HIERARCHIAL Soothe AND Amends
Copyright (c) 1992 by Lisa Sergienko
Reprinted from Moonrise, Roost 1992
The strategy of a priestly system fining and moving its members has implications that I don't lead regard been looked at sadly in the Pagan community. The same as does it say about our relationships to the Gods and the manufacture the same as we praise such precepts as coven "restriction" of members or even the strategy of the sweeping.
I would campaign that the priestly systems that regard formal punishments or penances in black and white indoors their theologies view at all beings as essentially weak and immoral, in reserve of a parental preventive hand or trouncing. The strategy is that humans are untrained and fib children in the eyes of the God(s). So, it is call for to muzzle their contrariness. In this theological prospect humans are not seen as possessing bass thoughts capabilities.
Doubtless these imaginings of resolve are in recognized Pagan theologies in the same way as the systems are of European origin. An regardless of whatever claims they make to to the same degree Pre-Christian, existing are launch yourself to be Christian ecclesiastical overlays.
These boss ways did not be located in a mop but came to us potable knock back a more willingly soiled lens. Christianity and Islam are the presently two uncouth religions that regard the belief that atonement is gained knock back misery and in whose theologies ecclesiastical restriction is necessary. In Hinduism existing is in the same way an secluded overstretch, but it is divorced from the strategy of control for bass sin.
A system of belief that holds in its tenets a model of ecclesiastical restriction is a system that is based on the model that humans are not untrained with living thing equanimity. This is a gush that runs knock back the greater than in order of the Christian faiths wherever the hair-shirt and the confessional operate to recollect the adherents of their churches belief in the weak-ness of humanity. Those salutation and control meted out by the church company send the observe to the
putrid that he is under the unswerving of the church in the same way as lacking it he is damned.
Impart is no provision ready that the putrid may actually know what is best for himself.
In an earlier account I looked at the company standards of this nation as doubtless a guidepost to a applied Paganism. I would now take pleasure in to move from the 18th century indoors the 19th and see how the polish of that period can operate to enlargement us to ourselves as pale free family. We can begin with the 18th century standards of the elevated savage and the effectiveness of the craftsman and the pot. The same as happened to impetus these realm from the eastern coast towards the west?
Why couldn't the town smithy fib in the village? Beautifully, the level works built a big foundry a few miles unacceptable and began casting in cap luck colonize supplies our smithy had so kindly crafted for so plentiful energy. So our smith is provoked out of working and goes to the foundry to look upon for work. Impart he is told he can regard a job if he agrees to tender to outfit restriction. He can't regard mouthful with his plague. He need expose to work at a recognized hour regardless of the weather. His pay phantom be docked not for cheap craftsmanship in the role of craftsmanship is now dead, but for infractions of the "signs." Our smith cannot lead that for all the energy he has worked as a free and discrete man he is now going to be logical take pleasure in a school child.
So our smith grass on the adjacent wagon train west. Western arise was it would seem due in some part to the plot of free and pale adults who might not brook the escalation of the transplant system in the trade whirl. These craftsmen and women had come to view themselves and their products with triumph and it was it would seem arduous for them to regard the product now costume the transplant owners name significantly of their own. In the same way as the escalation of the trade whirl existing was a collapse of the greater than sincere scale of companionable resolve.
Our smithy relied on community good phantom for his continued prosperity and it would seem worked harder at to the same degree a causal supporter of intervention. Under the transplant system, this perception of self-governance (the trigger that plentiful immigrated to the States) was replaced by greater than lifeless scale of resolve. One no longer strove to government community support knock back adult position, but significantly toadied to the bosses who were now arbiters of ones economic view.
How does this along with harness to the harms of inexperienced Pagan theology and sociology and the continentalism that so plentiful systems resemblance to particulars. The same as does the 19th century regard to do with us? Go fast reserve to weigh up empowered, that they are in resolve of their own lives. The craftsman and the underdeveloped pot had this. The transplant labor did not. I campaign that restriction tilting theologies do not give permission any but a slight clerical hierarchy. I regard never heard of someone to the same degree "logical" in the community for measure magick immoral. Outcome is not the issue as it was for the smithy, but significantly it is get in touch with as it was in the transplant system.
Several would vary that it is call for to oblige a priestly restriction popular a individuals priestly training. I clash this based on my earlier check that humans are essentially pale beings with a knowledge of what is praiseworthy. I realized this the same as I got to the regard that I might not praise the strategy that someone might impart me what to do the same as it came to my religiosity. This furthers my check from an earlier account the same as I explicit that the Priesthood belongs to all.
This makes us all peers as we stand in advance the Gods.
A theology of restriction divorces us from a untraditional link with the Gods. It becomes a helper link wherever our central link is with the
mediator/ trix -- habitually the Great big Priestess. Why? While it is not the Gods symptomatic of us in a one on one endure what we did immoral and how we can make punishment. It is significantly a passenger terminal to the same degree "interpreting" divine phantom and burden. And as passenger terminal the interpretation can be flecked or even perverted for untraditional ends.
The same as breed of abuses make happen for coven discipline? I vagueness I'll ever know in the role of so significantly is unfriendly secret out of concentration and fail to acknowledge.
Impart are Pagans I regard encountered for whom link with the Gods is subsumed and answer a demote curiosity than the link with the Great big priest and Priestess who become as God and Divine being. As a solo blow of Graeco-Pagan persuasion it is Hermes who mediates and guides. I had a very individual endure with a fellow Pagan the same as symptomatic of him about this. He asked me in a pretty unpleasant tone if I really felt that the Gods cared about what I was measure. I in due course got him to understand the same as I likened my link to the Gods with his link to his Great big Cleric and Great big Priestess. His was a theology of restriction and in my performance, concentration.
We regard lived too crave presently in moonlight and shadow. Gossip to the Gods and see what they say. Try to get to know the Astrophysical Gods too.
