I was over at Starweaver's Corner this morning reading his article "When one God just isn't Enough" and I began wondering, what do I call on gods for? What do they do for me? and more importantly, what do they do for any of us?

I guess this is on my mind right now because I was reading some Christian sites this week and it seems that all over the internet is plastered, "What Christ can do for you!" I imagine this is because they're pretty evangelical and they want people to come to Church, but to do that you have to answer the eternal question most people have, "What's in it for me?" If you're going to attempt to convert someone, you have to give them reason to change, some positive benefit they'll see in their life to justify the effort. Advertisers have known this forever, as well. Geico will save you money! Well, you get the idea.

Paganism is not evangelical. We do not convert or preach. But we do often have to justify ourselves to our Christian friends and families. "Why did you leave the Church??? Don't you know you're going to Hell??!" I never had a reaction quite that extreme from most of my family but many of us do. Instead I heard, "Have you lost your mind? You worship trees?!?" It was the height of insanity, rather than evil.

When faced with these attitudes, many pagans fall into the trap of comparing Christianity and Paganism like a bad Taco Bell commercial. Taco Bell often touts itself as the better alternative to the evil, or worse boring, burger. They put down their competition to show you why you should change your habits. Pagans often talk about all the things they see wrong in Christianity when justifying their beliefs to relatives who ask why, "Well, did you know your Bible was deliberately mistranslated when King James didn't like what scholars came up with?" That sort of thing. Instead of talking about our positive benefits, we're just illustrate the saying, "The worst kind of fundamentalist is a new convert."

To be fair, this is a phase similar to adolescence that many new converts really need to work through, the pushing away of the old authority in the new effort to develop a new, autonomous identity and most come out the other side realizing that they don't need to put down the mainstream regime to feel good about their new path... eventually. It took me personally almost three years to work through all of this myself and I'm sure it was very hard on my still Christian friends to have to listen to my diatribes every time the subject of religion came up.

So what do the Gods do for me anyhow? What positive benefits do I gain from not being a member of the mainstream religion in any of its forms? Let's take a look.

1) The Gods love me - unconditionally and forever - no matter what I do. This is especially important to me as I do not have that from the usual source, my parents. I no longer speak to my parents for reasons I'm not going to detail here. To have access to something that loves me, really loves me, and will keep on loving me and accepting me for who I am, no matter how badly I screw it up, is very important.

2) The Gods guide me, in so many myriad different ways. Prayer isn't working for me today? Let's take a look at the cards. Or runes. Or crystals. Paganism has no written text so we very much need ways of receiving guidance - not so much about what is right or wrong - but to help us through those tough times where we're not certain about where life is going or worse, how we're going to get there.

3) The Gods do not treat me like a child. I think this is the thing that attracts most pagans. If we screw up, we're going to fall on our faces but the Gods also don't tell us we have to be in bed by nine or that we have to wear a white shirt to a meeting or that we can't watch that cool new movie. We're expected to be adults, making adult choices, and then taking the consequences like adults when we make the wrong ones.

4) The Gods have seen to it I do not have to fear Death. This is most important if you're critically ill or have lost a loved one. Not only is Aunt Jane still out there somewhere, but you know she's not suffering and is happy and one day will be back on the Earth, trying again. The Summerlands (or whatever you want to name the realm after this life) is waiting for all of us and is not someplace we need to fear, for ourselves or someone we care about. What's better is that it doesn't matter how guilty we feel about what we've done in life, we all get this rest from the efforts of living no matter how badly we did at it.

5) They give me the tools I need to be able to deal with the challenges of life. We as pagans are almost unique in this that we get to take a pro-active role in solving our problems through ritual. Ours is not a passive faith, and while things like meditation and listening for the "voice of God" is important to it, we have so much more we can do as well.

6) The Gods want me to be happy. This is very likely the second most important principle to pagans. The gods want us to celebrate our lives and laugh and dance and sing and enjoy being who we are right now. We have eight Sabbats where the whole point is to celebrate the cycles of life itself. Eight times a year we're encouraged to take the time to look at how life moves and enjoy it.

So the next time you feel a need to justify your faith, or even just explain it to those who care about you but fear for you, take a look at these reasons to be Pagan and instead of putting down their faith, celebrate your own and show them how much you get out of it.

