Unholy pollution

Like I said, India and Japan aren’t any better than their culturally Christian counterparts art in environmental matters. Like, India worships the river Ganges but it’s also some of the most heavily polluted rivers in the world. Japan worships whales but also keep on hunting and eating them (they’re planning on resuming whaling).

There lies the folly of neopagan romanticism. In the sense that how can they abuse the very thing they revere a lot? Like that’s something some try to defend and articulate. But it seems it’s also possible that if India and Japan are any indication, pagans can be just as guilty of pollution and arguably animal abuse.

These are the things that were eventually stopped or at least often suspected in Christian places. And there may come a time when they’ll need to cut it out.

Not quite self-indulgence but

The real problem with neopaganism isn’t necessarily always a matter of self-indulgence but rather the inability to realise that it wouldn’t be any better if Europe were majority pagan (again). Look no further than India and Japan. They’re seriously sexist countries that technically worship the natural world whilst simultaneously abusing it. Ganges is polluted, Japan returns to whaling (and makes whales extinct).

Not to mention that although Hanuman’s a revered Hindu god, many Indians also consider monkeys pests. Same with dogs. In other words, Japan and India aren’t any better than their culturally Christian counterparts are. Different but still every bit as human. This includes hypocrisy and denial. That’s not to say liking nature’s bad. It’s that India and Japan aren’t any better in treating nature kindly despite their paganism

At other times, paganism feels more like misguided idealisation of things if because sometimes some of it’s just not practical in the long run.

Romantic yet bad

I still suspect that the appeal behind neo-paganism’s very much based on Romanticism. In the sense of seeking respite from industrialisation as well as Christianity which pretty much occurred fairly recently since the 19th century. Even though there’s a precedent in 18th century Enlightenment and the like. (There were some predictions of such things so.)

Though at other times, to put it fairly, it seems really naive in that it sometimes feels like a hatchet job compared to the truly pagan countries of Japan and India. Not that I condone paganism but it seems like the draw sometimes feels like a kind of unresolved malaise with Christianity at times. (Pagan India and Japan are more like Greece and Rome, albeit with warts.)

That and easily lending themselves to racists, which I think’s why paganism really isn’t always that successful. I guess anything romantic seems more appealing than what’s gritty. If India and Japan are any indication, truly pagan countries wouldn’t be any better and are just as problematic as their monotheist counterparts are.

Sometimes moreso.

Gone Devil

I sometimes think that Satan maybe similar to a cool girl in the sense of being very chill with human stupidity and vice and may serve as a muse of sorts. In the sense that you’ve got musicians and the like being inspired by him in some ways. And that he doesn’t nag whenever they screw up badly. (God would to the point of being willingly treacherous because he’s fed up with your vices at times. I know this.)

Now that’s something most don’t seem to articulate even if they know it, let alone preach it to others. If that’s the case, then it’s going to be way too damning in some regards.. TO the point where it’s like most people won’t take this seriously until you make an apt comparison that they’ll get. Albeit one that’s shockingly introspective. And one with damning implications for understanding human vice and idolatry.

In search of an alternative

I think this is something not too many people have brought up in a manner that’s understandable to others. But I think the attraction to things are misguided in the sense of perceiving them to be accessible or appealing. Anything and anybody that seems classically good (in the sense of being at the highest level of morality and ethics) seems unthinkable to others that they’d go for anything less than that.

They’d go for something that wouldn’t trigger feelings of being scolded and punished if because being under a divine being’s wrath’s pretty painful (I know this from experience). The very things they go for prompts the strongest polarising sentiments. Things like homosexuality, pagan gods and even popular pets are either abhorred or simply not too admired by the Bible prompt the strongest defensive or sentimental feelings among outsiders.

The only problem is they’re just adjusting to what they think is cool or perfect. So instead of semebody who died for everybody’s faults and did his best to help people out, they’d rather go for terrestrial lowlifes (you know like Michael Jackson) out of a feeling that they might have a chance. Even if that ends up backfiring (I know this too) though that doesn’t mean such characters are entirely bad.

For as long as you want them to improve, they can and will change. But the real issue’s a case of some misplaced need of sorts.

Not really witchy

This isn’t to say I condone paganism but that the association of paganism with witchcraft isn’t always the case in India and Japan where paganism’s still the majority/mainstream religion. (I also think they both give a better idea of what Ancient Greece and Rome were like.) It’s not that I like or advocate paganism but my own understanding through knowing Japan and India is that even pagans themselves fear witchcraft.

You could get a better understanding of how frightening Hecate was to the Romans and Greeks through Japanese folk beliefs surrounding foxes as well as Inari (a character linked to foxes). The Rig Veda also mentioned dog witches as Hecate’s linked to both dogs and witches. All you have to do’s to extrapolate from surviving pagan cults (if you will call them that).

I also feel like though paganism and witchcraft are technically unholy, paganism’s more analogous to a drunkard in the sense of having a more commonly practised and almost acceptable vice whilst witchcraft’s like smoking marijuana. Both of them are bad (at least to Christians and Muslims) though the former’s more likely to be tolerated.

Or at least that’s how I understand it.

The Rotarian Sep 1920 (Google Books)

Sentimentality:

When sentimentality replaces sentiment, nonsense is abroad. General Allenby walkt into Jerusalem when he captured it because he felt that although he was a conqueror, he could not ride where God walkt. This was a fine sentiment: the act of a Christian gentleman. Childless women gushing over lapdogs are good examples of the opposite emotion, sentimentality. There is about the same similarity between sentimentality and sentiment as there is between fried mush and tempered steel.