Defining Nature Spirituality

(July 6, 2022)  The first phase of the Enlightenment challenged human created religious laws and institutions hiding behind a claimed divine sanction. The next phase would challenge was the divine right of kings to rule. The idea of liberty never emerged in nations having a non-Pagan cultures.

The Dawn of Freedom began in Britain in 1688  because that was the year of the "Glorious Revolution" in which constitutional limits were placed on monarchical power and religious toleration was made state policy and entered English culture such that it was never revoked. This phase had its roots in the philosophy of government from the classical era. This is why all the original government buildings in the United States look classical. An overview of this phase of the Enlightenment published in 1966 said the following:

"To call the Enlightenment Pagan is to conjure up the most delightfully irresponsible sexual license: a lazy sun-drenched summer afternoon, fauns and nymphs cavorting to sensual music and lascivious paintings, preferably by Boucher. There is some reality to this fantasy: the philosophes argued for a positive appreciation of sensuality and despised asceticism.... In speaking of the Enlightenment as pagan therefore, I am referring not to sensuality but to the affinity of the enlightenment to classical thought. Words other than pagan - Augustan, Classical, Humanist - have all served as epithets to capture this affinity ...." (Gay 1966)

In this phase, the Enlightenment thinkers tried to separate the role of the state from the role of religion. Europe had seen too many religious wars and wars against heretics in its history. They concluded that the state would be responsible for material things while religion would be responsible for emotional/spiritual things. This first stated by John Locke  (1632-1704) who was also important in closing out the previous phase of Enlightenment. He wrote the following between 1689 and 1693:

Thomas Jefferson in the U.S Declaration of Independence shortened and generalized Locke's phase to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

The concept of happiness as used by Jefferson thus includes the right to health and the right to acquire and hold possessions. During the civil war Abraham Lincoln and the nation elevated in blood the Declaration of Independence above that of the constitution to justify the elimination of the property right of slavery. The Declaration as a statement of purpose trumped any legal document meant to implement that purpose. Freedom is Pagan.

References

Gay, Peter (1966)  The Enlightenment - The Rise of Modern Paganism 

Kramic, Isaac [editor] (1995)  The Portable Enlightenment Reader.  Penguin books 

(Jan. 3, 2023) Nature spirituality is mainstream Paganism such that the all-encompassing word "Pagan" usually means "nature spirituality" even though its dictionary definition is: "a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions."

The core of any spiritual practice are feelings. These feelings are non-material conscious experiences having various levels of emotional energy. Consciousness experiences represent the non-material spiritual realm which is separate from the physical realm. No theory of physics explains consciousness.

(June 9, 2023) The emotional resonances generated by land and climate are the main component of culture. This defines the main denominations found in today's Nature Paganism. These main denominations are: 

1. African
2. Celtic (Druid) - British Isles, France
3. Egyptian
4. Classical (Greek-Roman),
5. Central American (Mayan, Inca, Aztec) 
6. Nordic-Germanic (Viking)
7. Eclectic - present land spirituality (nature witchcrafts, wicca) but no connection with past traditions

The main subject of this website is the the Neolithic Farmer Ancient Druid civilization. This ancient culture along with the invading Indo-European culture is the ancestor to the Celtic, Nordic-Germanic, and Classical Pagan denominations.

(June 9, 2023) How does prayer or any communication with the spiritual realm really work? Are you on the phone or radio with some deity? Of course not! Energy is a physical phenomena and does not cross over into the non-material realm of consciousness. Only feelings have that possibility. Using feelings for that purpose is emotion magic, in other words, witchcraft. 

 The main themes of this video are:

• Magic crafting is a life-long path of growing awareness and self-improvement. 
• Everyone must find their own emotional resonances and correspondences. For example, what you read about what a crystal does may not work for you, that is only an observation of average effects. (standard training is to take a crystal and carry it with you so it is constantly in your mind. Observe what happens to you during that week.)
• You don't need a lot of tools and things to start. While those aid in directing and enhancing certain feelings and emotional channels most things around you generate some sort of feeling within you. Start with natural things you find and personal memory items. Also practice various kinds of meditation and yoga to see what works.
• Don't be afraid to mess up. Everyone is already messing up and doing uncontrolled witchcraft because everyone has feelings which are being projected out to others. These feelings then come back at oneself because we live in a social and spiritual network. So don't be afraid to start magic work which starts to bring emotions into awareness and under some sort of control. (That we exist within a social network has been scientifically proven. That we also exist within a spiritual network is inferred based upon anecdotal evidence and consideration of the evolutionary purpose of conscious experiences.)
• Keeping desired subconscious emotional channels open (emotional conditioning) requires constant but moderate practice just like athletic conditioning. If your life is a mess you have the wrong emotional/spiritual channels open so don't keep using those.
• You don't need to be a Wiccan to be a witch. While this was the first organized witchcraft tradition/religion, it is just one tradition out of many. Find a supportive tradition and make it your own but be aware that not all traditions are supportive. Traditions that are dualist (reality divided into good versus evil), dogmatic, or have lordified, human only, deities will severely limit your witchcraft by blocking many emotional channels. As Jesus himself said "you cannot serve two masters," meaning a person cannot follow both a feeling based spiritual path and a dogmatic path.

(July 3, 2022) This well done video uses the word "Pagan" as meaning "nature spirituality."  Any spirituality involves feelings of connection with the believed sources of existence. Nature spirituality assumes the sources of existence are the various powers of nature found in both its physical and spiritual (conscious) realms and not some human-like god living apart from nature on a higher plane. Also notice that Paganism (Druidry) in both its spiritual and religious forms is an ever growing personal path and not a static dogmatic faith.

