PAGAN THEOLOGY

Michael York

‘Paganism has no god’ and ‘paganism has many gods’.1 Both these asser- tions are true, and it may be asked how this is possible. Obviously, pagan- ism in general does not retain a fi gure comparable to the monotheistic God of Abrahamic tradition. An exception to this last statement might be the Olodumare fi gure as supreme creator in Santeria and Yoruba tradition. Nevertheless, Olodumare is more akin to the Demiurge of Gnosticism or the deus otiosus or deus absconditus, the ‘lazy’ or ‘absent’ God, of Deism. Moreover, Olodumare is a supreme fashioner and not a creator ex nihilo. All in all, paganism does not espouse affi liation to a transcendental God who is wholly other than the manifest world known to us through our senses. But additionally, paganism may be said to have no god because its emphasis is clearly placed upon empirical reality. For many pagans, belief in anything comparable to the supernatural is not important. In fact, numerous pagans do not believe in the supernatural in any sense. We are reminded in this of Margot Adler’s assertion that contemporary paganism is not about belief but rather on what is done.2 Vivienne Crowley puts forward that apart from “a very simple belief in the life force and the powers of the human psyche,” it is the working within a particular framework of ritual and symbolism that is the essence of paganism.3 It is this that allows over time the hidden understandings of the practice to manifest and become clearer to the participant.

1 Author’s usage note: I employ the terms ‘pagan’ and ‘paganism’ (with lower case p) throughout in a generic sense. I recognize that this runs counter to current fashion that seeks to present ‘Paganism’ as a bona fi de religion. My sympathies remain with this effort, and in the case of ‘Neo-paganism’ or ‘Neo-Paganism’ capitalizing the P is acceptable to the degree that the designated spirituality represents a specifi c and identifi able practice. In general, I judge capitalization of anything other than personal names and place names to be hubristic—often amounting to the waving of a red fl ag before a contentious bull. Accordingly, I will capitalize ‘Abrahamic’ but not ‘secular’ or ‘dharmic’ except that in the last case my Outlook Express spell check has the tendency automatically to convert ‘dharmic’ to ‘Dharmic’, and I have then left these for the most part. 2 Adler (1986); York (1995b: 102). 3 Crowley (1989: 16); York (1995b: 121). 284 michael york

Consequently, in as much as paganism—especially contemporary Western paganism—is a form of naturism, worship or honouring of natural cycles and processes, it is also largely a form of devotional humanism. Either way, to the degree that either nature or humanity is central, the emphasis of paganism is not on deity as such. In this sense, paganism is a spirituality that may be assessed as having no god per se. There is also another manner in which the statement, ‘paganism has no god’, might be true—namely that Wicca and some other forms of contemporary Western paganism concentrate more, and sometimes exclusively, on The Goddess. True enough, this deity has a son and consort generally designated The God who is variously recognized in the fi gures of Cernunnos, the Horned God, the Green Man, Oak King, Holly King, etc. But both genealogically and in terms of importance, The God is secondary so that the statement, ‘paganism has no god’, might be interpreted as ‘paganism has goddess fi rst and foremost’. From a theological perspective, modern witchcraft or Wicca may be described as a form of bi-theism. While names of deity and gods from Astarte, Ishtar, Demeter, Diana, Apollo, Mabon, Pan, etc. are often used and may even be individually worshiped, they are almost invariably considered to be instances or manifestations of either The Goddess or The God. So while someone like Charlene Spretnak might deny that the Wiccan goddess represents essentially the Abrahamic God in a dress, Jehovah in drag so to speak,4 in general Wicca and related Neo-pagan spiritualities focus on the interplay of the feminine and masculine in and throughout nature as well as the civilized world of humanity—the yin and yang of the cosmos. But while this bi-theistic perception dominates in Neo-paganism in both ontological and psycho- logical senses, Neo-paganism is itself only one expression of paganism within the world more widely—albeit in the West it is currently the most dominant and popular form of paganism primarily under the guise of Wicca and Witchcraft. Nevertheless, paganism may be said to have no god also in the sense that it is monistic or pantheistic, namely, all substance is divine or the

4 Spretnak (1982: xvii). “No one is interested in revering a ‘Yahweh with a skirt.’ A distant, judgmental, manipulative fi gure of power who holds us all in a state of terror.” I heard the ‘God in a dress’ assertion fi rst in a talk by Melissa Raphael who Wendy Griffi n informs me (personal communication, 23.12.6) Raphael borrowed from Spretnak. See further, Raphael (1998).