The place of politics in the spiritual quest

it is partly the nature of the project i am undertaking
and partly becuase it was election year
i have been concerned for a while now about the relationship between paganism and fascism
after a year of looking into it, my overall conclusion , is that paganism (like most fringe social phenomenom)  attracts alot of contrarians
and that most people who are using spirituality primarily to advance a political ideal eventually move away from any kind of structured spirituality, even ones as loosely structured as the various paganism's. If you are going to trumpet a religion when your main goals are political you'll eventually end up tending towards the one that will win you the most support

a political ideal, or any mundane ideal, for that matter
it's interesting because there were 3 main players (who wrote material) who pushed the pagan aspect of the order of woodcraft chivalry. ernest westlake  (the founder who wrote on theological aspects) victor neuberg (a poet / ex Crowley assossiate) and dion byngham (who edited the oragnisations magazine and was very vocal about the promotion of pagansim within the order)
i initially thought byngham was the most interesting because he was the loudest/ most proactive.
but reading his stuff, it's clear his concerns were guided by politics (a politics of radical individualism) to a large degree
his actual concern for the gods seems pretty tangental compared to his promotion of nietzsche and german youth movements
and general romanticism... though that also seems more of an aside to the other two
or a warm up
the gods are pretty front and centre in neuberg and westlakes writing
neubergs stuff reads entirely apolitical, and westlakes mostly relates to politics in discussing how the embrace of Dionysus might effect peoples general awareness



i am not familiar with either
anyway the point i was going to make was that byngham eventually gave up on paganism to  focus on promoting naturism


its no suprise... neubergs the only one who anyone might have heard of
but yeah... you just have to be weary in considering the insights of contrarians who joined the path you are studying as an act of rebellion
they can turn up interesting insights...
they can also muddy the waters pretty bad
so this year of distraction was probably worth it
learned some leasons about politics
made some techinal advances in the art making
* learned some leasons about the place of politics