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Internet Book of Shadows, (Various Authors), [1999], at sacred-texts.com


 
 
                        PAGAN MUSINGS
 
 [Tony Kelly of the Selene Community in Wales wrote this
 piece in l970.  It was published in l97l in the British
 edition of The Waxing Moon under the title "Pagan Movement."
  Under the title "Pagan Musings" it has passed from hand to
 hand and group to group all over the United States.  Tony
 Kelly was one of the founders of the Pagan Movement in the
 British Isles, which, with the Pagan Way in the United
 States, began as a single group of researchers into ancient
 goddess cults. They later divided, agreeing that each
 country required a different approach in bringing back
 Paganism.]
 
 We're of the old religion, sired of Time, and born of our
 beloved Earth Mother.  For too long the people have trodden
 a stony path that goes only onward beneath a sky that goes
 only upwards.  The Horned God plays in a lonely glade for
 the people are scattered in this barren age and the winds
 carry his plaintive notes over deserted heaths and reedy
 moors and into the lonely grasses.  who know now the ancient
 tongue of the Moon?  And who speaks still with the Goddess? 
 The magic of the land of Lirien and the old pagan gods have
 withered in the dragons breath; the old ways of magic have
 slipped into the well of the past, and only the rocks now
 remember what the moon told us long ago, and what we learned
 from the trees, and the voices of grasses and the scents of
 flowers.
 
 We're pagans and we worship the pagan gods, and among the
 people there are witches yet who speak with the moon and
 dance with the Horned One.  But a witch is a rare pagan in
 these days, deep and inscrutable, recognizable only by her
 own kind, by the light in her eyes and the love in her
 breast, by the magic in her hands and the lilt of her tongue
 and by her knowledge of the real.  But the wiccan way is one
 way.  There are many; there are pagans the world over who
 worship the Earth Mother and the Sky Father, the Rain God
 and the Rainbow Goddess, the Dark One and the Hag on the
 mountain, the Moon Goddess and the Little People in the
 mists on the other side of the veil. A pagan is one who
 worships the goddesses and gods of nature, whether by
 observation or by study, whether by love or admiration, or
 whether in their sacred rites with the Moon, or the great
 festivals of the Sun.
 
 Many suns ago, as the pale dawn of reason crept across the
 pagan sky, man grew out of believing in the gods.  He has
 yet to grow out disbelieving in them.  He who splits the
 Goddess on an existence-nonexistence dichotomy will earn
 himself only paradoxes, for the gods are not so divided and
 nor the magic lands of the Brother of Time.  Does a mind
 exist?  Ask her and she will tell you yes, but seek her out,
 and she'll elude you.  She in in every place, and in no
 place, and you'll see her works in all places, but herself
 in none.  Existence was the second-born from the Mother's
 womb and contains neither the first-born, nor the unborn.
 Show us your mind, and we'll show you the gods!  No matter
 2436
 
 that you can't, for we can't show you the gods.  But come
 with us and the Goddess herself will be our love and the God
 will call the tune.  But a brass penny for your reason; for
 logic is a closed ring, and the child doesn't validate the
 Mother, nor the dream the dreamer.  And what matter the wars
 of opposites to she who has fallen in love with a whirlwind
 or to the lover of the arching rainbow.
 
 But tell us of your Goddess as you love her, and the gods
 that guide your works, and we'll listen with wonder, for to
 do less would be arrogant.  but we'll do more, for the heart
 of man is aching for memories only half forgotten, and the
 Old Ones only half unseen.  We'll write the old myths as
 they were always written and we'll read them on the rocks
 and in the caves and in the deep of the greenwood's shade,
 and we'll hear them in the rippling mountain streams and in
 the rustling of the leaves, and we'll see them in the storm
 clouds, and in the evening mists.  We've no wish to create a
 new religion for our religion is as old as the hills and
 older, and we've no wish to bring differences together. 
 Differences are like different flowers in a meadow, and we
 are all one in the Mother.
 
 What need is there for a pagan movement since our religion
 has no teachings and we hear it in the wind and feel it in
 the stones and the Moon will dance with us as she will? 
 There is a need.  For long the Divider has been among our
 people and the tribes of man are no more.  The sons of the
 Sky Father have all but conquered nature, but they have
 poisoned her breast and the Mother is sad for the
 butterflies are dying and the night draws on.  A curse on
 the conqueror!  But not of us, for they curse themselves for
 they are nature too.  They have stolen our magic and sold it
 to the mindbenders and the mindbenders tramp a maze that has
 no outlet for they fear the real for the One who guards the
 path.
 
 Where are the pagan shrines?  And where do the people
 gather?  Where is the magic made?  And where are the Goddess
 and the Old Ones?  Our shrines are in the fields and on the
 mountains, in the stars and in the wind, deep in the
 greenwood and on the algal rocks where two streams meet. 
 but the shrines are deserted, and if we gathered in the arms
 of the Moon for our ancient rites to be with our gods as we
 were of old, we would be stopped by the dead who now rule
 the Mother's land and claim rights of ownership on the
 Mother's breast, and make laws of division and frustration
 for us.  We can no longer gather with our gods in a public
 place and the old rites of communion have been driven from
 the towns and cities ever deeper into the heath where barely
 a handful of heathens have remained to guard the old secrets
 and enact the old rites.  there is magic in the heath far
 from the cold grey society, and there are islands of magic
 hidden in the entrails of the metropoles behind closed
 doors, but the people are few, and the barriers between us
 are formidable.  The old religion has become a dark way,
 obscure, and hidden in the protective bosom of the night. 
 Thin fingers turn the pages of a book of shadows while the
 2437
 
 sunshine seeks in vain his worshippers in his leafy glades.
 
