> My spiritual journey ended some years ago. I found myself becoming
> more and more revolted by the idea of religion in general, and finally
> got to the point that I simply washed my hands of it all. If anyone
> were to ask me what I am now, I would say that I am not even an
> athiest. As far as I'm concerned, any adjective one uses to describe
> oneself to which ends in "-ist" or "-an" refers to some sort of
> religion, where the follower is expected to follow some (usually
> outdated) code that may or may not work for them, but are expected to
> follow nonetheless. In that sense, athiests are religious in their
> nearly ritualistic avoidance of religion.
I had some further thoughts on what you said above today. I was reminded
of
a guy I knew in your area who while semi-active in the local Pagan
community
as well as conservation and Earth oriented activities, he refused to call
himself anything, including Pagan. His feeling was that people in the
days
of yore didn't really call themselves anything. They worked in harmony
with
their world around them and called upon their goddesses and gods and did
their usual rituals but they never called themselves Pagans or Wiccans or
whatever. They just were. Pagan was a label forced upon certain people
by
others.
When I think about it, this seems pretty correct. I'm sure the word witch
was used at times but probably not often or openly. But these people
didn't
name their spirituality or call themselves by a specific label. So in
this
particular way I can relate to what you say (although I know you mean
differently! :) )
L
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