How do we fix paganism?

how so?

It's not false, he just didn't like being outed and insulted.

Paganism of any sort is always, 100%, a form of chuuni bullshit to make people feel special and above other people.

>Religion of any sort is always, 100%, a form of chuuni bullshit to make people feel special and above other people.

That's a projection of what he feels like most pagans are like. The vocal minority and et cetera.

iawtc

"You DO know Harry Potter isn't real, right?'

Yes, I also know it is one of the dullest franchises in the history of movie franchises? Each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of special effects, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody?just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-James Bond series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the books were good though r-right
"No!"
The writing is dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs."

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing. Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

The difference is that regular religion belief is normally motivated by people just integrating with their culture and/or cultivating genuine spiritual belief.

Paganism on the other hand is is counter-cultural by nature, the people that adopt it are always lead to adopt it as some form of rebellion. Obviously this means their beliefs are going to be less about spirituality and more about being edgy.

>How do we fix paganism?
>You don't, stop larping.

Well, you can show the gods have power and the monotheist "god" has no power and that they're just murderous LARPers, that's all they were, are and ever will be...

youtube.com/watch?v=FY0_D-zxtPw

With the sword

Pagans are stuck in the past. If they modernised their religion people would take them seriously. They would also need to standardise and centralise their religious beliefs to unify their movement.

Right now Pagans are a thousand different tiny communities that play dress up and have no united belief system or set of practices. They need common beliefs, practices and traditions that they all agree to share and follow. Half the reasons Pagans failed historically is why they fail today, they aren't a united group and they have no traditions of spreading the word.

So what they need is:
>A bible
>Church practices and traditions like the Catholic and Orthodox Churchea
>Stop dressing up as vikings and shit (except MAYBE priests, even then make it modern)
>Missionaries
>A religious head

It would also help if their members contributed to the "church" through donation. It wold take a shit load of work and a LOT of creativity and people will laugh at you for centuries in the same way the Romans laughed at Christians, and people laughed at Scientology because "new" religions are always laughed at.

Enforced indoctrination like Cucktianity or Pisslam.

>No bully please

People will always bully us. What kind of pagan are you OP?

We hold up the classics.

Ancient Greek and Chinese texts represent an absolute high point in human civilization. This glory goes entirely to the pagans. By learning from the classics, we can create the ancient world born beautiful and new.

Kek

Enjoy hell

This. Turn to the ancients, and not just Plato and his ideological descendents; we don't want just another revival of neo-Platonism.

There is another way. Japan has many "pagan" shrines and sacred trees/mountains etc. It's called Shinto and it's supported by donations and loosely managed by a central organization. There is no bible or evangelizing. You pray at the shrine, get married there, etc.

IMO replant the sacred groves, rebuild shrines to the ancient dieties (Celtic, Germanic, or otherwise) and re-institute a loose priesthood. This is part is important because in Japan priests are rarely community sages or leaders. They have a ceremonial job and they largely stick to it. We don't need an "asexual" clergy abusing divine authority to carry out all kinds of strange agendas. We just need a *married* man or woman to perform the rites. Over time they can take back the holidays an festivals appropriated by the Christian church.

Charlemagne actually said that belief in witchcraft was superstitious nonsense and that Christians should know better

I'm fully in agreement with him. Pagans, witches, wiccans, whatever. They're just bored mental infants and if you stop giving them attention they'll go away.

the bible says witchcraft is real tho

Völkisch paganism is the only kind that makes sense. But it makes the abominations on tumbl upset if you tell them that based Nigerian can not join your group.

DNA testing has never been a part of traditional religions. It will never work.

What a bunch of stupid niggers!

>witches are oppressed victims too now

The only kind that makes sense is restricting it to a particular geographic location because that's where all the holy sites and grovwes were originally located anyway. Not by ethnicity. Wouldn't work though because Americans wouldn't be able to larp as asatru anymore

Because shirts is uncontested in Japan.

Modern witches don't even hex people to the point that they roll their goat-like eyes at the mere suggestion of it.

That's against the entire point of returning to cultural religions, you're proposing creation of a pseudo-Christianity.

The Bible is full of shit

edgy

>the gods that dwell in an entirely different realm of reality are limited by geographical location

Stupid.

It doesn't, no. It describes people attempting to practice "poison", which was translated into English as "witchcraft".

No, as in "99% of Shinto stays in Japan".

