Pagan Culture

Many today still call the celebration of the Winter Solstice a pagan ritual full of sex, and while a bit of that is true, they don’t realize that the ritual that is Christmas is in itself drawn largely from the ancient ritual that celebrated the earth’s tilting on its axis, where the daytime hours are weaned to a minimum and the night is longer in the northern hemisphere {in the southern hemisphere it’s the opposite}. In 2007, the Winter Solstice takes place on December 22 at 6:09.Also called Saturnalia, Yule, the Long Night, and by most, Christmas, the Winter Solstice has a long and varied history. In prehistoric times, winter was seen as avery difficult time.

Tribes had to live off whatever they could store and the animals they could catch. The months were long and very cold and the Aboriginal peoples had the belief that as the sun sank lower at noon, they would be left in total darkness.But spring and warmer weather would always return, thus the idea of birth, death, and re-birth was born. The Aboriginal people were able to notice the slight elevation in the sun’s path within days after the solstice, perhaps before December 25th, even without the advanced instruments and equipment used today, hence celebrations were timed about the 25th. History of the Winter Solstice has been found as far back as the ancient Egyptians, who believed in a god-man and later, a savior. Osiris died and was entombed on December 21st; the passage reading, “At midnight , the priests emerged from an innershrine crying, ‘the virgin has brought fourth! The light is waxing and showing and image of a baby to the worshippers’”. In Ancient Greece, winter solstice became known as the ritual Lenaea, “The Festival of Wild Women”. In the ancient times a man would represent the harvest god Dionysus, who was torn to pieces and eaten by a gang of women only on this day. Later in the same ritual, Dionysus was reborn as a baby. By classical Greece the human sacrifice had been replaced by a goat and the women where funeral mourners and observers of the birth. Ancient Rome also had their version of the winter solstice, called Saturnalia; this is the festival where many today still believe, because of the rather smudged history of the Winter Solstice, that the entire celebration is about sex. At about 50 BCE in Rome, Saturnalia began as a feast......

When you go by the name Gypsy SilentRain in a town like Bentonville, you're going to turn some heads. Couple that with a sign in front of her home business that reads "Gypsy's Tavern "and you're going to get all kinds of reactions - not always favorable."We've had a brick thrown through our front window," said Gypsy SilentRain, who opened what she describes as a metaphysical shop at 1602 S. E. J St. in 2006. "We've been discriminated against, vandalized and threatened with bodily harm more times than you could imagine. We're close to Bentonville High School, and J Street is well traveled, so we've had a lot of parents concerned, thinking we doanimal sacrifices or something like that.

It's just not like that."In a lot of ways, Gypsy SilentRain, 26, is like many other residents in northwest Arkansas. She's married and has eight children who attend local schools. But she's pagan. And while she's friends with doctors, lawyers, nurses, mail carriers, firefighters and others in northwest Arkansas who are pagans, the term is normally enough - even if just for a brief moment - to send shivers down many people's spines. Having grown up with a pagan grandmother, delving into the metaphysical is nothing new for Gypsy SilentRain. But she says the number of misconceptions about gypsies, witches and any other term associated with paganism are so great that they're often difficult to overcome. That, however, is why she started Gypsy's Tavern. "So many people todayjust have no tolerance," said Gypsy SilentRain, who graduated from BHS in 1997. "People don't blink an eye if you talk about Catholics, Baptists or a lot of other religions. But there's a fear of the unknown. People just won't spend enough time with anything they're unfamiliar with to even know what it is they hate. "I'm a big advocate for freedom of religion. My grandmother was pagan, but my mother is a Christian, and my grandfather is a preacher. You're not going to find me putting down anyone else's beliefs. (Paganism ) is very nature-based. We believe in the properties of the Earth. Yet, when people drive by and see my sign, many of them get scared and think there's something satanic going on. Paganism has nothing to do with Satanism." Paganism comes from the Latin term "paganus, " meaning country dweller,accord......

Tamara Cheshire believes there is a great misunderstanding about what it means to be a pagan, which can lead to disapproval among ill-informed people. “I think there’s a stigma associated with the term pagan,” says Cheshire, adjunct professor of anthropology and ethnic studies and faculty adviser to the City College Pagan Club.Cheshire says this stigma can make finding an exact definition of paganism nearly impossible and that many non-pagans are quick to offer their own definition while having anobvious lack of knowledge about the belief system.“The most basic definition of a pagan would be someone who believes in more than one god or a pantheon of gods or goddesses,” says Evelyn Wachs, City College student, president and founder of the Pagan Club.

“It’s not one religion. You have Wicca, Druidism, Voodoo, as well as Celtic Reconstructionists. There are also people who simply refer to themselves as pagan or neo-pagan.” Paganism originated in a time when people lived in accordance with, and at the mercy of, the laws of nature, according to Kardia Zoe, Web master of kardia2000.com and an ordained minister of the Essene faith. Much of the beliefs of pagans are rooted in the observance of the changing of the seasons and other major occurrences in nature. Many modern-day celebrations were originallypagan. Holidays and traditions such as Halloween and Christmas trees can be traced back to ancient pagan practices. “When you get down to the core, the religions of the world are almost identical, but expressed in different languages,” points out Steven McIntosh, founding member, vice president and treasurer of the club. Pagans celebrate eight major holidays, according to Wachs. The winter solstice, summer solstice, spring equinox and autumn equinox make up four of them. Other pagan holidays are Samhain, pronounced sow-en, which we know as Halloween today; Imbolc, the first full moon in Aquarius on Feb. 1; Beltaine, the first full moon in Taurus on May 1; and Lughnasadh, which falls on Aug. 1 and is the first full moon in Leo. The diversity of beliefs within paganism presents a challenge for Wachs,wh......

In this world, where there are a confusingly large number of different religions and sects, with newer ones popping up every day, the word “WICCA” elicits either blank stares or vague talks of ‘evil’. While the former reaction is probably due to the lack of awareness, the latter is the sad legacy of years (perhaps centuries) of misconceptions and mistrust.To clear the doubts, here are the historical facts. Wicca is a peaceful earth-centred religion, which draws heavily from pre- Christian culture of Europe, particularly that of the Celtic people. Although formally founded in 1956 by a British Civil Servant ‘Gerald Gardner’, the origin of itsbasic beliefs and philosophies can be traced as far back as the Palaeolithic Era: reverence for nature is the most fundamental Wiccan tenet.Interestingly, while Gardner claims that Wicca, with all its definite and highly specific rituals existed before the advent of Christianity, several marked differences do exist between traditional paganism and Wicca, although most of them are ritualistic in nature.

Therefore, Wicca is normally designated as a ‘Neo Pagan Culture’. The word ‘Wicca’ has probably been derived from the Latin root, ‘wik’ (to bend or to change). Significantly, mysticism and magic form an integral part of Wicca, which defines magic as, “the art of causing change in conformity to one’s will.” Broadly speaking, Wiccans generally demarcate magic into categories of ‘High’ and‘Low’ magic. In a nutshell, low magic deals with everyday rituals intended to yield tangible results. For example, a ritual designed to heal a sick family member would qualify as Low magic, as it works on the Physical plane only. On the other hand, rites of a more arcane nature such as divination and deity invocation are works of High magic as they operate on the Astral (invisible) plane and have no discernible physical result. Of course, as individuality is one of the most predominant characteristics of this religion, such a classification may vary largely from person to person. Indeed, it is said that if one asks to Wiccans the definition of magic, one is liable to get many different answers. It would be worthwhile to mention here that many Wiccans prefer to spell magic as ‘magick’; perhaps to differentiate it from stage or illusionarymagic.......