Here's a brief introduction to the basic beliefs that I expect
will characterize most members of ADF (a Neopagan Druid organiza- tion).
These spiritual beliefs are similar to most of those held by other
Neopagans (see Margot Adler's book, "Drawing Down the Moon")
and the similarities are far more important than whatever specific distinctions
of doctrine or ethnic focus there might be between us and other
Neopagans. I should also mention that not all Neopagans
who consider themselves Druids will necessarily agree with
every point of the following list. Nonetheless, these beliefs
will be the roots of ADF's polytheology, the source of
the spiritual grove we seek to plant.
1) We believe that divinity is both immanent (internal)
and transcendent (external). We see the Gods as being able to
manifest at any point in space or time, including
within human beings, which they might choose, although
they may often have their preferences. Often this develops
among some Neopagans into
pantheism ("the physical world is divine") or panentheism
("the Gods are everywhere"). We tend more towards the latter position.
2) We believe that divinity is as likely to manifest
in a female form as it is in a male form, and that therefore women
and men are spiritually equal. We insist on a dynamic balance between female
and male deities honored and/or invoked at every ceremony, and a strict
gender balance in whatever theories of polytheology that we eventually
develop. We're "liberals" about women's rights and gay rights, but not
"radicals;" that is to say, we're unwilling to subordinate all our
other principles in order to promote this particular principle.
People who wish to make feminism or gay activism the absolute center
of all their spiritual activity will probably be happier in other groups.
3) We believe in a multiplicity of gods and goddesses, all of
whom are likely to be worthy of respect, love and worship. Sometimes
we believe in these divinities as individual and
independent entities; sometimes as Jungian "archetypes of the collective
unconscious" or "circuits in the psychic Switchboard;" sometimes
as aspects or faces of one or two major deities (the "High God/dess" and/or
"the Goddess and the Horned God"); and sometimes as "all of
the above!" We feel that this sort of flexibility leads
to pluralism (instead of monism), multi-valued logic systems
and an increased tolerance of other people's beliefs
and lifestyles. All of these are vital if our species is ever
going to learn to live in peace and harmony amid a
multiplicity of human cultures.
4) We believe that it is necessary to have a respect and love
for Nature as divine in her own right, and to accept ourselves as a
part of Nature and not as her "rulers." We tend to accept what has come
to be known as "the Gaia hypothesis," that the biosphere of our
planet is a living being, who is due all the love and
support that we, her children, can give her. This is especially
important in our modern era, when 3000 years of
monotheistic belief that "mankind is to have dominion over
the Earth" have come close to destroying the ability of the
biosphere to maintain itself. Many Neopagan groups refer to themselves
as "Earth religions" and this is a title which we believe
Neopagan Druidism should proudly claim, and which we should
work to earn. Thus we consider ecological awareness and activism
to be sacred duties. If the ecology, conservation and anti-nuclear
movements are ever to have "chaplains," we should be among them.
5) We believe in accepting the positive aspects of
western science and technology, but in maintaining an attitude of
worryness towards their supposed ethical neutrality. The overwhelming
majority of Neopagans are technophiles, not technophobes. We tend to be
better scientifically educated than the general population, and thus
we have a religious duty to speak out about the economics,
political and ecological uses and abuses of science and
technology.
6) We share with most other Neopagans a distaste for monolithic
religious organizations and would-be messiahs and gurus. Obviously,
this places the founders of Neopagan religious traditions in
a complex position: they need enough religious authority to focus the organizations
they're founding, but not so much as to allow them (or
their successors) to become oppressive. Since the pluralistic
approach denies the existence of any One True Right and
Only Way, and since Neopagans insist upon their own human
fallibility, we expect to be able to steer ADF between the Scylla
of tyranny and the Charybdis of anarchy.
7) In keeping with this, we believe that healthy
religions should have a minimum amount of dogma and a maximum
amount of eclectism and flexibility. Neopagans
tend to be reluctant to accept any idea without personally
investigating both its practicality and its long-range consequences.
They are also likely to
take useful ideas from almost any source that doesn't
run too fast to get away. We intend ADF to
be a "reconstructionist" tradition of Druidism, but we
know that eventually concepts from nonDruidic sources will be grafted
on to our trees. There's no harm in this, as long
as we stay aware of what we are doing at
every step of the way, and make a legitimate
effort to find authentic (and therefore spiritually and
esthetically congruent) parallels in genuine Indo-European sources first.
