Mark 15:34
And at the ninth hour Jesus called out with a loud voice:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

What is it to be forsaken? That which has been left desolate or denied? That which has been opposed? The growth of Paganism has been stunted, restricted and inhibited from evolving in a natural manner because of adverse environmental factors. We as Pagans must reevaluate the meanings of our entire knowledge base. What has been our opposition? What has left us desolate? Why do we not thrive as our ancestors did? It all comes down to what has been deemed good or right or evil and immoral. But what are these things? Nature does not differentiate between immorality and morality.

Take for instance “good” and “evil”. When we separate the secular from the spiritual what are we left with? More questions? No, an impartial universe where rules are created by whoever holds the sway of the time. And then there are the gods of every generation which are as changing as time itself. Which gods you ask? Not the moral guidelines created by mankind but what we know of the entities that people serve regardless of what their names are from culture to culture. You may see these gods or powers reflected in our own world throughout civilizations that have risen and fallen for thousands of years. Thousands of years? Of all of these which is right and which is wrong? There are common denominators among these various powers. Good and evil being the least of them. Answer for yourselves what they are. They can be both terrifying and beautiful, cruel and benevolent. Who needs good and evil when you have a universe of gods locked in dichotomous harmony and opposition?

There are such oppositions in the universe as to defy description but we have deaf ears while we listen and blind eyes while we see. We learn but will never understand. Life and Death define each other – one cannot exist without the other. Nature does not compete against Nurture because it is the same thing. Fire and Water. Earth and Air. These opposites make one another valuable. Like Satanism and Christianity. Without each other they have no value. If one lacks the other they are just Shamanistic Earth based Faith’s relying on a bogey-man to create a basis of opposition. The Secular and the Spiritual, they go hand in hand but will never coexist. The Gods’ creation is bigger than most give it credit for yet still is relegated to a realm of basic human understanding involving black vs white and good vs evil.

Followers of cults and followers of religions can cause the same amount of harm as they can cause the same good. However, they can be condemned and redeemed all the same. Perception is a fickle bitch. We do no have to fall for the same old tricks. Do wolves condemn foxes for hunting? There is a natural order. If the wolf tells the fox is he is a good at heart and it is all right to eat the hen in his name then nothing has changed. The wolf and the fox both have to eat. In order to survive in the spiritual world, like the secular world, one must adapt. No one faith is very different from another. We need Pagan temples and schools so that Pagans everywhere can flourish again. There must be a balance.

When will you adapt to survive? We adapt to save the future of a species, that is in essence the core of evolution after all. Change that brings survival. Why choose a religion of self persecution? When will you choose a sacred path and not a dogmatic one? When will future generations fail to fear religion as a cause of death? When will we begin to accept all religions again? Will you always choose to be forsaken? As long as religion rules your hatred and fears we, as a species, are doomed. I am afraid for our future.

So many questions. I write in questions. I fear I will never have enough answers. We can teach our children now what it means to be more than a single religion or a faith but my greatest fear is that we as a species will fall short of this mark and breed a culture of Pagan ignorance as opposed to Pagan Education and an air of Monotheistic Theocracy as opposed to Monotheistic education. Let us learn what it means to be human before what it means to be a Christian, Muslim, Pagan, Hindi, or Jew before we learn what it is to be human or let us learn what it is to be human before what we learn what it is to be affiliated with a faith. What is there to forsake other than what we have been taught? Nature is a Bitch and Nature is a Beast. It is too easy to say one way is right while saying the other way is wrong. The universe doesn’t differentiate but human laws do. 

Versatility is the way to adaptation, which in turn is the way of survival against all odds.