 Here, then, is the basic reason for a Pagan Movement; we
 must create a pagan society wherein everyone shall be free
 to worship the goddesses and gods of nature, and the
 relationship between a worshipper and her gods shall be
 sacred and inviolable, provided only that in her love of her
 own gods, she doesn't curse the names of the gods of others.
 
 It's not yet our business to press the law-makers with
 undivided endeavour to unmake the laws of repression and,
 with the Mother's love, it may never become our business for
 the stifling tides of dogmatism are at last already in ebb. 
 Our first work, and our greatest wish, is to come together,
 to be with each other in our tribes for we haven't yet grown
 from the Mother's breast to the stature of the gods.  We're
 of the earth, and sibs to all the children of wild nature,
 born long ago in the warm mud of the ocean floor; we were
 together then, and we were together in the rain forests long
 before that dark day when, beguiled by the pride of the Sky
 Father, and forgetful of the Mother's love, we killed her
 earlier-born children and impoverished the old genetic pool.
  The Red child lives yet in America; the Black Child has not
 forsaken the gods; the old Australians are still with their
 nature gods; the Old Ones still live deep in the heart of
 Mother India, and the White Child has still a foot on the
 old wiccan way, but Neanderthaler is no more and her magic
 faded as the Lli and the Archan burst their banks and the
 ocean flowed in to divide the Isle of Erin from the land of
 the White Goddess.
 
 Man looked with one eye on a two-faced god when he reached
 for the heavens and scorned the Earth which alone is our
 life and our provider and the bosom to which we have ever
 returned since the dawn of Time.  He who looks only to
 reason to plum the unfathomable is a fool, for logic is an
 echo already implicit i the question, and it has no voice of
 its own;  but he is no greater fool than he who scorns logic
 or derides its impotence from afar, but fears to engage in
 fair combat when he stands on his opponent's threshold.
 don't turn your back on Reason, for his thrust is deadly;
 but confound him and he'll yield for his code of combat is
 honorable. so here is more of the work of the Pagan
 Movement.  Our lore has become encrusted over the ages with
 occult trivia and the empty vapourings of the lost.  The
 occult arts are in a state of extreme decadence, astrology
 is in a state of disrepute and fears to confront the
 statistician's sword; alien creeds oust our native arts and,
 being as little understood as our own forgotten arts, are
 just as futile for their lack of understanding, and more so
 for their unfamiliarity.  Misunderstanding is rife.
 Disbelief is black on every horizon, and vampires abound on
 the blood of the credulous. Our work is to reject the
 trivial, the irrelevant and the erroneous, and to bring the
 lost children of the Earth Mother again into the court of
 the Sky Father where reason alone will avail.  Belief is the
 deceit of the credulous; it has no place in the heart of a
 pagan.
 2438
 
 But while we are sad for those who are bemused by Reason, we
 are deadened by those who see no further than his syllogisms
 as he turns the eternal wheel of the Great Tautology.  We
 were not fashioned in the mathematician's computations, and
 we were old when the first alchemist was a child.  We have
 walked in the magic forest, bewitched in the old Green
 Thinks; we have seen the cauldron and the one become many
 and the many in the one; we know the Silver Maid of the
 moonlight and the sounds of the cloven feet.  We have heard
 the pipes on the twilight ferns, and we've seen the spells
 of the enchantress, and Time be stilled.  We've been into
 eternal darkness where the Night Mare rides and rode her to
 the edge of the Abyss, and beyond, and we know the dark face
 of the Rising Sun.  spin a spell or words and make a magic
 knot; spin it on the magic loom and spin it with the gods. 
 Say it in the old chant and say it to the Goddess, and in
 her name.  Say it to a dark well and breathe it on a stone.
 There are no signposts on the untrod way, but we'll make our
 rituals together and bring them as our gifts to the Goddess
 and her God in the great rites.  Here, then, is our work in
 the Pagan Movement; to make magic in the name of our gods,
 to share our magic where the gods would wish it, and to come
 together in our ancient festivals of birth, and life, of
 death and of change in the old rhythm.  We'll print the
 rituals that can be shared in the written work;  we'll do
 all in our power to bring the people together, to teach
 those who would learn, and to learn from those who can
 teach.  We will initiate groups, bring people to groups, and
 groups to other groups in our common devotion to the goddess
 and gods of nature.  We will not storm the secrets of any
 coven, nor profane the tools, the magic, and still less, the
 gods of another.
 
 We'll collect the myths of the ages, of our people and of
 the pagans of other lands, and we'll study the books of the
 wise and we'll talk to the very young.  And whatever the
 pagan needs in her study, or her worship, then it is our
 concern, and the Movement's business to do everything
 possible to help each other in our worship of the gods we
 love.
 
 We are committed with the lone pagan on the seashore, with
 he who worships in the fastness of a mountain range or she
 who sings the old chant in a lost valley far from the
 metalloid road.  We are committed with the wanderer, and
 equally with the prisoner, disinherited from the Mother's
 milk in the darkness of the industrial webs.  We are
 committed too with the coven, with the circular dance in the
 light of the full moon, with the great festivals of the sun,
 and with the gatherings of the people.  We are committed to
 build our temples in the towns and in the wilderness, to buy
 the lands and the streams from the landowners and give them
 to the Goddess for her children's use, and we'll replant the
 greenwood as it was of old for love of the dryad stillness,
 and for love of our children's children.
 
 When the streams flow clear and the winds blow pure, and the
 sun never more rises unrenowned nor the moon ride in the
 2439
 
 skies unloved; when the stones tell of the Horned God and
 the greenwood grows deep to call back her own ones, then our
 work will be ended and the Pagan Movement will return to the
 beloved womb of our old religion, to the nature goddesses
 and gods of paganism.
 ................................................................................
 2440
 


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