David B wrote:
>> "Every religion would be in trouble if we relied on history to guide our
practices".
John wrote:
> Exactly. But at least thats something to debate over - e,g was the earth
created in 7 days. If we start getting into the territory of 'well, it might
not be, but the idea that it did works for me' we are headed on a slippery
slope.
I write:
A slippery slope to where? There is a difference, is there not, between
religions which base themselves on texts (which may or may not be literally
true) and historical events (which may or may not have happened in reality)
like Christianity or Islam (i.e. those based on "belief" in the modern
sense - believing something to be true) and traditions of faith and
spiritual practice based on the experience of powers, deities, spirits or
forces (i.e. those based on "belief" in the ancient sense - having a
relationship with one (or more) other-than-human force of some kind). There
is
also a difference between the kind of debate had by theologians and Biblical
scholars (for example), which I think John is talking about, and the way
average people live (with) and act out their faith.
To quote from Starhawk's letter to Atlantic Monthly that Vivianne so kindly
forwarded to the list:
"Goddess religion is not based on belief, in history, in archaeology, in
any Great Goddess past or present. Our spirituality is based on experience,
on a direct relationship with the cycles of birth, growth, death and
regeneration in nature and in human lives...
And I'm sure, from day to day conversations I have, that for many people of
many religions, their faith is more about their experience of and
relationship with God than it is about the theory or textual analysis of
their theologians.
Also, in traditions of Wicca and other kinds of religious witchcraft, what
matters is not whether something is verifiably accurate in a historical
sense, but whether it works. To continue quoting from Starhawk's letter:
"To us, Goddesses, Gods, and for that matter, archaeological theories are
not something to believe in, nor are they merely metaphors. An image of
deity,
a symbol on a pot, a cave painting, a liturgy are more like portals to
particular states of consciousness and constellations of energies. Meditate
on them, contemplate them, and they take you someplace, generally into some
aspect of those cycles of death and regeneration. The heart of my
connection to the Goddess has less to do with what I believe happened five
thousand years ago or five hundred years ago, and much more to do with what
I notice when I step outside my door...
"Archaeologists may never be
able to prove or disprove Marija Gimbutas' theories, but the wealth of
ancient images she presents to us are valuable because they work; they
function elegantly, right now, as gateways to that deep connected state. We
may never truly know whether Neolithic Minoans saw the spiral as a symbol of
regeneration; but I know the amazing, orgasmic power that is raised when we
dance a spiral with two thousand people at our Halloween ritual every year.
I may never know for certain what was in the mind of the maker of the
paleolithic, big bellied, heavy breasted female figure that sits atop my
computer, but she works as a Goddess for me because my own creativity is
awakened by looking at her every day..."
Is that the bottom of a slippery slope? Or simply the outcome of an
experience rather than text-based faith?
Elinor
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