Being a pagan

I proclaim: the modern pagans/heathens are ridiculous. At best.

What you can find, amongst them, are usually hippies, nazis, or just plain lunatics. Very little else.
All of those nutcases I mentioned above are just the products of modernity, having nothing whatsoever to do with that which may be called pagan/heathen, i.e. the pre-christian european heritage.

I don’t really like those terms – pagan, heathen, etc. –  (or any regarding this topic), but lacking others I’ll go along with them. Maybe “wayfarer” would be more appropriate, but I will not impose it on anybody.

First of all I’ll use a platitude: you don’t choose paganism; it chooses you.

Assuming you’re a sane person, you’ll feel paganism choosing you. At first on a simple basis, i.e. rebellion against modern values and standards, but don’t hurry, ’cause that’s not all. Later on a more complex basis, which leads to years of searching, reading and experiencing. Aftewards there is a period of understanding what you’ve experienced until now.To make it clearer: it takes fuckin’ time. So it is not at all something like “Alright. Fuck all. I’m a pagan now.”. It is the impulse to follow a less travelled road, a hard road, a long winding road. Without walking it, you’re just a poser and a clown. That is why I laugh at youngsters calling themselves pagans, or at middle age morons hugging trees, casting spells and getting a hard-on with tarot cards. Or at those poor bastards posting pics (on blogs and such) of horned vikings, northern gods, etc., alongside pics of Hitler and what not.
Not following that long, hard road I mentioned above is tipical of the modern man, always in a hurry, having no time for the truly important and resorting on prefabricated labels to give him/her the sense of some importance, because he/she knows damn well what a sorry ass he/she really is.

Second: you cannot be a towner and a pagan at the same time.

Which does not mean that simply moving to the country will change anything. It is the towner mentality that gets in the way of reaching any understanding of the topic I talk about here. It is that herd mentality of the towner one must first not have, or work hard at losing it, to actually get anywhere. For anyone understanding the rural and the pagan, this issue is clear.
I know a lot of “pagan” towners living in the country. Some famous (what a load of crap), others less and most unknown to the masses. No matter how hard they all try, it changes nothing. The path chosen is simply a wrong one.

Third: hippies.

Hedonism is what they embrace, besides simplistic environmentalism and other such delusions. They think, typical for the bourgeois and the proletarian, that by taking a stand one can change the course of history and of nature. They’re too products of the modernity I've mentioned before, so there’s no wonder as to what cretinisms they believe in.
And apart from thinking “change” (what? where? when? how?), they only got time to think “fornication” and “consciusness extension” (drug use). All of that under the veil of “paganism”, because simply “hippy scum” isn’t kinky enough, I suppose.

Fourth: nazis.

Product of the same modernism and the same lowest form of life, i.e. the modern man, as the hippies, they misuse more ostentatiously the simplest images of paganism, because, as the hippies, they cannot understand the complexity of it all and because it seems to aid their idiotical dogma. All of that under the veil of “paganism”, because simply “nazi scum” isn’t manly enough, I suppose.
I won’t name anyone, but you know who hey are. Unlike the hippies, who at times actually “go out there”, nazis dwell mostly infront of their computers.
The assumptions and the insults about how “nazis have small cocks” and how “they’re latently gay” suddenly start to sound like truths, so I won’t spend any more time on them.

Fifth: lunatics.

Beware of such folks! Call the “long armed shirts” guys to pick them up.

Sixth: academics.

Oh, yes. The academics are also into paganism, sporadically. And they can write huge books, hold speeches for hours and lose themselves in erudite quotes and phrases, until you could puke, but coming no step closer than their less educated commrades, pointed at above, to what “paganism” is actually all about.
Probably because reading alone does not suffice.

Seventh: reenactment.

If done for sports and for learning or teaching something, that’s OK and it should be done more often. But those fairs and festivals of retarded stereotypy and/or that LARP stuff… If you really wanna display your puerility, just go ahead, but dammit… don’t… you know.
If done for fun, it ain’t that bad. Just when you start generalizing your ignorance and thinking that’s the real deal, it becomes stupid.

Eighth: virtual warriors.

Listening to Manowar and blabbering about “gloriously dying in battle” is a sure sign of you not being even close to a warrior or a hero and it is another sure signs of being a stupid fuck with no balls and even less brains. These are the first to run, in a real battle situation, or to cry for their mothers, with pants wet and stinky.
I despise people reducing paganism/heathenism to only the topic of warriors. To those people I can say only this: there cannot be only chiefs and no indians. So, bugger off!

…

Now, if not sooner, you just might think this guy here is a real know-it-all. And I sure sound like one, I’ll admit that.

Actually, that’s only my personal experience talking there. Yours may be different and that’s good.

I know about what I worte first hand: I was, more or less and at one point or another, all of those types I mentioned before. It is, as I’ve said, a long and hard road, with obstacles and dead ends, with right and wrong, with… everything. And that’s good too. That’s how one learns best.
And I hope I’ve learned something, if not a lot.

Paganism is a way of living and of understanding the living world and the Whole, without prefabricated labels and opinions. It means resonating to an all-encompassing truth and wisdom. It means trying to comprehend it. And it means living in accordance with it, nevermind what the momentary values and precepts are. It means surrendering to and understanding the eternal. It means admitting you know nothing and that it will probably always stay that way. It means accepting no bullshit and kicking ass when necessary. It means, as Socrates put it, "Be as you wish to seem."
To me, at least. Don’t know about you.

There are enough prophets out there, who know everything. I know little, if anything, so don’t listen to me, folks.

…

Now? I returned to the area and the mentality I know best: the rural one. I was born and I grew up in a village, I’ll grow old and die in a village. I was long enough a towner, even though never in my heart. No more.

Found a house, at the edge of an algovian village, took my wife and mother (we take care of our old) with me, we plant what we can, we got ten hens and a rooster, a dog and a cat may follow… and it’s a start. The beginning of a new chapter. A new step on that old way forward.

But that is only my way. Which way is yours?


NOTE: I know “pagan” ended up meaning mostly wiccan-hippy bullshit, while “heathen” ended up meaning mostly nazi-fascist bullshit, but I don’t really care. This is not a blog for those drama queens anyway