Musings of a Housewife saw it's 100th unique visit yesterday! For a new blog that's only about a month old, this is excellent and thank you to everyone who's visited! Now you'all just need to leave more comments *hides*

Image via WikipediaIf you read any beginner's book on Tarot cards, you'll quickly run into three concepts. One, that cards can foretell the future. Two, that the future they foretell is only the most likely one at the time, can be influenced by the people involved, and is not written in stone. Three, that cards are good decision making tools much like thought-ballooning, brainstorming, and similar concepts.

I have to admit, right out, I don't think there is any reliable way of foretelling the future. Period. At best, I believe that our subconscious mind can extrapolate data better than we think it can and projects that onto whatever fortune-telling method we've chosen for ourselves which makes any method of divination just a quirkier way of getting in touch with that part of us that observes and sees more than our conscious everyday minds.

That said, I think Tarot is a great decision making tool. There's alot of Jungian symboloism involved in them, things that speak to our subconscious in language it can understand and interpret. What's even more important about them, and other methods, is that it opens a relatively painless way for our subconscious to speak back. There are alot of ways one can open the door to the subconscious mind, whole books have been written on the subject, but I find Tarot readings by far the fastest, easiest, most reliable method.

So no, when my local pastor or Elder says they're occult and evil, I'm not giving them up. Instead I tend to look at them like they've suddenly grown two heads and ask, "Where do you get this stuff??" Reacting to that point of view as if it were fringe science is unfair to them (I know very well where this attitude comes from after all, and it's really a method of lying) but it makes them pause and think. And, sadly, they wouldn't if I just reasonably explained my own point of view. It would go in one ear and out the other with no impact made and no brick laid in my bridge of thought between different religions.

All of that said, I have two decks. One is laughably enough one of the most occult of the decks available, the Crowley Thoth deck. This deck can be outright scary and intimidating to a beginner and it's certainly confusing even to me, who's used it for eight years now. My second deck is more humorous and a gift from a friend, the Silicon Valley Tarot from Steve Jackson Games. I love this Tarot deck, it's hilarious and fun and a great stress reliever. I use it when I need reminding on a gut level that life is just not that serious and I should relax and have a little fun.

Hmmmmm.... guess I need to break it out pretty soon... :P

Yvonne left me a comment and an invitation to the Christian-Pagan Dialogue Group on Facebook. I'm not a huge Facebook user but it's an open group which anyone can join and at first glance, looks interesting. I look forward to investigating it further and thanks for the invitation, Yvonne!

Image via WikipediaA friend of mine from Pagan Forum has a website called Splendid Fish Studios featuring some really neat handicrafts and is in fact the person from whom I'll be buying my copper athame when I have the money and get that far on my list (see Things to Buy on the right). He's a pretty good artist and a person who thinks! And no, he didn't pay me to say that :P Go check it out!

By the way, Corbin, since I know you'll read this at some point, did you know I went fishing in Fletcher's Pond as a kid? One of my favorite memories!

So, I've decided what kind of wand I want. I'm going to find a piece of wood as long as my arm from elbow to longest fingertip, remove the bark and sand it down smooth. Next, I will carve a bit of a hollow into one end for the crystal. Then I'm going to take a piece of blue silk as long as the wand and 6 inches wide and wrap it around the wood, tucking the ends in on each end of the wand and taking it down somehow into the ends.

I will next take a crystal I already own and glue it into the hollow over the silk. Hrm, perhaps I should glue it in first and tuck the silk in around it... I'll have to wait until I have the wood and the silk and see how it works before fastening anything down. Lastly, I will take two lengths of copper wire (dimensions unknown) and twine them around the wand from end to end like a double helix, ending in woven circles at each end of the wand. So, I need to buy blue silk and copper wire. I have everything else and the wood will be free, when found.

In the meantime, a chuckle. Zemanta, a service I use to enhance content in these posts, recommends this link for more information related to my content. The internet is a great thing but sometimes it baffles me!

Metapagan posted some pretty stupendous sights recently and you should go take a look! While you're at it, there's also this article about Costa Rica being Heaven on Earth. I don't travel much but if I did, I know I'd be looking at some of these places first.

In the Beginning was the Void and in the void was Deity, unnamed and unknowable, alone in endless darkness. After millenia in the Void, Deity(1) chose to experience more than the trackless Void and created the Multiverse(2). Stars wheeled within galactic clusters, accompanied by nebulae, lit by quasars. Deity split into myriad spiritual consciousnesses and inhabited all these forms as they danced, lived and ultimately died.