As for flexibility, Neopagan Druidism is an organic religion,
and like all other organisms it can be expected to grow, change
and produce offshoots as the years go by.
8) We believe that ethics and morality should be based
upon joy, self-love and respect; the avoidance
of actual harm to others; and the increase of public benefit.
We try to balance out people's needs for personal autonomy and growth,
with the necessity of paying attention to the impact
of each individual's actions on the lives and welfare
of others. The commonest Neopagan ethical expression
is "If it doesn't hurt anyone, do what you like." Most Neopagans
believe in some variant or another of the principle of
karma, and state that the results of their actions
will always return to them. It's difficult for ordinary humans to
successfully commit "offenses against the Gods," short of major crimes
such as ecocide or genocide, and our deities are perfectly
capable of defending their own honor without any help from mortal
busybodies. We see the traditional monotheistic concepts of sin,
guilt and divine retribution for thought-crimes as
sad misunderstandings of natural growth experiences.
9) We believe that human beings were meant to
lead lives filled with joy, love, pleasure, beauty and humor. Most
Neopagans are fond of food, drink, music, sex and bad
puns, and consider all of these (except possibly the puns)
to be sacraments. Although the ancient Druids appear
to have had ascetics within their ranks, they also had
a sensualist tradition, and the common folk have always preferred
the latter. Neopagan Druids try to keep these two approaches
in balance and harmony with each other by avoiding dualistic extremes.
But the bedrock question is, "If your religion doesn't enable you to enjoy
life more, why bother?"
10) We believe that with proper training, art, discipline and
intent, human minds and hearts are fully capable of performing
most of the magic and miracles they are ever likely
to need. This is done through the use of what we
perceive as natural, divinely granted psychic powers.
As with many other Neopagan traditions, the conscious
practice of magic is a central part of most of our religious
rituals. Unlike monotheists, we see no clearcut division
between magic and prayer. Neither, however, do we assume an
automatic connection between a person's ability to perform "miracles"
and either (a) their personal spirituality or (b) the accuracy of
their poly/theological opinions.
11) We believe in the importance of celebrating the
solar, lunar and other cycles of our lives. Because we see ourselves
as a part of Nature, and because we know that repeating patterns can give
meaning to our lives, we pay special attention to astronomical and
biological cycles. By consciously observing the solstices,
equinoxes and the points in between, as well as
the phases of the moon, we are not only aligning ourselves
with the movements and energy patterns of the external world, but
we are also continuing customs that reach back to the
original IndoEuropean peoples and beyond. These customs are
human universals, as are the various ceremonies known
as "rites of passage" -- celebrations of birth,
puberty, personal dedication to a given deity or group, marriage,
ordination, death, etc. Together these various sorts of observations help
us to find ourselves in space and time -- past, present and future.
12) We believe that people have the ability to solve
their current problems, both personal and public,
and to create a better world. Hunger, poverty, war and disease
are not necessary, nor inevitable. Pain, depression,
lack of creative opportunity and mutual oppression are not necessary either.
What is necessary is a new spiritual consciousness in which
short-sighted greed, power-mongering and violence are
seen as absurd, rather than noble. This utopian
vision, tempered with common sense, leads us to a strong commitment to
personal and global growth, evolution and balance.
13) We believe that people can progress far towards achieving
growth, evolution and balance through the
carefully planned alteration of their "normal" states of consciousness.
Neopagans use both ancient and modern methods of
aiding concentration, meditation, reprogramming and ecstasy.
We seek to avoid being locked into single-valued, monistic
"tunnel realities," and instead work on being able to switch
worldviews according to their appropriateness for each given situation,
while still maintaining a firm spiritual, ethical and practical grounding.
14) We believe that human interdependence implies
community service. Neopagan Druids are encouraged to use their
talents to help others, both inside and outside of the Neopagan
community. Some of us are active in political, social, ecological and charitable
organizations, while others prefer to work for the public good primarily
through spiritual means (and many of us do both). As Neopagan
Druids we have the right and the obligation
to actively oppose (physically and spiritually) those forces
which would kill our planet, oppress our fellow
human beings, and destroy our freedom of religion. Also,
however, we have a constant need to evaluate our own methods and
motives, and to make sure that our actions are coming from
the depths of our spiritual beings, and not from petty or short-sighted
desires for power.
