am writing this from my personal background in Wicca and Druidry, having spoken to many folk both in my own open pagan group and online.

If you look at a timeline of faiths, especially those affecting the British Isles, then you will notice some have been around since records began. There are those we can trace from around 1500BCE (BCE stands for before the common era and means before the current system of numbering years) and faiths that seem to have come to a halt only to be taken up again in modern times. History books will have us believe that the all pagan religions died out and that what modern pagans follow is a mishmash of things they have read in history books, fairy tales and stories that have grown from archaeology.

But there are pagan families who can trace their lines back for several centuries and during that time have conducted their own family rites and followed their own codes, yet in outward appearances seemed to have been following the state religion. Whether state and religion should be intertwined is something I will leave to the reader to decide for themselves, or for teachers and classes to discuss. There have been times over the centuries that you either agreed to follow the religion of the state or you were killed, but thankfully these times have passed and we are now permitted to worship and hold whatever religious views we choose, most of the time without interference by the state.

In Britain we live on islands that have been invaded many times over the centuries. This has not always been something that caused bloodshed. In some cases peoples from other parts of the world have simply moved here and brought their own beliefs with them and told others about those beliefs. They may have married into local families and their children have followed either the mothers or fathers faith, or maybe some aspects of both.

It is clear that the original inhabitants of the British Isles had their own faith, their own gods and their own festivals, and continued to celebrate these as the year turned.

When the Romans invaded Britain in the year 43CE, they started to build their long straight roads and their villas with baths and brought what they felt was civilisation. They also brought several religions. Why did they bring so many different beliefs with them? Because many of their soldiers were conscripts who came from other parts of the world and who already had their own faith. Thus early gods and goddesses who were worshiped here in Britain became a mix of the local spirits of place, early Earth Mother and Father Hunter figures and those brought into the country by peoples from other parts of the world. In the section of the book about gods I will talk a little bit about some of the different pagan gods that have been brought into Britain as well as touching on some of the other well known pantheons, or families, of gods. There will also be some activities to do and recipes to try. The second section of the book is about rites of passage, which are events that mark significant happenings in our lives. Lastly, I talk about what pagans believe happens after death.