paganism

I__ in no hurry. What for?The sun and moon aren__ in a hurry: they__e right.Hurrying is believing people can get past their legs,Or that, jumping, they can land past their shadow.No; I don__ know how to hurry.

Throughout the years, I have found people are confused about my love for both Christianity and Paganism. I tell them what was revealed to me while I lay sleeping in the hospital. The All, whether perceived as a God, or a Goddess, or as one being, or even as an energy field, cares only about one thing: Love. Absolute and unconditional love. --High Priestess Enoch

The Tejo runs down from SpainAnd the Tejo goes into the sea in Portugal.Everybody knows that.But not many people know the river of my villageAnd where it comes fromAnd where it__ going.And so, because it belongs to less people,The river of my village is freer and greater.

There is one element in Christianity which was not borrowed from Paganism -- religious intolerance. Referring to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, a writer on China says: 'Between the followers of the three national religions there is not only a total absence of persecution and bitter feeling, but a very great indifference as to which of them a man may belong.... Among the politer classes, when strangers meet, the question is asked: 'To what sublime religion do you belong,' and each one pronounces a eulogium, not on his own religion, but on that professed by the others, and concludes with the oft-repeated formula 'Religions are many; reason is one; we are all brothers.

(Marlowe's) Faustus stubbornly reverts to his atheistic beliefs and continues his elementary pagan re-education ~ the inferno to him is a 'place' invented by men.

We can name this river, here and now__ut we cannot name the water itself. We can name our gods and we can name ourselves, but we cannot name the essence of sacred identity that flows through both, that connects us and sanctifies us." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Naming the Water: Human and Deity Identity from an Earth-Centered Perspective

When I lay down on my deathbed, I want to know that I have done all I could to be a first rate human, not a third rate pawn of the gods.

Chabrias, ever preoccupied to offer the gods the worship due them, was disturbed by the progress of sects of this kind among the populace of large cities; he feared for the welfare of our ancient religions, which yoke men to no dogma whatsoever, but lend themselves, on the contrary, to interpretations as varied as nature itself; they allow austere spirits who desire to do so to invent for themselves a higher morality, but they do not bind the masses to precepts so strict as to engender immediate constraint and hypocrisy.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.

Lightly, lightly, very lightly,A wind passes very lightlyAnd goes away, always very lightly.And I don__ know what I thinkAnd I don__ want to know.

Bitter and Frail, young and weak. Smiles are useless, talk is cheap, Give thou venom, fangs like slime, Ugly freak for all of time. An empty gift just from me, Give it now, so mote it be!

WINTER'S GHOST:Autumn moonincautious in the dark riverWinter__ ghost walkswith a covered faceand silver bones wait in all animalsto be bone cloth upon her shoulderwait for her happiness in that they are silver

Would you teach me, Seth?__eth smiled and leaned back in his seat. __ou do realise, of course, that you have no idea what you ask of me?_ Seth replied after a moment.__f course,_ Christopher replied quietly. __ould you tell me?___o. That is the problem you see,_ Seth said. __agic is something you can never prepare someone for. Magic will make you, Christopher. It will find all the secret empty places of longing in you and fill them more surely than any other love. And magic will break your heart._ A slight, rather sad smile crossed Christopher__ face for a moment. __ know what you__e thinking. You think your heart is already broken, you think that this crooked and winding way is the only path left for you now. But you__e wrong. The heart breaks like every wave on the beach and there__ a darkness you__l have to pass through that you can__ even see from where you are now.