The Road Not Taken

From the modern definition once the entire world was pagan. Some of
the greatest world powers in history were entire countries of men
and women who honored, feared, and worshiped the ancient Gods. Today
they can scarcely respect each other.

Humans have biodegraded into weak, soft, fragile, and easily
offended creatures. And what should they do with their offenses but
to prove yet another of their faults, self-destruction.

Even the pettiest of things opens their mouths whether it affects
their lives or not. Spewing out smoke with no honor, no pride,
nothing but the sound of hallows. The division goes on when the
empty but bold form broken circles and groups based on unpondered
ideas and unmotivated intentions. The circles pile into a knot of
confusion as more and more people seek their own path into a world
where spirituality is left wanting.

The pagan world was burned to ash. As the winds of time blow the
delicate remains around we try to grasp for them and in doing so we
often crush them with the noblest touch. Our greatest intentions are
fraught with disappointment. What do we seek but to find a place for
our ancient souls in the modern world? Our nature tells us that we
need to find shelter. A safe place to have our ideas and build
families and groups to share them with. And so we make churches,
temples, alter, covens, and groups. Great and strong houses but also
empty ones. We spend so much time and energy on creating a shelter
that we have none left to seek out the very soul that will give life
to the body. Instead we scare it away with rules, moderation, and
false reconstructions based on nothing but our own imaginations.
At the moment yahoo provides 13,396 pagan related groups. Most of
them with false fronts, members list that are outdated, and some of
the largest by membership remain even though they failed and died
out long ago. Empty houses that never had the resident of pagan
soul. Pagan ideas and members yes.... but never the ancient soul.
We have to ask ourselves what it was that inspired the ancients to
create the gods and worship them. We named these primal forces, gave
them faces and bodies, assigned to them tributes and charges. We
wrote great and epic tales about their interactions with the mortal
world. Then we destroyed them by conversion. First to Christianity,
then to science, and today to stupidity. The human mind is the great
slayer of the real. And we wield it well.

We take only what peeks our interest and we convert it into what we
think to be true. Soon others jump to the same idea and take what
they want from this and that and form their own path. Soon everyone
is walking in circles because there is nothing true about themselves
or their ideas anymore. They tried to put together a soul map from
the bits and pieces of a million other soul maps. The results being
that their paths lead them to nothing and nothing. They did not
think for themselves. They submitted only to the thoughts of others.
They did not lead themselves they only followed the strongest of the
population around like lost dogs. And the can not speak for
themselves because they no longer know who they are or what they
think. Just what other might see them as by interpretation and a lot
of unfounded fear? Lost and confused they all soon run out of drive
and fall away in a simple breath of forgetting. Failed, unloved, and
hollowed from the great efforts they took to make the world
different than what it really is. They never realized that they we
acting on self-destruction until after they tapped out and gave up
on their own hearts.

Some linger around to complain. These are the ones we should watch
with some interest. One can learn a great deal from another's
failures. For humans make for excellent mirrors.

I challenge the modern interpretations of paganism and I work to do
nothing but provoke self-thought and creativity. I don't tell you
what to do. I tell you to think outside of someone Else's head.
Don't let the world think for you. Don't let someone Else's ideals
form the foundation for your life. Never follow some poor fools
rules. Chances are you will watch them fail and in their failure if
you continue to play follow the leader you to will share in their
fate.

Research and learn not to gain knowledge. If you learn what someone
else already knows and has offer to the world then you are not even
an equal to them. You're a student. Learn only to inspire your own
wisdom and bring it to the surface. Listen to the whispers you hear
in your own head and not what some cheap sod is out there screaming
as if they know all. They don't. Because you have yet to teach them
what you and you alone have come to realize.

You can read my writings and learn. Or you can read my writings and
think. My works are my own. They did not come from researching
someone Else's thoughts. They are not based on anyone Else's works.
They are mine and mine alone and not often challenged for some odd
reason. Even when I write them in such a way that would almost
demand some attention unrelated to praise.

People don't want to challenge me even when I invite them to. And
not because all I say is beyond any contesting but because they take
one look at me and know right down to the very depths of their soul
that I wont back down. I never learned the meaning of the
word "quit".

That is what having a pagan soul will teach you if you're open
enough to listen. Not rules or moderation's. No karmic laws that
came from some priest in India. Just standing.

No one on earth contests the idea of free will in all of its many
angles. We justify our laws and punishments based on the very idea
that each man and woman is responsible for their own actions. If
karma were such a powerful force then we would not need any mortal
form of punishment. We would let the universe seek its vengeance.
But we don't. And for a world so full of warriors every does tend to
call the police every time someone does them a wrong rather than
showing their great and wondrous strengths. Then we leave it to the
laws of man to get revenge. Not to karma. That is just one example
of the many hypocrites running around.

I was once called out of the perception that there is a thread of
disgust towards the pagan community in my writings. I never seem to
have anything supportive to say about modern paganism or the people
who lay claim to being pagan or even an elder. Men don't follow
titles. They follow courage and in laying a soul stead in the land
of paganism you had better have enough courage to defend it.
Otherwise this little world of ours will fail again just like it has
in the past.

I am disappointed in what I see in the pagan community. But it has
nothing to do with collective wisdom. It has to do with the fact
that very few people stand up for anything they believe in. You have
free will. You can do and be anything you want. Instead the majority
of pagans sit there begging for the scraps from someone Else's
spiritual table.

Members right here in the Den, the one place where you have
unlimited freedom, set there watching. What are you waiting for? A
notable thought? Something that might just add up to the
respectfulness of my dribble. The one and only reason I am above or
beyond anyone else is the fact that I am standing up and you are
setting down. And if you would just get enough motivation to stand
up here beside me then you would have no problem being heard or
having a lot of other people looking up to you. Not because you are
better than they are. Your not and neither am I. But because you are
standing and they are setting down. You will never see me setting
over there in the corner. For all I know someone might have peed
there when I stood up and scared the hell out of them. But you're
more than welcome to go over and try it out. I promise you won't be
setting alone.


Angel Snowden-2006