TSR Pagan Society

Hey everyone! I'm just curious to know if there are any others out there with similar beliefs to myself or who would consider themselves to be part or these grouups who could share their experiences/beliefs and enlighten me on what it means to you But first I'll share with you my own pathway:

Before secondary school, I was a mild C of E Christian. I was in the church choir and sunday school. After joining secondary school and learning about Christianity in RE and about how loving the Christian God was, I decided to take it a step further and became confirmed in year 8. I have always loved people and nature and I was amazed at the things 'God' had created. I was young and naive and let's just say I didn't exactly read the small print. Anyway the school I went to was a Catholic school. You can probably see where this is going. We were all forced to do RE for GCSE and we followed a syllabus which basically was all about learning Lukes gospel word for word, then discussing the church's view on situiations in great depth. Oh and looking at crazy American evangelists. As if the syllabus wasn't enough to give me a bad impression of Christianity, after hearing what Catholics had to say about sex, abortion, homosexuality etc, I was outraged. How could the 'loving' God I had come to love through my 'faith' condemn the very people he created? (I also came out as bisexual around this point in time). I will never forget the lesson I ripped the cross and chain off my neck, stood on it and ran out for air. Which, looking back was kinda stupid because the gardens at my school were full of Mary and Jesus statues which made things worse. The God I once loved and admired, hated people like me who were OK with non-marital sex and OK with loving the same sex. I was totally lost. The next few months were the most confusing of my life so far. I rejected the God who rejected me, but I still admired the beauty of nature. It had a profound effect on me and I realised that this was where my beliefs were centred. Nature did not reject or judge, and it was beautiful and all-loving. And what's more, nature doesn't exactly care about sex before marriage or even homosexuality, because it is all natural :L So my curent beliefs centre around nature, its cycles, its balance, its purity, its power and its love

tl;dr I was Christian, went to Catholic school and it totally put me off. Now I'm Pagan

Now it's your turn x

I don't mean to question your beliefs, but you sound like you are judging the truth-value of religions on whether or not you like the teachings or not. If something sounds nicer, that has no effect on its actual veracity - just because paganism does not reject or judge has no impact on whether it's more (or less) correct than Christianity.

Apologies if you have other reasons.

How else would one judge a religion? If someone doesn't like the teachings, they're hardly going to follow them, now are they? Consequently, if a particular path puts them off it completely, why shouldn't they find solace in another, which they prefer the teachings of?

Religion is rarely about objective truth and is more about subjective truth and what feels right to the person.

Well the only method available is personal revelation - where 'truth' might be 'revealed' to a person. You say a person would hardly follow teachings they don't like, but if a person doesn't like the teachings, that is surely besides the point - if Christianity was true for example, God would hardly accept "but I didn't like the teachings" as an appropriate excuse, and nor would not liking the teachings change whether it was God or not waiting for you on the other side.

I'm not saying the choice itself was bad (why shouldn't they find solace indeed) - only that if religion is really about finding the truth, then the truth is the truth no matter whether it's beautiful or ugly, weird or wonderful.

Religion surely is (at least somewhat) about objective truth if that religion makes statements applicable outside of oneself - for example of the existence of Heaven and Hell, or statements about nature - which are claims that are either true, or they are false. Whether we like what is true says more about us than it does about reality.

I have a fair few tarot decks and a some oracle cards but I only really use one deck. When I was 15 or so I went into the pagan shop in town with the intent to buy a tarot deck. But I saw the Druid Animal Oracle cards and ended up buying them. I've tried to use tarot cards but I always get better results with my Druid Animal Oracle. (But only for me.. If I try to read for other people the readings aren't right so I only read for other people with tarot.)

My list:

Also, guys, I'm thinking of making a Ask A Pagan thread in the subforum, what do you guys think and would you be interesting in contributing if it works?

Also, guys, I'm thinking of making a Ask A Pagan thread in the subforum, what do you guys think and would you be interesting in contributing if it works?

Read the Triumph of the Moon if you are really interested. (I'm too tired to go into it tonight.)

You see, I don't understand it. I cannot comprehend why I get screamed at that I worship something that DOES NOT EXIST for me.
I don't go around screaming at Christians that they're evil and wrong and worship the being I believe is responsible for everything bad in the world*, so why the **** are they allowed to do the same thing to me when I don't even ****ing believe in it?!

*FYI, I don't believe Christians worship that, quite frankly I don't care what they worship or believe in, but as soon as they start telling me that I'm evil then I will respond because they are just insulting me and I'm ****ing tired of it.

Also, witches don't get "their" power from anything. Because witches don't actually have "power" of their own. They just know how to harness and manipulate energy that is already present. There's nothing special about witches and they don't have any special powers, it's just all techniques mainly. Which if people had any inkling what witchcraft was, instead of just screaming "EVIL DEVIL WORSHIPPER!!!!!!111!!!!", they would understand that.

I'm not trying to apply my beliefs onto Christians. I don't give a **** what they believe, and I don't try to shove things down their throats like they do until they start insulting me and then I get pissed off and I'm ****ing tired of it.

Hi!

I know your post is from months ago, but I'm really instrested in getting into Tarot. I've been looking at some of the decks you mentioned, but I was wondering how exactly you got into Tarot reading? Did you self teach it? (and if so, can I ask how?)