(July 3, 2022) Spirituality without grounding is just another feel good drug in a society full of such drugs. Spiritual practices need to be grounded in order for them to make a difference in people's lives. This grounding turns spirituality into a religion. 

Early Christianity faced this same issue due to its initial emphasis on gifts of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul issued this warning to those new Christians who only wanted to feel good and powerful. 

 The three components of spiritual grounding are:

1. Defining a community knowledge source

2. Defining a paradigm of the Divine

3. Defining the goals (purpose) of the community

(Jan. 3, 2023) Having all the facts in the world is useless unless the relevant facts can be found when needed. This requires a mental framework or model (paradigm) for working with acquired facts. If new facts cannot be fitted into a person's existing paradigm they will tend to ignore those facts. Thus holding onto a simple paradigm makes that person seem stupid to others. Consequently, each person needs to develop as general a paradigm as possible by having broad experiences and getting a broad education.

Paradigms are difficult to change. In science paradigm changes are what make scientific revolutions different from normal science. Paradigms are heavily influenced by the culture one is born into and ones own emotional needs, especially the need to  belong to a powerful group. These deep emotional needs can make paradigms very sticky and resistant to change. 

The four main classes of spiritual/religious paradigms are:

Atheistic, Pantheistic - Material realm is superior or is the only realm which exists.

The spiritual realm does not really exist or has no power. Our material world of energy and mass is the only reality. Anything spiritual like the existence of conscious experiences is considered an illusion or as something which mysteriously emerges from material activity.

Transcendentalist - The divine/spiritual realm is superior. The material world is an illusion. 

The material realm has no existence apart from the divine realm and is just a manifestation of the divine. Our minds create define our reality as constrained by our own cultural conditioning.

Perceptheistic - the divine/spiritual realm co-exists equally with the material realm but only the material realm can be known in common by a  community (Druidry)

We can know the physical realm objectively as a community but we can only know the spiritual realm at a personal level. No one else directly shares  our consciousness. Because of this, deities of the spiritual realm can be perceived in a way best suited for each person either as people or as clusters of powers. This was the paradigm of the ancient pre-classical era culture as revealed by its newly translated texts.

Theistic (Monotheistic or Polytheistic) -  Theistic (Monotheistic or Polytheistic) -  Divine/spiritual realm co-exists equally with material realm.. Both realms can be known in common by a community. The spiritual realm is known dogmatically via a religion's sacred text. Deities may be lordified, that is, perceived only as people. (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or be perceptheistic (Buddhism, reconstructed Pagan religions)

This paradigm replaced ancient perceptheism with the rise of large nation states. Their distant male kings came to be seen powers just a powerful and capricious as nature powers. Because these kings were mostly male the divine feminine was downgraded. Because kings had royal courts the divine realm came to be perceived as personified lord gods living on a higher plane in their own royal courts. Because these gods have a full range of human emotions humans need to fear them and appease them with gifts and praise.

(July 3, 2022) Druidry has two valid sources of knowledge with differing purposes because we as humans exist in two different realms, the physical realm and the spiritual realm (our conscious feelings). Community knowledge deals with group survival and prosperity so everyone is expected to have the same truths. In contrast spiritual knowledge is for personal fulfillment, that is, for finding out who we really are. This is reflected in the ancient saying at the entrance to Greek sanctuary at Delphi of "Know Thyself."

In the ancient past before the rise of books and institutional authorities, nature was the only source of community knowledge. If to many cultural traditions developed contrary to nature that culture soon went extinct by being outperformed by others.

Nature is the only guaranteed consistent source of knowledge even if we humans may not understand all of it. If nature was not consistent we would not be here because the universe would have crashed like a computer.

Other knowledge sources are charismatic gurus and sacred texts which are human created sources although unsupported dogmatic claims are made that they are divinely inspired. If they are truly divinely inspired they would all be consistent internally and consistent with each other but they are not.  The result is inherent conflict because in the end truth cannot be agreed upon. The only inherently peaceful religions are nature based religions.

(July 3, 2022) Existing religious communities have three possible requirements for their members:

1. Druid (Nature-Based) Communities- Conscious beings are the endpoint of creation and so play an amplified role in its eternal cycle. Therefore humans must seek to support that eternal cycle by aligning with the divine powers (which if personified is the same as saying do the will of God). Whatever a person's personal goals may be they will be easier to achieve by working with the divine powers instead of against them. Conscious beings are eventually reincarnated in this world or other worlds at a level appropriate for their level of consciousness. This life is an opportunity for improving one's eternal soul.

2. Eastern Dualist Communities- Creation separated humans from the perfect eternal and changeless divine. Therefore humans  must seek to rejoin the Divine by becoming still and passionless like the Divine (oneness). 

3. Western Dualist Communities- Creation separated humans from the good divine so that humans are born part of an evil and corrupt world. Therefore, humans must be saved from it by either doing good works, by following laws, or by having proper beliefs. Only in this way can souls rejoin the Divine and gain an eternal blissful life.

The ancients always sought to work with the divine/natural powers to achieve societal and personal goals because they viewed them as laws of nature. If the "divine powers" are personified like they are in the Bible then this statement is the same as saying "doing the will of God." (in the Hebrew scriptures the word translated as god is 'elohim  where /m/ is a plural ending.)

What challenged the original Nature based life purpose was the invention of dualism in the Zoroastrian religion (see picture).