*Sigh* Some guys are just so very easily led... ;)

some women are such a pleasure to follow.

It's definitely changing in this respect. At least in our diocese, all prayers and hymns have been edited to remove gender specifics when referring to God. There are also rumblings that, with the shortage of men entering the priesthood, nuns may be allowed to perform the sacraments soon.

In greek mythology, Pandora, the first woman, was created as a punishment for man. :ivy:

The Greeks weren't exactly enlightened in that respect. The Wiccan community is the only one I know of that doesn't buy into all that finger pointing.

Bullitt - Paganism is, in my mind anyway, a sort of all-encompassing term for numerous ancient religions practiced by pre-Christian peoples. By that definition, Wiccans are Pagan, but by no means are Wiccans the only variety of Pagan. Also, the religion we know as Wicca was synthesized in the early 1950's by a guy named Gerald Gardner, so it is one of the new kids on the block. However, the fundaments of what we believe come from the practices of the ancient peoples of the British Isles and Europe, so it isn't a "made-up religion".

For Wiccans, there are a few basic tenets:

1) Goddess worship (and God worship as well, though usually not Jehovah, since His rules specifically forbid polytheism...but there are self-professed "ChristoWiccans", which is another whole ball of wax. I call them "fence-sitters")
2) A notion that there is energy in the universe and that we can access, channel and use it according to our wills (magick).
3) The belief that we create our own realities and are therefore personally responsible for our actions. No external redemption.
4) A credo, known as "The Wiccan Rede", which states "And it harm none, do as you will shall be the whole of the law". Many Pagans take this to mean that you can do anything you want, an interpretation which I find to be fatally flawed, but again, that's a whole other discussion.
5) We're pretty much tree huggers because we believe the Earth to be our "mother", as it were.

Like any religion, a discussion of Wicca cannot really be adequately rendered in a few paragraphs, so I'll just tell you what I've told others here-I'm happy to answer any specific questions about my personal path. I'm no scholar by any means, but I am an adherent and a constant student of my particular brand of Paganism. For other brands of Paganism, I'll tell you as much as I know if you have any questions about a specific path. As has been mentioned by Bri, Wolf is also a practicing Pagan, and she'll be a good source for you as well.

I think the gender thing, which respect to women as lesser beings has been discussed in the Philo thread (which, by the way, has a few threads on what it is to be Pagan :) ). My view is that the bible does not discuss women as second class, only the "church" (of various flavors) has made it seem that way.

A contextual reading of the Bible (without a priest leading you by the hand) will turn up that women had a role to play just as much as men did. I haven't seen any place that specifically says "and the Lord said, Let women be mistreated and unable to have a productive, fruitful, happy life."

People attribute a lot of things to the Bible to justify things that they simply shouldn't have done. Again, contextually, it's just not there. Another example that's a "hot button" issue lately: homosexuality. There is no doubt it's wrong, according to the Bible, to practice homosexuality. Does that mean all Christians should hate homosexuals? No. Nor should they call names, or get physical, or scream that "Yer goin' straight to Hayle!!". That's unacceptable, from a biblical standpoint.

See, most Christians wanna thump the Bible when it comes to judging other people and their actions, but try to use the Bible and tell them that it's not their place to judge people, and you really see what they're made of. LOL Makes me laugh just to think about it.

I'm rambling. The point I was trying to make was: Yes, Biblicly, God, the Son and the Holy Ghost are male influences, but that doesn't mean women are less valued.

*ducks, waiting for the shit storm*

*Cartman*It's a bunch of tree hugging hippie crap!*/Cartman*

And now back to your regularly scheduled elucidation.

OnyxCougar--no shit storm here, but don't you think the Adam/Eve story was a little, um, harsh on womankind? If I recall that story pretty much dumps the load of woe and evil right in the woman's pretty lap, no?

In all seriousness, you should pick the religious paradigm that best justifies your desires. That's the only purpose modern religion serves anyway.

If you insist on having faith in something, have faith in yourself. Believe in what you want to believe, set your own path. None of the other ones in history have been proven more accurate that any other anyway.

I have been avoiding this discussion up to now since I don't know all that much about paganism. I do have two friends who are into Wicca, and I've attended some Wiccan ceremonies, and I felt they were more reverant than many Christian services I've been to. Neither of my friends hates anybody of any other faith, BTW. "Live and let live" is their philosophy.

I have to agree with Brianna that, all in all, Christianity can be very misogynist. Not only do we have Eve, there's that line in Genesis to the effect that woman should bear their children in pain and suffering. When anaesthetics first came out, many Christians felt it was going against the word of God to alleviate the pain of women undergoing labor. There are also the writings of St. Paul, a misogynist if I ever read one. To this very day, fundamentalist Christians will tell you that a wife should defer to her husband and some take it so far as to say a husband may even beat his wife with impunity.

I like the Navajo belief which has Changing Woman as one of their chief deities. Changing woman is way cool - she created all the plants which give abundance to the earth, and she created the Navajo people from her own skin (talk about being created in the image of God (dess)! I also like the Tibetan Buddhist deities, the Green Tara and the White Tara. The Green Tara is very powerful and can stop demons dead in their tracks merely by radiating the force of her compassion upon them. The White Tara decided to become re-incarnated as a woman to show that women, too, can attain the status of a Buddha. I have found very little mysogeny in the writing of the Buddha, and Buddhism has no intolerance for other faiths. The Buddha himself taught that if someone else is following a spiritual path that works for them to honor that path even it wasn't Buddhist.

I have to agree with Mari over the St. Paul issue. He did have some issues with women and homosexuals, didn't he? I took a class quite a few years back that was devoted entirely to Romans and it was pretty gag-inducing.

I'd have said, "Oh you are one of those ignorant anti-zionists! Thanks for letting me know. I'll give my money to a much more worthy cause with people who aren't idiots and I'll be sure my friends to the same."

The burden of most bad things that have manifested in the Christian faith can be traced back to Paul. The original tenets are great, on the rare occasions that anyone actually pays attention to them, understands them and applies them.

You mean it wasn't Yoko Ono's fault after all? :eek3: