Pagans Are Back
by Ian R. Thorpe
2007-02-19
The Pagans Are Back And The North Is Magic. by ianrthorpe @ 2007-02-19 – 17:49:52
According to results of a survey released this week Britain is full of Wizards, Witches, Druids, Psychics, Aliens and people with supernatural powers including the ability to teleport people they don’t like to other galaxies.
This last category are very bad news for Channel 4, “Neighbours from Hell” has been a great summer schedule filler for years but will Neighbours to Betelgeuse ever catch on. I mean, the expression on some chavvy types face as he, his pit bull, quad bike and Burberry cap start to dematerialise would be priceless two, maybe three times but there isn’t much scope for plot development.
The survey was sponsored by the Sci Fi TV channel and supervised by Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe, editor of the Fortean Times website, psychic investigator, expert in “anomalous occurrences” and all round loveable eccentric (I wish there were more like him.) Its final report revealed that around 10% of Britons now believe in pagan gods, ley lines, psychic healing, precognition through the use of crystal balls, tarot cards etc., alien abduction and divining. This is more than regularly attend mainstream churches.
Region by region it turns out that Sussex is very psychic, Essex is full of witches (you can recognise them by the white stilettos) and the East Midlands is not very weird at all. Now why does that not surprise me?
Cornwall and the West Country scored very highly as one might expect but the top counties were all in the heathen north. Lancashire, North Yorkshire, Cumberland and Northumberland are populated by people who are off their heads it seems.
Which would confirm what we have always told you about the potency of our local beer. Drink the right stuff and the world fills up with engaging oddballs.
But what has paganism to offer modern city dwellers. Is it the nudity and sex as most people fondly imagine? I think not though pagans are a pretty uninhibited lot. Paganism is actually not a religion with a founding philosophy, dogma and creed. Nobody has to believe anything. It is all about living in harmony with your environment and the people with whom you share it. Though I consider myself more pagan than anything I have never, I promise you, run around the hills naked under a full mon on solstice night. Well not as part of any religious observance anyway.
The nearest I get to an act of worship is sitting in my garden on a smmer day, watching the bees, butterflies and other insects being busy around the lavenders, buddlejas, honeysuckle and other fragrant shrubs and plants. No pentacles, no chanting, nothing, just being. It is woderfully theraputic. Sometimes I think most of the world' problems exist because we are so conditioned to striving constantly we have forgotten how to be.
Read Ian's poem for Spring Equinox, From the Darkness at Authorsden. Also links to other pagan poems in his Eightfold Year series
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