Open debate

[jadedsage]

I found the following on another site I belong to. I thought that I would post it here and see if we can get some folks to voice their own opinions on, not only this view, but any of their own personal thoughts.

Happy reading!!!


I've been doing some thinking and wondering about the true relevance of Paganism and Wicca to our actual lives in the 21st century and wanted to see what others thought about this.

We live in a very artificial atmosphere today. We don't follow an agrarian seasonal year. Do the seasonal changes celebrated in the earth religions really mean anything to us? We have no dark nights anymore. Our cities pollute the sky with their artificial lights 24/7. How relevant is the "longest night" when we never have a real night at all?

Our homes are artificially heated, so how can we really know what the long cold is all about? We don't rest and
recuperate in the dark seasons. The "holiday" season around Christmas and New Years is the busiest, most hectic season of the year, somewhat defeating the
purpose of the rest and repose of the winter. How can we feel rejuvenated and ready to grow again in the spring when we haven't rested at all in the winter?

Lately I've been feeling that what the sabbats celebrate and the reality of my 21st century life are pretty diametrically opposed to one another. We have fresh fruit of every kind all year long in the grocery stores, so you can't tell from he foods what time of year it is. Darkness and cold and short days are looked on as something "bad". We light up the night and run our
commerce 24/7. Winter only lasts long enough to celebrate Christmas and then it's Spring again.


Does anyone else feel this disconnect?

Our covens and public ceremonies are held on the most convenient nights, not necessarily on the actual nights of the moons or sabbats. Is there relevance in the Old Ways to our lives today, or have our lives become something so totally disconnected from nature that we're just moving through the forms?

Now, I don't have any answers on this, I'm just mulling things over in my mind and wondering what others have to say.

But, there is a reason that the Ancients put things like the helestone at Stonehenge and the roof box at Newgrange, so that certain specific times of year
will be marked, and everyone will know when those times are. I wonder if we have lost the old "Great Magicks" because we haven't made time for them.

The Great Mysteries are stil out there,but we have to meet them on THEIR terms and not squeeze them in on a daytimer between the PTA meeting and picking up
the dogfood from the grocery.

What I wouldn't give to be able to actually live for a year with only the cycle of the seasons and the days to mark the passage of time and not have to be tied to a stupid clock.

I wonder if the prevelance of such things as depression, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are due in large part to human beings trying to fit themselves into a system of life that we're not "hard wired" to plug
into?

Certainly the natural rhythms have a relation to our bodies. You can see this in the moon cycles of women. What if we're not SUPPOSED to be living like this and that's one thing causing a lot of problems we're having today.

Just gathering wool and throwing out something for controversy!




ALRIGHT FOLKS, LETS HEAR FROM YOU!!!!!!!

[jadedsage]

anyone out there?

[Jadefire]

As a rule it's true we don't follow the agrarian season year any longer, but that doesn't mean that as human beings the rites and festivals so integral to that way of life no longer apply. Humans have always attempted to control the elements, to light the darkness. We use street lamps they used candles, fires and torches.

The festivals still apply because it wasn't just the cycle of the land being celebrated it was the cycle of life, death and rebirth. That still applies as long as you live and breathe.

I have always taken the references to things like the long cold and the darkest night to be as much about the weather and the time of year as about the human soul. Regardless of warm cozy houses we are still aware at least on some level of the biting cold, and the darkness that seems to linger in the winter months.

As for the holiday seasons, of course they are intensely busy, that doesn't mean that we don't feel the change in the air, or the promise of spring. We are not bound by seasons in the same way we once were, but that doesn't mean we don't feel it.

As for winter only lasting long enough for Christmas, I would have to disagree, winter lasts a great deal longer than that, sometimes far past its supposed end. If you listen and you have attuned yourself to the land, if you have taken pleasure in it and allowed yourself to hear it's whispers, than you are aware of the changes. You feel it sleeping, and you feel the slow awakening of things beneath the ground long before you see the first greens of spring.

I don't think you have to be disconnected, I think you simply have to learn to reconnect.

On a personal level I try to celebrate on the actual nights even if it is something as simple as standing in the moonfall and marveling at her beauty. I might work a true, lengthy ritual at another time, but I don't think that alters the reverence, or the relevance of those rituals in our lives.

Stonehenge, and Newgrange are used for marking time, because it's passage was as important to them as it is to us. They may not have used the clock on the wall, but in many ways they were just as bound to the number of hours in the day as we are.

All you have to do is open your eyes and look perhaps more deeply than you do and those mysteries are waiting there. It's not about making time for them, or about being bound by the clock, its about seeing and understanding the importance of things in life.

We don't live the way our ancestors did, it doesn't mean that we don't have some of the same issues, or feel the changes in the year in a similar way, it means that we have to take what they had and apply it to our lives. If you spend your time celebrating the seasonal changes with no reference of a personal nature than yes you are just going through the motions. It has to be about you as much as the seasons.

As for being hard wired for one way of life or another, I think that most of us would be well served to stop and smell the roses once in awhile. I think that some of the sickness and issues we have are directly related to the way we have chosen to live, but I don't think that's the only reason. I think that the winter is a time of shadows and darkness and that during that time I am personally more susceptible to depressive thinking.

[jadedsage]

Anyone Else? Come on, you must at least have an opinion?