15) We believe that if we are to achieve any of our goals, we
must practice what we preach. Neopagan Druidism should be a
way of life, not merely a weekly or monthly social function. Thus
we must always strive to make our lives consistent with
our proclaimed beliefs. In a time when many people
are looking for something solid to hang on to in the midst
of rapid technological and cultural changes, Neopagan Druidism
can offer a natural and creative alternative to the repressive structures
of mainstream monotheism. But our alternative will not be seen
as such unless we can manage to make it a complete lifestyle
-- one with concern, if not always immediate answers, for the problems
of everyday life, as well as the grand cosmic questions.
Obviously, there's a great deal more to Neopaganism in general and
our version of it in particular. The details of
Neopagan polytheology will take years to develop. The
section of the "Druid Handbook" dealing with beliefs
will consist of statements with commentaries (and even arguments) about
the meanings of the statements. The purpose of this format
is multiple: to emphasize that there are no final answers to the
great questions of human existence; to express clearly
that Neopagans can disagree with each other about subtle details
of interpretation, while still remaining members of the
same religion; and to allow the belief system to grow and adapt
to changing cultural and technological needs. Neopagan Druidism
is to be a religion of the future, as well as of the present
and the past.
This article has been reprinted from "The
Druids' Progress",
issue #1, and is copyright 1984 by P. E. I. Bonewits. "DP" is the
irregular journal of a Neopagan Druid group called "Ar nDraiocht
Fein", founded by Bonewits (author of "Real Magic").
For more
data, send an S.A.S.E. to: Box 9398, Berkeley,
CA, USA 94709.
Permission to distribute via BBS's is hereby granted,
provided
that the entire article, including this notice, is kept intact.
The term "Pagan" comes from the Latin paganus, which appears to
have originally meant "country dweller,"
"villager," or "hick." The members of the
Roman army seem to have used it to mean "civilian." When
Christianity took over the Empire and continued it under new management,
the word took on the idea of "one who is not a soldier of Christ."
Today, the word means "atheist" or "devil worshiper"
to many devout monotheists. But those who call themselves Pagan use
it differently; as a general term for native, natural and polytheistic
religions, and their members. The following definitions have been
coined in recent years in order to keep the various polytheological
and historical distinctions clear: "Paleopaganism" refers to the original
tribal faiths of Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas,
Oceania and Australia, where and when they were (or are)
still practiced as intact belief systems. Of the
so-called "Great Religions of the World," Hinduism, Taoism and Shinto fall
under this category. "Mesopaganism" is the word used for those religions
founded as attempts to recreate, revive or continue
what their founders thought of as the (usually
European) Paleopagan ways of their ancestors (or predecessors),
but which were heavily influenced (accidentally, deliberately or
involuntarily) by the monotheistic and/or dualistic worldviews of
Judaism, Christianity and/or Islam. Examples of
Mesopagan belief systems would include the Masonic Druids,
Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism, Crowleyianity, and the many Afro-American
faiths (Voudoun, Macumba, etc.). "Neopaganism" refers to those religions
created since 1940 or so that have attempted to blend what
their founders perceived as the best aspects of different types of Paleopaganism
with modern "Aquarian Age" ideals, while eliminating
as much as possible of the traditional western dualism. The title of this
section should now make a great deal more sense. So let's look at
the state of Paleopaganism in Europe prior to the arrival of Christianity.
It's important to remember that a lot of history happened
in Europe before anyone got around to writing it down. Around
4000 B.C.E. ("Before the Common Era") the tribes that
spoke Proto-Indo-European began to migrate away from their original
homeland, which was probably the territory around the northwest shores
of the Black Sea. Some went southeast and founded
the Armenian, Iranian and Indic cultures. Others went
south to Anatolia and Palestine, and became known
as Hittites and Mitanni. Those who went southwest to the Balkans
became Thracians and Greeks. Others who went west and north established
the Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Baltic cultures.
All this migrating around took many centuries and involved
a lot of bloodshed. Previous inhabitants of a given piece of territory
had to be persuaded, usually at swordpoint, to
let the newcomers in -- and there went the neighborhood!
The pre-Indo-European cultures in Europe (which were not necessarily
"peaceful matriarchies") were all still in the late Neolithic ("New
Stone Age") cultural era, with only stone axes, spears and knives
with which to defend themselves. The invaders had bronze weapons
and armor with which to fight, plus bronze axes with which to
clear the great forests that covered the continent, bronze
plows to till the soil, etc.
