<rant>

Oh wow, how to reply? :)

Myself, I'm ALL about free love, non-conforminism (is that a word? if not, it should be) and not screw, but FUCK THE MAN. I do however take issue with love everyone. I'm not nice to everyone, a real Pagan wouldn't be. I'm come from Viking blood, many many many years ago, but it's in the DNA. I don't think my ancestors where nice to everyone. I do my thing, I let others do theirs. If I have an opinion about their thing, I'm more than willing to give it, and I usually do. Point is...I'm human. Like everyone else here (except the aliens). We are all different, we are all products of our selective environments. We will are react differently to any situation.

So some Pagans want to play hippy. More power to ya. Just don't say shit to me, when I don't.

Simple.

</rant>

"You cannot say be tolerant and non-judgmental without being intolerant and judgmental yourself."


True enough, but I feel no obligation to be tolerant of bigots, frauds, thieves or Republicans. Fuck 'em all.

Hehe...I know exactly what you mean. I see them all the time at Pagan conferences and festivals: rainbow-colored clothing, "hippie" attire, or my favorite - a turtleneck with a large T-shirt over it and flowy pasly pants...what's up with that? But I take a look at those people (mostly women) and I try and understand their experiences, where they are coming from...

From what I understand of Neo-Pagan history, there was a great latching onto Pagan spirituality in the 60s and 70s, with Earth-based thinking, anti-war philosophies, Hinduism/Buddhism, karma, yoga, brown rice, the Gaia Hypothesis, and Feminism. Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart may have had more to do with the "hippie" image of neo-Pagans than anything else. They are polyamorists (hence the "we love everybody" idea), used to raise "unicorns", and it is stated at Oberon was the first to coin the term "neo-Pagan" to describe the spiritual movement he saw around him. He also wrote extensively on the Gaia hypothesis and formed the Church of All Worlds, partly inspired by the book "Stranger in a Strange Land" (BTW if I'm getting any of this wrong, please let me know!)
There is a whole section on him and this movement in Margot Adler's "Drawing Down the Moon".

So that was the 60s, now onto the 70s: Feminism took hold, and there was a great deal of research coming out about Goddess civilizations. Women (and men) who were already gravitiating towards Witchcraft, Earth-based spirituality, and Feminist consciousness suddenly had new ammo: scientific evidence. Furthermore, the Vietnam War was still going on, as was the anti-war movement and distrust of the government (even my normally conservative mother says that the government was lying about the number of casualties of the war) and since these civilizations were apparently found with NO evidence of weapons, it was concluded that Goddess societies were peaceful.

And then there was the 80s and 90s: Paganism goes mainstream; Llewellyn Books prints 1000s of books on insta-Paganism: blended and whipped like fattening cream all for your Barnes and Noble-Starbucks-y yummy non-threatening "we're not evil" enjoyment.

Now there's another thing: we as Pagans have had to work VERY hard to overcome old stereotypes that Pagans and Witches are evil and we worship the Devil (thanks Hollywood!) and for some that meant embracing a more "peace friendly" mindset. Some may have already been hippies to begin with...and just found the Earth-based philosophy of Pagansim to be a more compatabile religion for their politics.

The "dogma of love, light, and happiness" may be more New Age concepts than ancient age, but nearly all religions speak of these things. I know your context, but what's wrong with love? Or happiness? I know a girl in my Pagan group who is constantly miserable. She always wants things to be her way and I swear I have never seen her genuinely smile. Life is fucked up for her and no one can convice her otherwise. Being that miserable and serious all the time is not healthy...joy is what gives us purpose in life.

Does this help?

Blessings

My answer to your question... confusion, or trying to relive their ancestors glory days??
I personally have been studying, practicing, and living my life as a Pagan for approx. 24 years, and have been down the road and back again when it comes to my own choices in my faith. If there was a book on something that struck a cord, I read it. If there was a ritual close to me, no matter what the group based itself on -Isis, Gardner, Golden Dawn, etc-, I went, I wanted to see what was out there, what I could find for myself, what I needed to develop me.
I tried that fluffy bunny stuff when I was in high school (because my friends were afraid of getting to know what I was really studying -High Magick-). I can do it, but I don't particularily care for it.
To each, his own.
I choose to follow an eclectic pattern, not because I cannot make up my mind, it is because not one single path has everything that I want, need, desire to attain, in one single branch. I know what I want, and I am still going to keep learning to get there.
Hopefully, in the meantime, I can enlighten the few confused souls (who ask) who think that all Pagans are Fluffy, love everyone, and sprinkle the world with Faery dust & pretty flowers, that we are no different than anyone else, we are indeed human, we have our faults, but we choose to follow a different faith. Not everything in this world is black and white, or good and evil. We do have varying shades of grey, and it is not the energy in and of itself that is 'bad' so to speak, it is just the manner in which it is to be used, if at all.
Some things, and some people are best left alone.
Since we are human, we all have personal choice. And that in and of itself is one of the many great things that we can posess.
I prefer to be tolerant of other's choices in life, (even though I may not agree with them), is something grand that I hope to pass on to my offspring. (The golden rule). (Doesn't mean you have to be nice, just tolerant enough to walk away and leave it be. Unless they are trying to kick your butt, then hell's bells, stand up for yourself! At that point, tolerance only gets you so far.)
:)

Depends on your geography....

