From: lilleyc@cs.man.ac.uk (Chris Lilley)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: How the hell can religion and action not be related?
Date: 6 Nov 92 00:40:44 GMT
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.

In article <1992Nov4.012641.19923@trl.oz.au> banerjee@titan.trl.OZ.AU
(Arindam Banerjee) writes:

>Westerners have used Christianity as an essential tool to achieve world
>domination. Having done it, they are now discarding it - this seems to
>me the central theme of this newsgroup. This faintly smacks of a kind of
>opportunism we know quite well. 

I suggest you are committing the sort of logical error that assumes all
of a group of people are somehow joined together - tell one, tell all
- in a sort of amorphous mass.

The sub group of westerners who have attempted world domination (not
attained it yet I hope) is not the same sub group that is practicing
neo paganism. There are of course many other sub groups.

In other words, I am suggesting that you have generalised excessively.

The first sub group is not discarding Christianity at all - although
after the US elections, some of them may be thinking its not quite the
ticket to power they had hoped ;-)

>To me the basis for this action of discarding Christianity, and the
>consequences therefrom, is interesting. 

The basis for discarding organised religions - not just Christianity -
seems to be a desire to grow, experience, and find out for oneself. A
return to experiential religion.

>What is also interesting is the
>almost total ignorance and lack of interest in the genuinely pagan
>traditions of Hinduism - on what grounds I can only conjecture.

Four grounds I can think of.

Firstly, Hinduism is seen in the West as just another major, state
religion. It is thus an unlikely candidate for people looking for the
sort of religious experience I have described. I am not suggesting
this is a correct perception, just a widespread one.

Secondly, depending on your definition of Pagan, some people would not
consider Hinduism to fall into a useful definition of pagan. There has
been some discussion of the meaning of the term pagan on this group,
with a marked diversity of opinions being expressed. Some of us do not
regard the Oxford English Dictionary as the sole arbiter of our
religious principles ;-)

Thirdly, as you say, simply a lack of knowlege about hinduism.

Fourthly, a large component of many people's neo paganism is the
concepty of immanence, the sanctity of place, connection to the land,
and so on. For example, some people in the US are looking to the numerous and
varied Native American religions as sources of inspiration in addition
to, or instead of, the European Paganism some of their ancestors may
have practiced. To place rather than to person. That being so, neo
pagans would be unlikely to adopt Hindu beliefs unless they were
living in India (or, perhaps, had ancestry there).

However, I gather that some people of a more ceremonial magic
persuasion - thelemic oriented - have used Hindu thought forms in some
of their rituals. This is second hand information - I have talked with
them about it but not attended.

In 'The Witches God' which discusses the varied manifestations of a
male deity, the Farrars have a chapter on Shiva in addition to the
more expected chapters on Herne,Cernunnos and so on - complete with
suggested ritual and dietary advice contributed by a Hindu person.
They have been criticised in some quarters for this eclecticism.

There is an eclectic and syncretic tendency in modern paganism, and
having neo pagans selectively borrowing and re-interpreting parts of
Hinduism might not be what you had in mind...

Oh and by the way -

It was my understanding that 'Hinduism' was a blanket term imposed by
Europeans on the wide variety of beliefs in the Indian sub continent -
meaning simply people beyond the Indus river - in rather the same way
that paganus or heathen was the term for people of the countryside,
and civilis (civilised) for people of the towns.

Is this correct?

Perhaps you would like to post something about Hinduism and how you
see it connected with other pagan traditions. I would be most
interested in such a post.

--
Chris Lilley
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