What is it with paganism?

Over at Feministe, there's a thread about "how did you get into paganism?" started by one of the guest bloggers (I've elected not to link that thread from here because I think that this post is likely to seem fairly confrontational towards paganism, and it would not be a pretty meeting!). Anyway, the basic, fundamental point of this post is really to say, "can anyone explain to me what I'm not getting here?" with regards to why people choose paganism.

For the record, I have always held a keen interest in religions and belief systems, and have read more than my fair share (as a non-pagan) of the myths and legends etc. Right now I'm working my way through Normandi Ellis' translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, "Awakening Osiris". I like to think I'm not coming from a completely ignorant position here!

Although undoubtedly people will feel that this looks like a serious piece of evangelising and trying to convince people to believe the same as me, I am honestly talking about my personal reactions and questions/problems. You are welcome to believe what you will, and I will not judge people by their choosing differently from me. This is not about you, it is about me. It is about me "not getting it", and what exactly it is that I don't get. My "not getting it" is not a criticism of you. Even though I may frame my "not getting it" in terms of criticism of your belief system, at every point I assume that my criticism is one that you can answer - it is an artefact of my "not getting it" and not an artefact of a flaw in your beliefs necessarily.

Preamble over...

I'll get to the more "rational" queries later, but at the heart of my puzzlement about people choosing paganism is just a sense that it seems so empty to me, and I know from speaking with many pagan-identified people I know (not even speaking about their religion or mine very much) that they don't find it so, but I can't quite get my head around how come. I don't know if any of my regular readers idnetify as pagan or not, but I would love it if someone could explain to me what they feel they get out of paganism, what their god(s) and goddess(es) bring to the table. Because I can't work out from what I've been told, and what I've read, about paganism, where the personal relationship with the gods and goddesses actually happens. (To be fair, there's a lot of fundie Christians who seem to miss the "personal relationship with God" bit as well). Emotionally, it just feels wrong to me that you could believe in gods and goddesses that answer your beck and call, that are limited and contained and prescribed. That are defined by the world.

This can perhaps be described in a different way as that I find paganism to look at curiously lacking in the numinous, and without any real sense of "out of reach" or "infinity". In a single word, it seems to me amazingly small, like Dinky toy gods.

That's my "gut reaction" to paganism, as it were. I know I must be missing something, because I see what the people whom I know and are pagan worshippers are like, and I am sure that they must be getting something of value from their religious beliefs, but I don't see it myself.

Now we get to the more rational or reasoned arguments. Firstly, sticking with more "strict" theology, we have the Hebrew God of Gods argument:

Few modern Christians recognise this fact, but the Old Testament books of Law (including Judges, Kings and Chronicles) acknowledge the existence of other gods besides YHWH. Indeed, one commenter on the paganism thread @ Feministe pointed this out - even the First Commandment (I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me - the NIV footnotes explain that "before" implies "as a rival to") suggests that other gods do exist. Paganism is any religion centred on other gods than YHWH (aka Abba, aka Allah).

But there is a fundamental difference, according to the monotheistic texts of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, between Y/A/A and the other gods. In the Hebrew Scriptures / Septuagint (the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that was more commonly used by Jews around the Mediterranean in the 1st Centuries CE and BCE than the original Hebrew was) it is made explicit that YHWH is the one true God above all other gods, and that all other gods bow to Him and are subject to Him - in essence, YHWH is the God whom other gods regard in the way that humans regard the gods. An example to illustrate this fundamental difference is given in 1 Kings 20:23, 28

Meanwhile the officials of the king of Aram advised him, "Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they are too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they...

The man of God came up and told the king of Israel, "This is what the LORD says: 'Because the Arameans think the LORD is a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys, I will deliver this vast army into your hands, and you will know that I am the LORD.'"

YHWH is not limited as other deities are, and the comparisons made by the Arameans are meaningless in relation to YHWH. (For the record, no, I don't believe the battle described was actually decided by God, I am using the passage to illustrate the beliefs - there are many such passages). It is stated outright in Deuteronomy 10:14, 17

To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it...

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome

What I don't get is why you would want to choose a lesser deity. Like the "it seems small" thing above, the God I believe in is a God of the entire universe and beyond, unbounded by Creation but sovereign over it. The pagan deities seem to be bounded by and a part of Creation, even when I hear them described by pagans. Maybe, again, I'm missing something here but it seems to me that it's inherently limited - in essence valuing the works of the craftsperson instead of the craftsperson hirself and hir skills.

