Why the theology of Ernest westlake and the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry is a good bedrock to build on.

Westlake is important not just because he initiated the first organised pagan revival in the english speaking world but because of his choice of sources, Tragedy and Cult.

His drawing from the tragic poets is instructive because they do not just describe the gods but sanction and sanctify the entire gamut of human emotion, from ecstasy to despair, as pious response to deity and the actions of deity. This is the first marriage of a humanist polytheism.

Westlakes embrace of cult is what turns this from passive philosophy to religious experience. It is the affirmation that through ritual the human to gain experience of divinity.

This is what makes the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry a good basis for a pagan religion. It works outward, putting the reality ofthe gods before specifics of practice, then saying it is possible for humans to seek experience of the gods. Opening the door to all avenues of practice from prehistory to the current age, from magic to philosophy. All human understandings.