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Is Wicca a Christian Sect?

To: alt.pagan,alt.religion.wicca
From: paghat@netscapeSPAM-ME-NOT.net (paghat)
Subject: Re: Is Wicca a Christian Sect?
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:40:49 -0800

> In article , nocTifer
>  writes
> >50031029 viii om
> >
> >Shez :
> >#> ...The Christian god is not part of paganism, 
 
> An Interesting view, but out of touch with reality, 
> If your a Satanist fine, but Satanism is still the other side of the
> coin to Christianity their has to be belief in one to believe in the
> other. I don't believe in any form of Christianity. 

The majority of moder pagan movements have been founded by Christians
attempting to escape their formative religious influences, & failing.
"Satanism" is no more (and no less) "Christian" than most other "pagan"
movements that Christians have founded. Even so, since christianity really
got going as a Judaized form of pagan religion in the wake of the
translation of Torah into the Septuagint, it could and should be argued
that Christianity is itself still what it always was -- paganism -- & so
why shouldn't modern christians change it all back to something they
imagine to be closer to the root. Jesus is merely Tamuz after all, right
down to the "He is risen!" chant Hellenized peoples cried out to Tamuz.
> >
> >generally since the term 'pagan' derives in its usage,
> >immediately previous, from 'not Jewish/Christian/Muslim'
> >then what you are saying is fairly accurate. however,
> >the Jewish religious complex includes pre-monotheist 
> >deities like Asherah, so sometimes Neopagans include 
> >these and tread the bordlands of 'nonpagan', creating
> >Mooncakes and engaging in revivalism which may include
> >old versions of the god Yahweh. I've seen the occasional
> >poster talk about this God/Goddess pair before.

Cooler than that, Asherah survives in mystical Judaism to this day. The
Zohar says right out that Asherah is the same as the Divine Shekhinah,
female presence of G-d, otherwise known as the Sabbath Bride, or Kallah,
or Matronit, having all the traits as Cybele. See Raphael Pattai's
wonderful book THE HEBREW GODDESS. Similar to the manner by which
christianity is a judaized form of Hellenic paganism (and neo-paganism a
re-paganized Christianity), so too Judaism descends from SumeroAkkadian
semitic paganism. No faith escapes its origin entirely, or its cultural
context. This need not be perceived (by pagans) as a bad thing or an
offending thing. One thing that makes makes Judaism so great is it thas an
unbroken track that precedes the even the most primitive form of Judaism
which grew out of Sumer. Buddhism is great because it tracks directly to
the Vedas & before. If paganism is REALLY divorced from its christian
cultural context & was entirely made up from scratch, it would not have
the unbroken traces back to the origins of human thought -- it would just
be here-&-now fad. Well, sometimes it is, but it makes more sense to me
that "Dianics" who grew up in a Christian context would do better to
recover the greater meaning of Mary rather than pretend they're not very
deeply imprinted by their actual religious imprinting from childhood on,
reinforced hourly by all their key cultural touchstones.

-paghat the ratgirl

-- 
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
   -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

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