The impact of this superior technology can be judged
by the fact that, by the time of the Roman Empire, nearly every language
spoken in Europe (except Basque, Lappish and Finnish)
was a member of the Western branch of Indo-European. Everything west
of the Urals was pretty much dominated by a loosely
interlinked conglomeration of related cultures, each of which was
a mixture of the PIE culture and that of the previous holders of
its territory. The largest group of cultures north of the Roman
borders was that of the Celts, and the second largest that of the Germans
(some scholars consider the Germans to be so closely
related culturally to the Celts as to be practically a subset, at
least in archaeological terms).
Thanks to the work of Georges Dumezil, James Duran and others,
we are beginning to have a clear idea of the social, political,
magical and religious functions of the priestly "class" in IndoEuropean
Paleopaganism. I use the word "class" deliberately, for the Western
Indo-European cultures seem to have been built on the same fundamental
social pattern as that with which we are familiar in Vedic India:
clergy, warriors, and providers (farmers, craftspeople,
traders, herders, etc.). In fact, it appears that a close to exact
correspondence can be made between the religious, political and social
functions originally performed by a Latin flamen, a Celtic
draoi, or a Vedic brahman.
The Indo-European clergy basically included the entire intelligensia
of their cultures: poets, musicians, historians, astronomers,
genealogists, judges, diviners, and of course, leaders and supervisors
of religious rituals. Officially, they ranked immediately
below the local tribal chieftains or "kings" and above the
warriors. However, since the kings were quasi-religious figures,
usually inaugurated by the clergy, and often dominated by them,
it was frequently a tossup as to who was in charge in any given
tribe. The clergy were exempt from taxation and military service,
and in some cultures are said to have spent decades in specialized
training.
They seem to have been responsible for all public
religious rituals (private ones were run by the heads of each
household). Public ceremonies were most often held in fenced groves of
sacred trees. These were usually of birch, yew, and oak
(or ash where oaks were rare), depending upon the subset of
deities or ancestors being addressed, as well as the specific occasion.
Various members of the priestly caste would be responsible
for music, recitation of prayers, sacrificing of animals
(or occasionally human criminals or prisoners of war), divination
from the flames of the ritual fire or the entrails of the sacrificial victim,
and other minor ritual duties. Senior members of the
caste ("the" Druids, "the" brahmans or "the" flamens as such) would
be responsible for making sure that the rites were done exactly according
to tradition. Without such supervision, public rituals were generally
impossible; thus Caesar's comment that all public Gaulish sacrifices
required a Druid to be present. There are definite indications that
the Indo-European clergy held certain polytheological
and mystical opinions in common, although only the vaguest
outlines are known at this point. There was a belief in reincarnation
(with time spent between lives in an Other World very similar
to the Earthly one), in the sacredness of particular trees,
in the continuing relationship between
mortals, ancestors and deities, and naturally in
the standard laws of magic (see Real Magic). There was an ascetic
tradition of the sort that developed into the various types of yoga in
India, complete with the Pagan equivalent of monasteries and
convents. There was also, I believe, a European "tantric" tradition
of sex and drug magic, although it's possible that this was mostly
the native shamanic traditions being absorbed and transmuted. Only
the western Celtic clergy (the Druids) seem to have had any
sort of organized inter-tribal communications network. Most
of the rest of the IE clergy seem to have kept to their own local tribes.
Among the Germanic peoples, the priestly class had weakened by the
early centuries of the Common Era to the point where the majority of ritual
work was done by the heads of households. We don't know whether or not
any but the highest ranking clergy were full-time priests and
priestesses. At the height of the Celtic cultures,
training for the clergy was said to take twenty years of hard work, which
would not have left much time or energy for developing other careers. Among
the Scandinavians, there seem
to have been priests and priestesses (godar, gydjur) who lived in small
temples and occasionally toured the countryside with statues of their
patron/matron deities, whom they were considered to be "married" to.
In the rest of the Germanic, Slavic and Baltic cultures, however,
many of the clergy may have worked part-time, a common custom in many tribal
societies.