>"The gods I believe in are real despite belief in them never progressing beyond a few square miles and a couple thousand people."
Really makes you think

You can't

Ok. But other forms of polytheism are not Shinto.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft#Hebrew_Bible

>The precise meaning of the Hebrew כָּשַׁף, usually translated as "witch" or "sorceress", is uncertain. In the Septuagint, it was translated as pharmakeía or pharmakous. In the 16th century, Reginald Scot, a prominent critic of the witch trials, translated כָּשַׁף, φαρμαkεία, and the Vulgate's Latin equivalent veneficos as all meaning "poisoner", and on this basis, claimed that "witch" was an incorrect translation and poisoners were intended.[96] His theory still holds some currency, but is not widely accepted, and in Daniel 2:2 כָּשַׁף is listed alongside other magic practitioners who could interpret dreams: magicians, astrologers, and Chaldeans.

Honestly, keep digging holes in the ground or in old churches/houses until you find an authentic literary record of the oral traditions with actual theology or ritual behind them.

You can't compare a rebuilding and repopulating a religion to keeping a dying religion alive. Shinto is essentially dead as a religion today and is only alive for cultural traditions, weddings, festivals etc. Saying most Japanese people are Shinto because they get married in a shrine is like saying most people in Norway that celebrate Christmas are Christians. The truth is both are largely athiest countries that are following religions traditions but don't believe in religion.

Traditions =/= Religious belief

Good luck getting any followers. Why do you think Christianity was so successful? Pagan religions are too limiting a club, unless every pagan family has like 10 children and they instill a zealous religious belief in their children to also have 10 children it will never spread. Even then a pagan family is prey to Christian missionaries. Playing the "we'll wait for people to become interested in playing dress up in the forest" game will NEVER gain traction. It should also be noted that modern pagan beliefs will never be the same as the ancient ones because they stopped existing as a religion. You will never return to ancient traditiins, you are flying blind as far as traditions are concerned, the only hope you have is to create now traditions that will increase your religions chance of success.

Christianity was successful for a reason user, unless you pagans learn from the mistakes pagans of the past made no matter how hard you try to revive it eventually it will disappear again.

Nobody wanted to publish HP. The guy who published the book only did it because his daughter liked it.

>Enjoy hell

You're a fool.

youtube.com/watch?v=T_YJo_Uh_TE

>magic isn't real

>>>/reddit/
>>>/thedonald/

How is paganism counter culture by nature when it was the first religion?

Harold Bloom copypasta

>>>>/reddit/
>>>>/thedonald/

How does this contribute to this conversation loser?

youtube.com/watch?v=-BVx_INbbxQ

I think paganism and heathendom stand a solid chance in the modern age. More people are becoming agnostic, atheistic, and non religious. The Christian church is struggling to keep their young members. (here's a link about that: theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/breaking-faith/517785/) They are also struggling to keep up with modern values. A big example of this is gay marriage.

Millennials are the most educated generation we've seen in a long time. People are also more likely to turn agnostic when they are educated. This leaves a giant gap. The millennials don't have values to instill upon their children which are based in doctrine and community. What do they do?

Heathendom is that faith in the gods isn't that important. In fact, the vast majority of heathens think that the gods are elements of nature, and not literal. Asatru offers stories to teach children, and values people can relate to as adults.

"Live a good life. If there are Gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are Gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no Gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

I hope that one day we have heathen gardens (instead of churches, pic related, where people are active in their community and care for the environment. We are a generation where climate change is huge, and Asatru promotes taking care of the earth. We could do a lot of good in the community by having public gardens instead of temples. We could help people. We could replace what people are missing right now.

I also wanted to add that there's a lot of ways we could promote heathendom in the modern age. Thor is the god of lightning. It would be really cool to have events where people praise science and have parties.

youtube.com/watch?v=3FpjcOWwiI4

Imagine something like thi (above) People could come together and celebrate like this. We need a way for religion to reach the modern age, and this is an excellent way to start. We need to embrace technology and science, and we can definitely do that. Evolution isn't something we should be taking from schools. I think Asatru would be a great way to support science, technology, computers, and taking care of the earth.

The gods don't care if you drink. If they were real, the gods would want you to have fun and enjoy your life. That's another thing people need in these hard times.

THESE ARE ALL THINGS WE NEED RIGHT NOW. Science, modern medicine, protecting the environment, and something to believe in.

This could actually happen. We shouldn't have ever left.

>Paganism and heathendom stand a solid chance in the modern age.
Okay
>More people are becoming agnostic, atheistic, and non religious.
Okay
>What do they do?
>Adopt another religion except this time as vague moral lessons and not as an organised religion
If people are only taking moral lessons from stories from a religion then its not really a religion and its not really being followed as a religion. There is nothing stopping parents reading such stories to their kids in the same way reading Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel isn't banned. A parent could read biblical moral lessons to their children in the same way to teach moral lessons and still not be a religious family too, stuff like the good Samaritan is a good lesson for children. Reading it as a moral lesson doesn't make a person a Christian or Jew in the same way reading Norse sagas doesn't make a person Asteru.