When Deity had learned all it could from these forms, it kindled biological life(3). Bacteria, amoeba, virii all found niches on planets and spiritual habitation by Deity as it continued on its journey to learn all it could. Sooner than before, Deity exhausted the possibilities of these forms, too, and introduced a new idea into the multiverse: Gender. With this, Deity itself split into two(4) to better maintain the balance, male and female - God and Goddess. And still Deity inhabits everything.

The stars continue on their journey through the Void, amoeba divide and live everywhere, male and female we live and learn and die and are born, pieces of the God and Goddess, until there is no more for us to know.

1. I believe that Deity wished to learn more than it had before but why it might want to do so escapes me.
2. I use the word Multiverse because who knows what else is out there?
3. I have no idea how often or where life might have begun. It's immaterial to the myth and of no practical use in my life. Aliens would be too cool, though.
4. If there are aliens, who knows how many genders might have been created. Always keep an open mind.

Stan asked why I thought sorrow and pain might exist, what purpose would they serve if not to facilitate free choice. This is my answer. they exist for the same reason the color black does and for the reason that I exist, and for the reasons trees exist - because that's part and parcel of the reality we experience. Deity didn't make these things except in the same general way Deity made the universe and everything in it. No God is going to purposefully inflict suffering on it's followers although a Universe with a vacuum is going to have consequences as will gravity and heat and anything else that causes us pain and suffering as well as joy and delight.

These things were not created for any purpose but rather are the natural extension of the laws of reality and existence. Fall down the stairs, you'll break a leg and maybe your neck. Enter the lottery, and you have a chance to win. Much pain and suffering are the results of our actions as a race and something we inflict on each other, something we are responsible for - not something we can just wave a wand and say "Oh, it's all Satan's fault or it's all God's plan. We don't have to feel responsible."

We are responsible and I think until we learn as a whole species how to stop doing this to ourselves and each other, we're going to keep living and dying and being born. Yes, that puts "Judgement Day" (or whatever you want to call the beginning of the next phase of existence) very far in the future but if you study history there is hope. We call ourselves enlightened compared to people who lived in medieval times for a reason. We have learned from our mistakes, sometimes not well and sometimes we backslide but overall we keep going forward.

A good example of this is racism. It was not long ago that people thought it fact that those of color were genetically inferior to Caucasians. They very sincerely believe there was some scientific explanation for their superiority. We've learned better and while there are still those who don't yet believe, they are getting to be far fewer and in between than even 100 years ago. We are learning and each of us can individually hasten that day forward by continuing to learn and grow and inflict just a little less pain on our fellow human beings.

Image from WikipediaWhile Full Moon Esbats are fairly common, I don't see much talk about New Moon celebrations. It's a time of newness, the pause before the growth spurt, the death of the old moon, so many things. I used it this month to look at myself and make sort of a mini-resolution, something small but self-improving to work on for the next two weeks while the moon and magick both grow in power and strength.

I lit two candles, white for the goddess and red for the god. I'd have preferred black for the god but it wasn't available and red is a nice god-color. I didn't call any gods by name, just sat and thought about what I wanted to work on while the candles burned a bit and the incense filled the room. I did chat with Phil for a bit about the day, what I was doing, what it all meant to me and afterwards made some pine sawdust for an incense base while I listened to Clannad.

It was a good night, peaceful, relaxing. The last week has been pretty emotionally hectic and this was a good time to pause, let the sadness go for a bit and this morning I feel far more stable than I have this last seven days even though I know the worst is yet to come as I suffer from something similar to seasonal depression and that has a week or two left to cycle through my life. And yet, I feel like I want to accomplish something again, even though my energy reserves are low and I'm still not sleeping more than four to five hours at time.

I think the experience would have been even nicer if I owned a piece of furniture with a moonscape painted on it with glow-in-the-dark paint. Thinking about it, though, I don't think I'd actually want the furniture piece but rather a moon painted on my wall or ceiling or part of it on both. The room would've glowed beautifully with that and the candlelight.

My horoscope says to trust my intuition this week but I have to admit, depression is good at shaking a person's self-confidence and while I usually do trust my judgment, I know I've already made several pretty bad calls in recent days. (I'm not a big believer in horoscopes anyhow but sometimes they help remind me of things I've forgotten to pay attention to.) On the other hand, something told me that I needed to do this ritual last night, even though I was tired, groggy, feeling out-of-sorts so perhaps it's not so bad after all.

Image by Jill - Glossy Veneer via FlickrI'm not a big one for playing practical jokes but I did find some things that made me laugh this week. Here are some excerpts with links back to entire post. Happy April Fool's Day!