Sorry for all the questions, but I remembered you posting about it so I thought I might as well ask

****ing hell...

The whole scared bonfire crap at Samhain is due to Geoffrey Keating writing that it happened. BUT no medieval Irish authors write about anything pagany (as in pre-Christian) to do with Samhain. They do for Beltane though and Hutton hypotheses that Keating got confused between the two.

It was pretty much just an end of the trading season and a harvest festival and a lot of tribal assemblies happened then.
Also no sacrificing of animals, slaughtering for the winter, yes, sacrificing no.

The earliest mention of Samhain (or another other spelling) was in the 10th century when Ireland was pretty much exclusively Christian.

Basically, we have James Frazer and Geoffrey Keating to blame for the whole misconception of Samhain as some sort of pre-Christian pagan festival. It wasn't.

Beltane, on the other hand, was and a lot of what is written about Beltane is now attributed to Samhain.

That ****ing good enough for you?!

(And don't even dare to go on about my spelling/grammar.. I need a fag far too much to care about checking it. )

Whoops, sorry I've only just seen this. I'm too worked up (and tired ) atm to reply but I will, I promise! Probably on Thursday because I'm pretty busy over the next few days.



FYI for everybody else, I'm sorry about my ranting I'm just pissed off. Also not my choice to bring it into this thread but whatever, I don't have a god complex over this forum so I have no control.

Hey everyone! I'm just curious to know if there are any others out there with similar beliefs to myself or who would consider themselves to be part or these grouups who could share their experiences/beliefs and enlighten me on what it means to you But first I'll share with you my own pathway:

Before secondary school, I was a mild C of E Christian. I was in the church choir and sunday school. After joining secondary school and learning about Christianity in RE and about how loving the Christian God was, I decided to take it a step further and became confirmed in year 8. I have always loved people and nature and I was amazed at the things 'God' had created. I was young and naive and let's just say I didn't exactly read the small print. Anyway the school I went to was a Catholic school. You can probably see where this is going. We were all forced to do RE for GCSE and we followed a syllabus which basically was all about learning Lukes gospel word for word, then discussing the church's view on situiations in great depth. Oh and looking at crazy American evangelists. As if the syllabus wasn't enough to give me a bad impression of Christianity, after hearing what Catholics had to say about sex, abortion, homosexuality etc, I was outraged. How could the 'loving' God I had come to love through my 'faith' condemn the very people he created? (I also came out as bisexual around this point in time). I will never forget the lesson I ripped the cross and chain off my neck, stood on it and ran out for air. Which, looking back was kinda stupid because the gardens at my school were full of Mary and Jesus statues which made things worse. The God I once loved and admired, hated people like me who were OK with non-marital sex and OK with loving the same sex. I was totally lost. The next few months were the most confusing of my life so far. I rejected the God who rejected me, but I still admired the beauty of nature. It had a profound effect on me and I realised that this was where my beliefs were centred. Nature did not reject or judge, and it was beautiful and all-loving. And what's more, nature doesn't exactly care about sex before marriage or even homosexuality, because it is all natural :L So my curent beliefs centre around nature, its cycles, its balance, its purity, its power and its love

tl;dr I was Christian, went to Catholic school and it totally put me off. Now I'm Pagan

Now it's your turn x

I'm not being rude, I'm pissed off because I'm fed up with this whole thing. And let's not even get started on the Glee thread and your behaviour in there which was despicable.
EDIT: But whatever, the Glee thread has nothing to do with this discussion so I have no idea why you're trying to bring in something off topic when you're so up on keeping things on topic...


The point about the OP's description of Samhain was completely relevant to that thread because he was talking about Samhain being a pre-Christian festival all to do with the Druids, which isn't true.
And again with the whole Satan thing, although there I got annoyed, because Samhain (in the historical context) doesn't have anything to do with paganism..

Just realised after flicking through my copy, it wasn't Triumph of the Moon that he mainly wrote about this, it was Stations of the Sun. Although Triumph is a damn good read because it dispells all the crap that surrounds neo-pagan (mainly Wicca,) Pretty much just explains that Wicca is a brand new religion from the 1950s that had tedious links at best to pre-Christain Britain and that a hell of a lot of what you read in Wicca 101 books (and Silver Ravenwolf is the worst for it ) is a load of tosh. m

I brought it up because it was relevant to my point. As for my behaviour being despicable... Wow, harsh. I mean, I don't think I threatened to kill any babies or eat humans or anything. I'm such a bad pagan... (That's a joke by the way.)

I quoted you in here because I didn't want our conversation about Christian beliefs about pagans to derail the thread and I used it as an opportunity to find out more about the book. Admittedly, I appear to have misunderstood your issue with the Christian beliefs bit, but there we go. I shall check out Stations of the Sun once I have some free time. Your point on Samhain was on topic and fine, never said I had an issue with it.

However, I would question the idea that Samhain has absolutely nothing to do with old paganism. Again, I'd need to check my sources, but isn't it the time when spirits rose up, etc? That's hardly a Christian belief and could be a holdover from paganism. Just an idle curiosity, as I haven't researched it in such a long time.