Your point about being in tune with nature isn't exactly exclusive to pagan religions btw. Most religious figures in the western world across all faiths support some level of environmentalism, Pope Francis has called for action on the subject for example. Most Church groups are also very community orientated, this is a feature of all religions, Mosques and Synagogues are the same. If anything having a "group" of people whose only connection to one another is reading the same moral lessons which can be interpreted by each family differently sounds like a very divided community, you have the same thing with Protestant groups, they all agree to be different to the Catholic Church but they all diverge in to different sects based on exactly what each group chooses to believe.

>The Future of Secularism: a Biologically Informed Theory Supplemented with Cross-Cultural Evidence
Read it senpai, religious people aren't going anywhere. You will never have a majority agnostic population.

You know it's still new, right? I'm not trying to get into an internet debate with you. As a re constructionist religion, we have only been founded in 1973. We just gained acceptance in the United States military recently. It's going to take a while to get settled.

You are right that we need to get more organised. The entire community agrees on this. We're all working on it, and these things take time.

Also, you're forgetting that people do need organised religion for their children (and themselves as adults). This isn't just reading books to them. It's community based. People get lonely. This is because they need to have friends for their kids, they need to have stuff to do and events to go to. An example of this is Summer bible school. Meetups are also a good thing for adults because it can be hard to make friends outside of work when you are older. There's a lot of beneficial reasons these communities exist. Don't count them out.

Also, there's no way you'll ever see Christians reading bible stories to their kids, and then saying 'btw this didn't actually happen lulz'. This is why they are stagnating and loosing members. They also aren't keeping up with the times. They're just as guilty of breaking down their numbers and dividing when they cannot agree on gay marriage and abortion.

>Most Church groups are also very community orientated, this is a feature of all religions, Mosques and Synagogues are the same.

All Moses/Muhammad worship is prohibited by God everywhere on the planet.

youtube.com/watch?v=6EWb-dw219k

>Pagans are stuck in the past. If they modernised their religion people would take them seriously. They would also need to standardise and centralise their religious beliefs to unify their movement.
then it wouldn't be paganism. That's the entire difference between paganism and kike religions. You don't go in a sheep crowd and get told what to think

My problem with paganism is not the belief itself but the people it attracts.
>edgy raging metalheads
>virgins
>screeching obese banshees
>females
>LARPers
>batshit insane esotards
If someone actually developed a coherent belief system and a structured organization that goes beyond dressing like a faggot and talking shit about Christianity, I'd take it more seriously.

literally nothing you believe in is real lmao

>You don't go in a sheep crowd and get told what to think
That's actually one of the reasons people speculate early Christianity was so much more popular than Paganism after a short while. Christianity encourages involvement of laity, whereas the only people who really practice Paganism in any real capacity are the secretive priestly caste who tell their followers what to do.

You've got it backwards senpai.

>Heindrich, get the cross.

Logical theological arguments, there's non reason why you couldn't apply something like the cosmological argument to paganism - other than the non-placement of a prime mover within their pantheons normally. It would make it just as valid theologically as Christianity or Islam in that manner.

>Christianity encourages involvement of laity, whereas the only people who really practice Paganism in any real capacity are the secretive priestly caste who tell their followers what to do.

Yeah, well the gods aren't as entertaining as a serial killer's manifesto of nonsense since the gods are pretty much indistinguishable from reality.

e.g. god of sun, god of night, goddess of wisdom, god of agriculture, god of theater, etc.

youtube.com/watch?v=a6wmDBz8H_Q

Are you schizophrenic?

Wikipedia says 7,878 people are Asteru in the USA from a 2014 census. Even considering its young age that is almost nothing considering modern means of communication. Those people can only really be defined as a group because they follow the same faith but they are in reality dozens of different groups operating individually probably only sharing nominal similarities and they all practice their faith differently. Clearly you're not working hard enough, it doesn't help when people like this guy seem completely opposed to a unification movement.

I'm not forgetting that people like organized religions, I'm saying your religion isn't organized. If people have the option of an organized religion and a disorganized one they will choose the organized one (Christianity/Islam), their functions, community etc are all larger and they have many more events more frequently. SO if lonely people want sense of community they won't be joining the bi-monthly forest dance but the daily mass service and weekly barbecue.