It's also common for such cultures to have full- or part-time
healers, who may use herbs, hypnosis, psychology, massage, magic
and other techniques. Frequently they will also have diviners and weather
predictors (or controllers). Midwives, almost always
female, are also standard and, as mentioned above,
there is usually a priestess or priest working at least
part-time. What causes confusion, especially when dealing with
extinct cultures, is that different tribes combine these offices
into different people.
At the opening of the Common Era, European Paleopaganism
consisted of three interwoven layers: firstly, the original
pre-Indo-European religions (which were of course also the results of several
millenia of religious evolution and cultural conquests); secondly,
the proto-Indo-European belief system held by the PIE speakers
before they began their migrations; and thirdly, the
full scale "high religions" of the developed Indo-European
cultures. Disentangling these various layers is going to take a very long
time, if indeed it will ever be actually possible. The successful
genocide campaigns waged against the Druids and their colleagues are complex
enough to warrant a separate discussion. Suffice it to say that by
the time of the seventh century C.E., Druidism had
been either destroyed or driven completely underground throughout
Europe. In parts of Wales and Ireland, fragments
of Druidism seem to have survived in disguise through the institutions
of the Celtic Church and of the Bards and Poets.
Some of these survivals, along with a great deal of speculation
and a few outright forgeries, combined to inspire the
("Meso- pagan") Masonic/Rosicrucian Druid fraternities of
the 1700's. These groups have perpetuated these fragments (and
speculations and forgeries) to this very day, augmenting
them with a great deal of folkloric and other research.
These would seem to most Americans to be the only sources
of information about Paleopagan Druidism. However, research done
by Russian and Eastern European folklorists, anthropologists
and musicologists among the Baltic peoples of Latvia, Lithuania
and Estonia indicates that Paleopagan traditions may have survived in small
villages, hidden in the woods and swamps, even into the
current century! Some of these villages still had people dressing up
in long white robes and going out to sacred groves
to do ceremonies, as recently as World War One!
Iron Curtain social scientists interviewed the local clergy,
recorded the ceremonies and songs, and otherwise made a thorough
study of their "quaint traditions" preparatory to turning them
all into good Marxists. Ironically enough, some
of the oldest "fossils" of preserved Indo-European traditions
(along with bits of vocabulary from Proto-German
and other early IE tongues) seem to have been kept by Finno-Ugric
peoples such as the Cheremis. Most of this research
has been published in a variety of Soviet academic books and
journals, and has never been translated into English. This
material, when combined with the Vedic and Old Irish sources, may give
us most of the missing links necessary to reconstruct Paleo-pagan European
Druidism.
The translation of this material, along with some of the writings
of Dumezil (and others) that are not yet in English,
is going to be an important part of the research work of ADF for the first
few years. And we're going to see if we can get copies of some
of the films...
But there are some definite "nonfacts" about the ancient Druids that
need to be mentioned: There are no real indications that
they used stone altars (at Stonehenge or anywhere else);
that they were better philosophers than the classical Greeks or Egyptians;
that they had anything to do with the mythical continents of Atlantis or
Mu; or that they wore gold Masonic regalia or used Rosicrucian passwords.
They were not the architects of (a) Stonehenge, (b) the
megalithic circles and lines of Northwestern Europe,
(c) the Pyramids of Egypt, (d) the Pyramids of the Americas, (e) the statues
of Easter Island, or (f) anything other than wooden barns and stone houses.
There is no proof that any of them were monotheists, or "Prechristian
Christians," that they understood or invented either Pythagorean
or Gnostic or Cabalistic
mysticism; or that they all had long white beards
and golden sickles.
Separating the sense from the nonsense, and the probabilities
from the absurdities, about the Paleopagan clergy of Europe
is going to take a great deal of work. But the results
should be worth it, since we will wind up with a much clearer
image of the real "Old Religions" than Neopagans have
ever had available before. This will have liturgical,
philosophical and political consequences, some of which we'll be
discussing in future issues of "The Druids' Progress".
