Neo Paganism

This week we had the opportunity to learn about modern religions. There are many examples of them. I wanted to know about Neo-Paganism because I think the mere idea of rescuing ancient beliefs, rituals and pantheons or, on the hand, creating a new religious system is extremely interesting. I read a bit about the other religions before deciding which one I was going to investigate. I think the variety and differences among them quite interesting.

When I started reading about Neo Paganism, I found out the term doesn’t refer only to Wicca, but to a group of different religions that include: Asatru, Church of All Worlds, Discordianism, Druidry, Feri, Gwyddons, Hellenismos, Kemeticism, Religio Romana, Religious Witchcraft, Senistrognata, Thelema and Wicca.

We can see that Paganism or Neo-Paganism is an umbrella term that covers many religious and non-religious practice and that the variety and combinations or fusions is incredible, especially when you read that the number of practitioners of these “alternative spiritualities” or “new religious movements” is between 200,000 and 1,000,000 in the United States.

The members of these religions can adopt a great variety of Gods or chose monotheism or atheism if they want. They follow the principles of reverence for nature, sensuality, pleasure, art, creativity and the female principle. Their practices, places of cult and literature are incredible diverse.

The Wiccan Rede is a statement that provides the key moral system for some of the Neo-pagan religions. The most common for of the Rede is: An it harm none, do what ye will. (Do what you will, so long as it harms none.)

I have included two video clips. The first one shows some aspects about Wicca and the people who belongs to this religion. This video was taken in a place in England where a coven of witches is gradually accepted into the community.

The second one is an interview with Oberon Zell Ravenheart, who, according with the information in his website is “a modern Renaissance man, a transpersonal psychologist, metaphysician, naturalist, theologian, shaman, author, artist, sculptor, lecturer, teacher, and ordained Priest of the Earth-Mother, Gaia. Oberon Zell Ravenheart is one of the founders of the Church of All Worlds, the publisher of Green Egg Magazine and the Headmaster of the Grey School of Wizardry.







To complete this assignment, I used the pages recommended in the Learning Wikispaces for this class. I chose only one of them when I realized there were too many variations for this theme. I got most of the information I used here from the following page: http://www.ecauldron.net/newpagan.php . I found a large number of links and information in this page. I also used some pages from Wikipedia, and looked for multimedia in Youtube.