River Higginbotham - Paganism-An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions 2002 by Joyce and River Higginbotham.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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First e-book edition 2013

E-book ISBN: 9780738717036

Book design and editing by Joanna Willis

Cover image 2002 by Corel Professional Photos

Cover design and interior illustrations by Gavin Dayton Duffy, Llewellyn art department

Excerpts from the God of Jane by Jane Roberts 2000 by Robert F. Butts. Reprinted by permission of Moment Point Press, Inc.

Permission to quote from A Book of Troth granted by Runa-Raven Press

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

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Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to teachers everywhere,

but especially to Moriah MacCleod and Jane Roberts,

our first teachers.

This book is also dedicated to the memory of Vito John Ponticello,

who brought so many seekers together

including the two of us.

Contents

What is Paganism?

You Are What You Believe

A Pagan View of deity

What About Satan?

The Living Universe

Magick

Ethics and Personal Responsibility

Exercises

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank Lowell McFarland for helping us track down obscure demographic information; Scott Russell for sending us his dissertation and discussing the results of his national survey; Selena Fox and Dennis Carpenter for sharing their many years of survey information gathered at Circle Sanctuary, a Pagan land sanctuary in Wisconsin; the physicist who reviewed chapter 5 and gave us invaluable feedback; and Joyces dad, the television engineer who inspired the Cosmic TV. A warm thank-you goes to those on the local Pagan chat list who shared scriptural research and debate, and to members of the Legion of Loki for insights into the Satanic movements.

We also send a thank-you to Jodi, Naomi, Dave, and Jenny at the Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago for their helpful research and discussion regarding the origins of panentheism, and to Tom Chapin for his insights into Taoism and Confucianism.

We also thank our friends and family for being supportive of our spiritual searching over the years; or if they couldnt be supportive, then for at least being catalysts of growth and change. We also wish to thank Regina Clarke for reviewing the manuscript and raising issues that never occurred to us; Dana Eilers and Blaine Drayer for their encouragement; Frank Medina for being a connector into the creative current; Morgan T. Forrest for being a companion on the journey and taking Joyce to Mystic Valley for the first time; fellow authors Dorothy Morrison, Trish Telesco, M. R. Sellars, and Silver RavenWolf for their encouragement; and our many students over the years who asked us so many questions.

Introduction

If you are curious about Paganism, you have come to the right place. Perhaps you are curious because one of your friends or family members is a Pagan and you want to understand him or her better. Perhaps you are taking a world religions class or are studying the Pagan movement through your church or Sunday school. Perhaps you are interested in Paganism for yourself and want to discover if this is the spiritual path for you. Whatever your reasons for being here, you have found a good starting point. We hope to make Paganism approachable and easy for you to understand.

As we wrote this book, we wanted to be sure it accomplished two goals. The first is to provide facts and information about Paganism in order to help you better understand the Pagan movement. The second is to provide you with tools to help you move forward in your personal and spiritual development. To help you meet both of these goals, weve included a number of activities that can be used by any number of people in a variety of settings, including classrooms, Sunday schools, study groups, or private study. You can certainly use this book on your own, but if you know of others interested in Paganism, you may find it enjoyable and enriching to study it with them.

We also highly recommend that you acquire a journal or notebook before getting started, especially if you are using this book as an aid to spiritual development. A journal is an ideal place to take notes, write down your thoughts, answer the discussion questions, and do the journaling exercises. Each chapter contains one or more sets of journaling exercises designed to help you identify who you are right now and why, and where you might like to go next. Your journaling captures a snapshot of who you are at this moment. Seeing parts of yourself on paper can help you gain insight on many levels. If you are working through this book with a group, sharing parts of your journaling with others can be meaningful for everyone. Some of our best memories in class come from students sharing their journaling with usdescribing their struggles and successes, uncovering an old belief, writing a poem, or seeing something in a new way. Years from now your journal will make an interesting record of your spiritual journey.

As you will already have noticed, this book is jointly written. Because River and I developed our understanding of Paganism together, we decided to write this book together. Generally, we refer to ourselves as we, and occasionally as River and I or Joyce and I. In those rare instances when we or us is used to mean people in general, we will clearly say so. When one of us is reminiscing or telling a story, we identify which of us is speaking as we tell the story in the first person. Writing as a team and deciding which voice to use has presented some unique challenges, but we think youll find that we keep shifts in voice to a minimum and those we do make are easy to follow.