Why I became interested in paganism
It was kind of a progression. Christian hysterics over dungeons and dragons (and all not explicitly christian aspects of culture) during my childhood (I was very into fantasy gamebooks and wargaming).
There was a period I was trapped in a dead end menial job in the middle of nowhere (two and a half hours by bus to get to the "big town" (pop. 8000) in the area). Things were getting a bit cabin fever-y after a year and a half of being stuck in this place and would spend my nights on the internet researching pagan survivals (wicca never really clicked for me).
Eventually I found Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon" which is sort of a long dissection of the emergence wcica. This gave me some starting points to look into pre-wiccan reconstructionist movements. Which lead to me getting copies of some documents of an early pagan revival movement from the British Library while visiting the UK.
I had been a staunch atheist my whole life and this didn't change overnight, but over the year or so after I returned home I read various things (Alan Moores reason for becoming a magician, the book "Rational Mysticism" where a researcher interviews various prominent psychonauts in the scientific and esoteric communities about their mystical experiences) and came up against various positions within atheism that I couldn't reconcile (such as "what were the ancients talking about when they discussed gods" the response I got from atheists I brought it up with, "nothing" didn't really cut if for me. Another was my determination that the drug experience is a valid human experience, which makes decrying religious ecstasy pretty hard to do as a humanist.)
<I have had a series of experiences throughout my life that with hindsight are attributable to forces outside of myself, including UPG>
The realisation that some fantasy authors had studied the occult (not the ones the christians were more panicking about) or had other links with it i.e. Machen, Blackwood, Ende, Crowleys interest in lord Dunsany etc. Alan Moore coming out as a magician was probably the big one.
Not to mention a lot of the most interesting modernist artists (The symbolists and surrealists being two of the major movements with occult leanings, but you can find occult links and ideas in pretty much every major art movement of the early 20th century.) basicly the occult looked a lot like the font of all creative endeavor. which sort of ties things in a nice circle.
posted by Classical Polytheist @ 05:36
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