Well for me its an area I find increasingly problematic and, indeed, I
am curious if one creates gods and goddesses as convenient why not
simply do the job yourself and why bother with terms like Pagan at all.
Given this kind of approach is miles from historical paganism I find it
difficult to see how it should conceptually hold together at all in any
meaningful way. Indeed I tend to find it all tends to crumble in a
Schlegelian way when subjected to critique. Especially with the odd
juxtaposition of tradition, pop culture and Chistian/Judaic loose
versions of hermeticism and gnosticism out of cosmological and cultural
context.
David
Caroline Tully wrote:
> Yes its actually an aetheistic approach to deities - you only exist
> because I/we believe in you. It's like Peter Pan's Tinkerbell fading
> away when all the children stopped believing in fairies. One wonders
> what the point in believing in deities actually is if they aren't
> really real. Is it like an externalisation of an aspect of one's inner
> self, blown up big, and then appealed to/commanded? Why not cut out
> the ritual and go do the job yourself?
>
> ~Caroline.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* David Waldron <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 19, 2008 12:07 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Lovecraft- was A question
> about Ganesh
>
> There seems to be this underlying ideology here that belief
> creates power and deities are somehow akin to a Tulpa. I am not
> really sure how that plays out but if you follow it then you can
> invest abstract cultural references with magical/divine energy in
> theory. Rather terry Pratchetts Small Gods in a way. Its a
> different take to the existent Gods of history or the
> psychologising of deities I've usually come across. Still I
> wonder, given the discussion of replacing Hercules or Aries with
> Chuck Norris, if Chuck Norris is prayed to and invoked will he get
> super powers? ;-) Well someone before came up with the line of
> using Peter Griffin and Lois as incarnation of the God and Goddess
> and they get super powers all the time. :-P
> David
>
>
>
> Caroline Tully wrote:
>> >>What real value (or power, or whatever other qualifier you care
>> to attribute) can something truly be said to have if no one knows
>> it's there,<<
>>
>> That's a bit human-centric isn't it? What about things we will
>> never see, things at the bottom of the sea like a big sea
>> volcano, or in outer space like say, black holes, they have power
>> and we might not know they are there. Or do you mean some kind of
>> other sort of "power"?
>>
>> ~Caroline.
>
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