I went to a Catholic school, we learned biblical stories as moral lessons not as 100% truths. While you are correct Christians are on the decline so are irreligious people, keeping up with the times has nothing to do with it, (considering Islam is globally the fastest growing religion and their core beliefs are also not with the times). The issue is possibly the opposite, too many Christian groups have adopted "the times" in concern to contraception and childbirth. For centuries Christian groups preached and practiced the idea of "go fourth and multiply!" which gave them an ever growing number. Their decline coincides with womens liberation and contraception becoming more popular in western countries, both of these are the fastest way to stop population growth.

tl;dr: Yes by total numbers Christians are declining but of the people reproducing (in the west) they are more often Christians.

It didn't work that way.

Pagan traditions were oral traditions which treated knowledge as something to horde jealously. Making such broad, sweeping statements about a tradition which has no unifying canon, and probably varied wildly from community to community (right up to the abominably superstitious marriage of state and religion that was Roman and Carthaginian paganism) is simple contrarian values-projection.

There's no such religion as "paganism" it is just a hate speech term used by followers of Abrahamic religions for anyone that follows a non-Abrahamic religion.

>Are you schizophrenic?

No. Are you inattentive or incognizant?

>Making such broad, sweeping statements about a tradition which has no unifying canon, and probably varied wildly from community to community (right up to the abominably superstitious marriage of state and religion that was Roman and Carthaginian paganism) is simple contrarian values-projection.

The GODS = indistinguishable from reality.

youtube.com/watch?v=w8w2mv-AflU

np.reddit.com/user/HonorableJudgeHolden

Now you're just being obtuse. We live in the modern day, did you get the fucking memo?

>"Mal" mean "evil"
Yes and no. "Mal" can mean "evil", but also "hurt", "wrong", "ill", "trouble" or simply "bad".

>Praising science
Dropped.

What's wrong with praising science, user? Its given us everything.

>Yes and no. "Mal" can mean "evil", but also "hurt", "wrong", "ill", "trouble" or simply "bad".

Meh, whatever, it's no coincidence - but you have to look close.

youtube.com/watch?v=NCGk1WimO2I

youtube.com/watch?v=pt8lhNNk9So

> Is actually the answer
> Is entirely ignored

Elder god tier: Canticle for Leibowitz

>1984 above lotr
>nice bait

>exploration of the human condition in an oppressive world of social conformity and authority taken to extremes
>bland escapism utterly devoid of deeper themes designed primarily to showcase Tolkien's fictional languages

They were placed correctly.

>babies first "deep thinking" book
>literary masterpiece

No they weren't

XD LE MEME MAGIC HAHA UPVOTE THIS VOTE PLOX

There is no "Paganism" to fix. Paganism is simply a catch-all term for the unorganized beliefs that arise in various different cultures before organized religions come along. In truth Paganism was a million small contradicting faiths with different beliefs and traditions. You can't revive it because there is no one thing to revive. The only way you can get a more than local amount of people to follow the exact same religion is through force or intimidation. As we live in more enlightened times doing such is no longer considered moral and we thus see a rise in AtheismAgnosticism and "Fad" conversions like western Buddhists. To truly bring back "Paganism" you would have to first create a singular Pagan faith (good luck getting everyone to agree on its pantheon/beliefs/rituals/etc.) And then find some way to enforce it upon an unwilling populace (good luck taking over the government and establishing your specific Paganism as the ;aw of the land.)

>XD LE MEME MAGIC HAHA UPVOTE THIS VOTE PLOX

Just be catholic bro. You get your plurality to worship in the saints.

what were the sorcerers in the court of Pharaoh doing?

Uh I guess it's hard to measure relgious fervor, but I personally have witnessed a stream of businessmen visiting a shrine in Downtown Tokyo to pray. My ex-gf would pray at shrines, and took it pretty seriously. They may not be moralizing 24/7 and carrying signs like Westboro Baptist Church, but I think its a big mistake to call Japan an atheist country.

>what were the sorcerers in the court of Pharaoh doing?

Serving God.

youtube.com/watch?v=NCGk1WimO2I

When you treat science like a god then it's not science.

Reminder

When someone is black as night you know that have little to seek in Nordic paganism same for lilly-white people interested in African witchcraft and spider mythology.

Really makes you think

i have yet to meet a real pagan who had actual faith in their religion. the only reason they're doing it is to be edgy.

Unless they were raised pagan, it effectively isn't the "first religion" for them. It has to be a part of their upbringing, not something that they adopt later on in life, for it to be anything other than a reaction to what they were brought up as. Maybe if you're some tribal that's been practicing for hundreds of years like native Americans we can talk.

...

Why do you come here posting the same few images? They don't prove anything and only serve to make you look foolish, or even mentally ill.

2 corinthians 4:4,6
“…the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God…. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Because science isn't a divinity. It's an abstract concept. And it should be treated as such.

>the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ
Isn't the point to save those unbelievers by bringing them to Christ? What the fuck was Paul thinking when he wrote this?