Fix ignorance please
 

Sooo, I was walking through the good 'ol College green here at Ohio University, and I noticed some people collecting change for some cause or another out of the corner of my eye. I'm a naturally inquisitive person so I walked over and proceeded out of my instinctual sympathy for just about any change collecting cause. I was about to drop my buck into the jar and one of the people manning the booth grabbed my wrist and said "We don't want your dirty Zionist money, get the f*** outta here!" Apparrantly, he had seen the ring on my pinkie finger w/ crosses stamped on it.

So naturally, they got no mula from Bullitt, and as i was walking away, I looked back to see exactly what campus organization they were from and it was the PSOU (Pagan Society of Ohio University).

I googled them and found nothing. So I was just wondering, since I know nothing about Pagans and some of you appear to be exactly that, if you could um, fill me in on Paganism and hopefully tell me that most of them aren't like this.

bullitt-first let me apologize to you for the abuse you suffered under their hands--not only was it NOT in keeping with Pagan tradition it was igorant to boot. That kind of stuff makes me sick. I went to OU (as I PM'd you) back in the dinosaur days--'83-'87 and I never encountered any hostility like that except from the long-suffering Townies (and, you must admit, they DO suffer.) A true Pagan would not have said/treated/thought those hateful things. Sounds like a cover for another cause and just trying to use the very heavy and influencial Pagan community there in Athens as a cover. I am so sorry they were asshats to you.

you know about the graveyards in Athens, don't you? :skull:

There are assholes everywhere. Please don't lump all Pagans in with the psychos you interacted with today.

I don't know what their "cause" was, but I'd be willing to bet that whoever they are, they are probably considered to be weirdo idiots by most of the other Pagans in your community. Intolerance is pretty rare amongst true adherents of the Old Ways, so them calling you a Zionist in a pejorative manner probably marks them as complete wackos and just plain dipshits.

Oh no, don't take m wrong, I'm not really all that offended by these people's actions, I just brush off these kinds of things. It just sparked my curiosity into Paganism and what all it entails.
And yes i know about the graves and the insane asylum (which is now university owned) one of its buildings hasn't been changed since the complex was sold. So if you can get inside (its all boarded up and fenced off) its real creepy cause it was the children's ward. So theres all this crazy stuff on the walls. The gravesites make a pentagram around Athens don't they?

Right. Very weird. Do you have any Townie anecdotes? Is BoJangles still there? I think that's the place when one can 'drink around the world'.

Unless you ran into a bunch of white power folks masquerading as pagans, I am seriously wondering how you were identified as a "Zionist" because of a ring containing crosses. Star of David, I might understand.

I agree with the rest of the folk here, what you encountered is absolutely not typical pagan behavior.

Interesting, nonetheless.

So, are you going to approach the University Diversity Committee to report the behavior, during what was probably an unauthorized fundraiser. My own college was pretty pissy about such things. (unauthorized money gathering, they couldn't have given a shit about diversity. It was the 80s.)

Brianna-I think Bojangles is gone. Either that or I just haven't seen it yet. I just woke up when I'm writing this so I'm kinda of fuzzy as to what you mean by "town anecdotes". Sorry, I don't do well in the mornings :zzz: .

Wolf- Eh, I'm really sure if I'm gonna report it or not. They probly just assumed (correctly) that I'm a Christian and thus called me a Zionist. And there's plenty of crazies around here so I doubt the university is really gonna do anything about it.
Also, kinda of the whole point of this thread, could you, or anyone else for that matter, give me a breif overview of Paganism? Here's what I DO know: It's super old, and these guys def. weren't Pagans. That's about the extent of my knowledge on the subject. I'm a naturally curious person so was just wondering if ya could fill me in a bit.

Wolf or Elspode are WAAAAAY more scholarly scholars on this topic than I am--I am wondering if I've a brain tumor as I cannot articulate self very well of late (and I know some of you will say to yourselves: what does she mean of late??!)

Try or maybe and possibly. :)

http://www.paganfed.demon.co.uk/aboutpf-3ps.htm

So, please correct me if i'm way wrong which i probably am, according to this site, if you lived according to these doctrines, you could be say, Pagan and still be Christian? Because they seem to thave the same set of ideals and basic practices. I.E. respect for other beings, recognition of a higher power which has no "gender", etc.

IMHO most of your Christians would say their God is definitely a male and so is his progeny. And so is the Holy Spirit, amen. I was raised in a Catholic home and went to Catholic schools where women were regarded as second-class citizens and not worthy to minister as a priest(ess) but only as nuns--handmaidens to the priesthood.

Yeah, I was referring to the absolute basics of Christianity. Not one particular sect. I'm a presbyterian myself, but I don't necessarily follow all the doctrines that the Presbyterian church puts forth. I'm more of a "Me and JC and God and I'm just trying to get through life not screwin up too much" kinda deal.

a Lapsed Presbyterian? :) Actually, seems a lot of trouble started when people began assigning gender to their dieties. I became interested in Wicca because of the equality afforded both male and female energies. The Judeo-Christian traditions throw a lot of shame on the female half of humanity.

that's because you lead us fine upstanding menfolk down the path of temptation, don'tcha know?

yeah, unfortunately, some people I know at my church think along those lines. That woman was created to server man and that the rights ands freedoms they enjoy now are just privaledges. Personally, I couldn't dissagree more. I think we were all created on an absolutely equal basis and that anyone who tries to place his or her sex above the other one is contradicting themselves in the fact that they are, in the proccess of making themselves higher, just becoming more arrogant and becoming the lesser person.
If that made any sense at all :eyebrow: . I'm kind of hard to follow sometimes sry.

*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:

Bruce, you are somthin else man. Somthin I can only aspire to be. Either you or NBN...

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?

I don't really think so. The snake tempted Eve, and she liked the idea, and she brought it to Adam and he liked the idea too. There's no implied malice in Eve's bringing something she saw as good to share with Adam, and he's just as responsible for listening to her as she is for listening to the snake and bears similar consequences. Women get pain in childbirth and I think men get snakebites? (Which is also sort of the snake's punishment, to be hated and killed by man.)

Now, the whole Lilith story, on the other hand, is pretty misogynistic in my opinion--I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure she was rejected because she was too uppity, and Eve was created to be more docile. But I think that story may be mostly apocryphal, come to think of it.

It's all apocryphal if you go back far enough. The decision to classify "this" as canon and "that" as not was just a big committee meeting. They left out some good stuff because it didnt' fit the political model they wanted to build.

I had originally wrote this big old long reply, with scriptural references and everything, then lost it, but basically, what clodfobble said!!

If you read the text, God BLAMES the serpent for deceiving the woman in the first place, then punished both Adam and Eve, showing the first recorded "every action has a consequence" theme.