I thought this was quite and interesting response,
Jason, but I wasn't familiar with the distinction you
were making between Hermetic Pagans and Deity-based
Pagans. Is it a distinction of private "gnosis"
versus public ritual or is there some other subtlety
I'm missing here?
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"Why not cut out the ritual and go do the job
yourself?"
A question like this seems to imply a very
goal-oriented, Christian viewpoint on ritual, that the
sole purpose of ritual is to supplicate the deity. You
are doing the job yourself, through ritual. Ritual
puts us in a state of mind where we can access these
'deities' or parts of your subconscious (whatever you
want to call them), through symbols, through
performance, through ritual action, we go beyond our
intellectual selves and think differently, and
experience differently through our bodies. And it's
also more than just 'psychology,' it's embodied
practice.
I also know both 'Hermetic' Pagans and deity-based
Pagans, and in my experience, I felt like the latter
were more dogmatic and much more rigid in their
beliefs (and had much more in common with mainstream
Christians I knew). So, contrary to Mogg, I tend to
prefer the company of the former myself, but I
certainly don't dismiss the beliefs of deity-based
folk.
To return to my earlier point about DuQuette, I
definitely tend to resist this notion of a binary
between 'internal' and 'external' - between belief
creating deity or deity creating belief (it feels like
very old-school Enlightenment thinking). Functionally,
I usually see no difference. I think both are part of
the same ineffable process, and I'm reluctant to
dismiss some of these instances as 'new-agey.' It
seems rather condescending to do so and negates the
subjective experience of the practitioner.
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