The Political Implications of Reviving Druidism
(c) 1984 P. E. I. Bonewits
Reprinted from "The Druids' Progress" #1
Throughout all known human history, people who
had hidden knowledge (whether of healing, weather prediction,
mathematics, or magic) have used their exclusive possession of that
knowledge as a source of power, for purposes that were good, bad
or weird. The warrior caste has always done its level best
to take that knowledge away from the clergy and to put it to
political, economic and military use. Today, almost all the hard
and soft sciences have become tools for those who wish to control their
fellow human beings. The polluters, the exploiters, the oppressors,
the conquerors -- whether calling themselves "capitalists" or "communists"
-- they are the ones who control nearly all the technology of overt power
and a great deal of the tech for covert tyranny. One of the
very few ways we have of defending ourselves and our fellow
passengers (human and other) on this Spaceship Earth is through
the careful and judicious use of magic. National
governments and private enterprises are spending
millions of dollars (and rubles and pounds and yen) trying to develop
psychic powers into dependable tools for warfare and oppression;
while most of us who should be learning precise techniques and careful
timing, in order to use magic and the power of the Gods to defend ourselves
and our Mother Earth, have been busy being misty-eyed romantics,
not wanting to "sully our karma" by trying to do magic that might really
work (that is to say, for which we would have to take personal
responsibility). As a result, we have assisted the very forces
of oppression which we claim to oppose. We
are partly responsible for the poverty, hunger, pollution,
disease and early deaths which dominate so much of our planet.
Occultists have assisted by being unwilling to
put their talents to the test by using them for "mundane"
or "lowly-evolved" purposes. Ecologists, Celtic ationalists, and
would-be revolutionaries have assisted by being unwilling to
use nonmaterialistic technologies to cause changes in the material world
(after all, if Freud and Marx didn't mention magic as real,
it can't possibly work). The creation of Neopagan Druidism may be able
to help change those attitudes.
Despite the efforts of liberal Christian clergymen to make us
forget the physical and cultural genocide committed by organized
Christianity against the peoples of Europe, there is simply
no way to ignore the fact that monotheists in power always seek
to silence competing voices. We cannot look
to the mainstream churches for our physical and spiritual liberation,
for they are the ones who took our freedom away in the first
place. Marxist atheism is no answer either, for
it is also a product of the monotheistic tunnel-reality,
and seeks to impose its dogmas and holy scriptures just as
strenuously as ever the churches have. Those who want to live
in a world of peace, freedom and cultural pluralism, must look
beyond the currently available, "respectable" (i.e., monistic)
alternatives they have been presented with by the mass media, and consider
new alternatives.
Many people think of Neopaganism in general, or Druidism
in particular (if they think of them at all), as just being
"odd" religions, with no political implications worth
investigating. But I believe that Neopagan Druidism has
important political ideas which should be considered, especially
by those concerned with the survival and revival of the Celtic peoples.
Druidism is political because one of the primary tasks of the
clergy has always been to ride herd on the warriors. (This may be one reason
why barbarian warriors welcomed the Christian missionaries, because
they perceived (correctly) that the Christian priests
would be far more likely to play ball with them than the Druids had
been. After all, if the world is ending any day now, why
bother controlling your local warriors?) Since the primary
threat to life on this planet now comes from
out-of-control warriors, it's time we started taking that duty seriously
again. Druidism is political because only a Nature worshipping religion
can give people sufficient concern for the environment.
Monotheism is a major cause of the current state of the world's
ecology. We need a strong public religion that tells the polluters,
"No, it's not divinely sanctioned for you to
rape the Earth."
Druidism is political because the Druids have always been the
preservers of the best of their traditional cultures. The Mesopagan
Druids of Brittany and Wales, for example, are directly
responsible for assisting the revival of the Cornish language and tradition
from the very edge of extinction. The various traditional preservation
and independence movements, such as the Celtic, Flemish, Baltic
and other related movements in Europe, need religious and cultural
leadership based in their own cultures. Druidism can help create
an environment in which such leadership can develop.
Druidism is political because it offers a worldview completely different
from that of the monotheistic/monistic tyranny that now controls
our planet. One of the many things that any religion
does is to shape the ways in which people see the world
around them. We need a religion that offers people a multitude
of options, rather than traditional western either/or,
black/white, win/lose choices.
Druidism is political, at the bedrock level, because
it can teach people how to use their Gods-given psychic and other
talents to change the way things are. Make no mistake, magic works,
at least as often as poetry, music or political rallies do. Magic is a
form of power that we, the people of the Earth, have available
to use, not just for psychological "empowerment" (making
ourselves feel better) but to actually control the individuals
and institutions responsible for our planet's current mess. If we are
unwilling to use magic, then we had might as well
resign ourselves and our descendants to either a life of slavery
in a homogenized, pasteurized world, or a quick
and painful nuclear death. And what excuse will we give to the "Lords of
Karma" then? |