I have encountered plenty of hippieness in pagandom...starting with a lot of polyamory free love ....probably due to that "all acts of pleasure are worship unto me" line. Non-conformity....well if you were a conformist you probably would not change religions and probably close to 75% of American pagans are converts...so...

but I also know a large movement of military pagans. I have met a lot of people who are pro-self-defense following a lot of ancient celtic and asatru customs. If you go to the east coast...particularly by military bases....you'll meet a lot of sword weilding pagans. There also seems to be almost a connection between pagans who are pro-military and pagans who are pro-monogamy. I don't know where that comes from, just my unscientific observation.

Many Dianics aren't particularly nice, either....especially if you're male.

There might be a regional or geo geographical component to this. The pagans I meet in person are mostly from Virginia. They are an interesting mix of military and back-country. There is no more promiscuity among this group as any other group of humans.

I take some issue with your reference to free-love. You are buying into all the hype that the new media has propogated. A good number of us veterans from the 60's probably were more "chaste" than you think. Many would be aghast for instance of your profile, Chas.

My point is...its all a matter of degree.

I also think that a lot of people are drawn to Paganism and other religious groups because they are lacking something in their lives. Sometimes this is a healthy thing...but sometimes if they are lacking self-esteem or self-confidence it can get filled in negative ways.

It is a deep topic. Thanks for bringing it up.
Majka

not all pagans are zen buddhists ...
Pagan does not = peacenik

"hippies" tend to be more liberal thinking all around, I think, and progressive ... just my thoughts...

Great post.

Personally, I'm a sole practicioner and have been really turned off by a lot of people I meet who claim to be Pagan, but are really just hippies.

The difference to me? Honoring one's word.

Sure, as humans we all lie to an extent, but I've found that the folks who are running around spewing peace and love also tend to be the most full of shit. I'm a bit jaded due to recent experience but I see a lot of women using Wicca as a way to control others and to put themselves on a "all-about-love" pedestal. I've never seen it that way, and so maybe I'm the one who is wrong. But then I see these same peaceful folks run cons on people while batting their eyes and asking for a handout...and it gives the rest of us a bad name!

I'm probably not making any sense, am I? Tired. Long and short of it...great thread.

love this thread! also if you guys want to discuss fluffy bunnies in specific...I created a tribe just for fluffy bunnies
tribes.tribe.net/fluffybunny

I get what you are saying and these are my thoughts, that fit in from my perspective, and I hope that it adds to the conversation in some way.

Acceptance of the right for someone to follow their own path does not mean you have to agree with it, much less find a way to feel "love". There are times when I am stricken with (both at different times) the beauty of the natural world and also it's feral, unyielding face. I see that mirrored in Gods who love and are of beauty, say for example Venus, and also in other deities like Macha, one of the Morrigans who I have worked with. (on a side note I was cheated on and I found her, prayed to her, cried in rage and despair to her and she said, "he will know public shame because that is what he fears... and he did, as I was witness to). is it love? well then it is tough love.

We live in a universe of polarities. I don't believe in words like good and bad because I think that they are human creations, our minds make it so, not nature and so far the greater universe hasn't made it plain that there is good and bad (aka evil). We do also live in a world of trines and squares and more... There is power in three, three views, three lovers, three nations at difference. There is one singularity, IMO, and that is the power of creation. Not sentient as far as we all can tell, but prevalent in all things by the measure of power we can perceeve in our self through our interior ability to sense and that which can also be experienced by the flavor of emotions we generate from life and the ideas that arise from it; thirdly we see it through the magnificent lens of the scientific community, peering into the depths and the reaches to show the ambient energy passing from all bodies into other bodies, atoms, molecules, strings....

I don't say pagan unless I mean to say that I am of the earth and worship as I choose. I say pagan to mean I am not anything but my own experience, both shared and singularly experienced. I choose to say Capital "W"itch. I bend. I am conscious. I choose. I manifest. I find harmony. I create. I am Witch. Therefore I can decide to make or not make a voice against or for... however it is taught, in my own personal tradition, by the force of fire, that this is the light within me; and by the realm of water that we all, reflect the lights into the world and so all have this right. I cannot say that you are a lollypop licking pagan and it is right or wrong, except for myself.

Hippies? My mother was one and I thank her because I grew up with magick and respect for all religious, spiritual and idyllic beliefs. I was never a "child of Love" in some free love, free sex, free drug use, kind of way. Of course I experimented, but don't we all? Hippies did allot of drugs, a crash into the mystic realm without any training and some people paid for that, and IMO mixed up their energies. They may have been heralds of a new consciousness but they fucked it up by wasting their minds on substances, and whoring out the temples of their bodies on a drug induced, patchwork beliefs. Thinking that only good can come from sleeping with more people in a day than you have hours, isn't enlightenment.

Pagan's of the past, if you dig deep, sacrificed animals and people. Waged wars. Held on to superstitious beliefs and did all that corrupt politicians do. They did good and there are many other merits that counterbalance the bad, in retrospect, but isn't any culture, any belief system susceptible to the same proclivities towards graces and vices?

..And that's human nature, and that's life. There isn't perfection, except in the natural beauty of the perfect imperfection of nature, which we are a part of.

The weight of the fluffy bunnies and the agro-pagans actions, thoughts, words and deeds will not be judged but it will be measured by the social achievements that they can create and the success of their lives, which is the success of their community because the two are entirely interdependent.

Scott