The next stumbling block I have in "getting" paganism is one that maybe comes from my more scientific mind, and the doctrine I have that God does not ask us to accept more than we are ready to accept (which is why Genesis doesn't talk about the universe beginning 12-15 billion years ago, or try to explain quantum physics). Put simply, paganism strikes me as being obsolete. I said this comes from my scientific mind, and in science new theories supersede old theories as they better explain the observed phenomena of the physical world. New technology replaces old. Paganism feels to me like the slide rule of religions, a theological technology that maybe once was useful, but is hopelessly simplistic compared to the theology of more recent religions, or indeed, more developed religions (I'm thinking here of Hinduism in particular). And in spiritual terms, I haven't been able to figure out what paganism brings that more agnostic self-help ideologies don't offer. Once again, maybe there is something fundamental I'm missing, or maybe I just haven't read enough about pagan belief systems to get it, and maybe someone wil be able to explain to me what I'm not getting. But that's the problem I have.

My last query is one that I confess may seem a little hypocritical, in that similar charges might be laid at the feet of modern Christians: namely, that the original pagan religions of Northern Europe (the Celtic and Nordic/Germanic systems) were pretty bloodthirsty by all accounts (I'm thinking not only of the propaganda of the Romans but also the archaeological evidence that I've read about). The myth cycles that underpinned many of those religions also seem to be cast in confrontational and violent terms, or else to exist as glorified folk-history tales. (Yes, I am aware that large parts of the Hebrew Scriptures/Septuagint also have those characteristics.) As well as having read texts discussing the old religions "in situ" as it were, I've also read fiction by authors whom I respect (and who have referenced their research) such as Alan Garner (whose "Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and "Moon of Gomrath" draw on pagan archetypes and who writes in the author's notes that he deliberately did not include full texts of spells in case they were for real) and Neil Gaiman (I'm thinking in particular of "American Gods" here). Garner's representation of the old deities (or old magic) is as unruly, dangerous, uncontrolled - and violent. While Neil Gaiman's "Mr Wednesday" is deliberately cast as much more sinister than Odin (which is a consequence of the basic concept of Gaiman's "American Gods") it seems fair to say that the basis for that nature is within the original archetype. I am not claiming these novels as particularly strong sources of information about paganism, but I use them to help illustrate this one of my problems.

To recast the issue, if my earlier puzzlement was about worshipping gods and goddesses who come at the worshippers' beck and call, then this is almost the opposite - as paganism appears to me, it suggests a world of gods and goddesses that have to be kept on their leash because their nature is inimical or indifferent to humans - but they can be made to do our bidding. In another way of putting it, if my earlier point was that paganism seems to me to be like valuing the craft rather than the craftsperson, then this is like worshipping a caged animal rather than a free person. In my very first statement, about my immediate, gut, emotional reaction to paganism, I said that I couldn't work out where the personal relationship is possible with the pagan gods, and this is why I can't grasp it: how do you have a relationship with a caged or a wild animal?

Then again, some of the ways I see paganism cast these days, they seem to leave out this side of things and seem to make it all fluffy and lovely, casting paganism, magic etc in terms designed to appeal to young teen girls. On the Feministe thread I saw a number of comments saying that you don't have to believe in the gods and goddesses, just use them as inspiration (just to be clear, I think this is a different phenomenon from the teen girls thing). I don't know what to make of that. I think that magic and such are real things - or at least, potentially real - and just as dangerous as any other type of power (e.g. electricity); so playing down the seriousness of those things strikes me as dangerous in itself. Alternatively, if it isn't real then what's the point? We're back to that "Dinky toy gods" idea I mentioned earlier.

I look at the people who choose paganism, some of whom are my friends, others less so, and while some seem to be indulging in that teen-girl consumerist version of paganism most I think are getting something important to them out of their religion. There must be SOMEthing (or several somethings) that I'm ot getting about it, but so far I haven't been able to figure out what. It's pretty hard to ask face-to-face, because I don't think I can manage to cast it in terms that won't sound like "Justify your faith to me now!" Even without mentioning any of the issues I've raised here, I have that basic barrier of language; there's no doubt in my mind that a lot of this post must have the same "justify your faith to me now!" tone to it, even though I have tried to make it about me and not you - and of course, with the plethora of issues I've raised here, it must come across as very confrontational. I just hope I don't sound as strident as some of the atheists who piss me off (while at the same time knowing that that is probably a forlorn hope).

This is by way of apologising if I've pissed people off with this post; and asking pretty please will someone enlighten me as to what I haven't understood?