Happy New Year! Happy Hogmanay! Welcome to Pagan Travel in 2010! (That's pronounced "twenty-ten" or so I am told by those who are way cooler than I.) Along with giving you the lowdown on all the cool “Pagan Places” you can visit on our waxing, waning, wonderful Mother Earth, I hope to dispel myths and misinformation about Paganism and Wicca along the way. Come along and see the world! Paganism is everywhere.
Like everyone else, Pagans make New Year's resolutions and sometimes don't keep them. This is not mysterious or arcane. Dedication, determination, hard work, concentration and follow-through are the characteristics that will help you succeed in the new decade. Sometimes these characteristics are harder to muster than we originally thought.
These are the same principles--dedication, determination, hard work, concentration and follow through -- that many witches, Wiccans, and some Pagans apply to any magickal work they attempt. It might be called magick, but it still takes hard work. Misunderstandings abound, as they do about much of what is labeled (rightly or wrongly) as Pagan or Wiccan. It probably will surprise many of you that some Pagans don't do magick. A larger number of Wiccans do, but not all. For those who are totally confused by the different sects of Paganism, the rule of thumb is, "All Wiccans are Pagan, but not all Pagans are Wiccan." It's close to the idea that all Southern Baptists are Christian, but not all Christians are Southern Baptists.
Every Pagan path (Pagan being the general umbrella term for a great number of sometimes not completely compatible "nature religions.") is different. Wiccans, witches, Heathens, Druids, and countless more spiritual paths embrace characteristics of Paganism. The joke is that if you gather six Pagans in a room, you will get six definitions of Paganism. The primary characteristic seems to be a strong sense of individuality.
Many Pagans follow what they call an “Earth-centered” spirituality. Some Pagans follow the law, "Harm none.” Wiccans have a version of this law that states in archaic English, “An that it harm none, do what thou wilt.” This is called the Wiccan Rede and can be very loosely compared to the Christian Golden Rule. Some Wiccans also believe what they call the “Rule of Three” which states that for every action or energy, positive or negative, that you send out into the Universe, this action or energy, positive or negative, will come back to you three-fold. Think “karma” or in secular terms “what goes around, comes around.” In scientific terms, think about the First Law of Thermodynamics: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The THREE-fold idea seems to come from the magick of the number THREE in some Wiccan tradition’s ideology, i.e. the idea of a Triple Goddess.
Some Pagans and many ceremonial magicians see "magick" as defined by Aleister Crowley as: "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take "magickal weapons", pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations" — these sentences — in the "magickal language" ie, that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth "spirits", such as printers, publishers, booksellers and so forth and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this [article] is thus an act of Magick by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will." (From Wikipedia’s page about Crowley)
Many Wiccans see "magick" as a more psychological transformation, a type of positive affirmation with the added sacred dimension of making these affirmations before your personal Gods and Goddesses inside a "magick circle." The writings of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are good refernce materials for this type of psychology as it relates to Pagan thought. Another view of magic can be seen in a book written by the popular psychologiist and motivational speaker, Dr. Wayne Dyer. Dyer entitled his book, Real Magic. It is a great read with yet another view of magic and although it contains many ideas that embrace the Pagan paradigm of values, Dyer is not known to be Pagan. Neither are Jung or Campbell, but their ideas are well-known and loved in some Pagan circles.
I digress too long on my second favorite subject which is debunking misinformation assigned to Paganism. This is my secondary goal in these columns. My primary goal is telling the world about all the “Pagan Places” that are just waiting to be explored in this world. In 2010, I hope to approach this wide-flung subject matter in a more organized fashion starting with an outline of all the “sacred places” in the various regions of the USA and then moving over to Ireland, the UK, France and on across a large portion of the world.
Pagan Travel Examiner will continue to feature the Pagan festival calendars, the Renaissance Faire calendars and interviews and reports about people and places Pagan-related all across this world. As always, I encourage you to subscribe to my columns, comment at the bottom of each of the articles and write to me at Branwenn@aol.com with any additional ideas or suggestions you may have for these pages. I want to hear from you!
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This article kicked off the year 2010 on my Examiner.com column Pagan Travel Examiner
