Rev Lora OBrien - A Practical Guide to Pagan Priesthood: Community Leadership and Vocation

Introduction

Officially, Ive been a Pagan priest for twenty-two years (at the time of writing), and this is a book I wish I had my hands on many years ago. Thats not in any way an attempt to set this work up as some sort of ultimate guide. Its not; how could it be? How could any book be?

What this book does is provide something of a baseline or common standard at least, practical advice for building community leadership skills, and information on how to be a priest within the wide world of modern Paganism. As far as I know, there isnt one outside of specific traditions practices.

People have been acting as priests for as long as they have been engaging in religious practice, and we do have many examples of historical nonmonotheistic religious structures and how they organized and trained their priests through various different cultures back in the day. Look at ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Sumer. Look at the Maya civilization, the Hindu traditions of India, and the pre-Christian societal structure of my own home, Ireland. It is beyond the scope of this book to go into any great depth on the priesthood of any particular culture, but I do urge you to explore and research any that catch your attention.

What Is a Pagan Priest?

You may or may not be familiar with the term Pagan , but we can clarify what Im talking about here in a modern context so were all on the same page.

If you were to ask ten different Pagans what the word means, I can pretty much guarantee youd get ten different answers, and that can even be from practitioners who are coming from a similar culture or even a similar tradition! That said, most modern definitions of Paganism would be along the lines of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping/earth-based spiritual practice or thereabouts. What do those words mean? Theis m refers to the belief in a deity or deities such as a divine creator (or meddler, depending on your perspective.) So, polytheism refers to the belief in multiple deities, as opposed to the more currently culturally familiar monotheistic belief in a single god. Pantheism is the belief that everything is divine, that a deity resides in everything and everyone, rather than being characterized or personified in a single or multiple entity or being. Pagan pantheism offers the belief that divinity is inseparable from nature and that God is in everything as a part of it. Deity is immanent in nature.

What Ive written are only descriptors, and they can apply across many different religious and cultural beliefs. Note that polytheism or pantheism on their own arent necessarily Paganmany Christians around the world might be classed as pantheistic, for example. Its the combination of those beliefs with the nature worshipping part that gives us the Pagan definition. Nature worship or identifying with an earth-based spirituality is any of a variety of religious, spiritual, and devotional practices that focus on the worship of spirits or a deity/deities considered to be behind the natural phenomena visible in nature. The figure or figures could be personified natural features (e.g., a mountain, river, ocean) or a fully realized and sentient guardian divinity or specific deity.