“[Indigenous Peoples] are busy trying to survive. We should not be claiming continuity with them and appropriating their political capital in an effort to acquire some kind of legitimacy.”

Thank you for that, Sam.

For non-Native Americans to be claiming to be indigenous is just a new round of colonialism. From what I’m seeing in other fora, it is actually alienating the very indigenous people I assume some meant to ally themselves with. Again, I think what we have here is non-Indigenous people speaking to and for non-Indigenous people, and not taking into account what actual Indigenous people are saying (and have been saying, for decades and longer). And tokenism doesn’t count; I’m talking about community-wide principles and standards.

Defining groups from the outside is generally a bad idea. While I don’t identify much with the current state of the Contemporary Pagan/Neopagan community, it is true that, by the technical definition, my earth-based, polytheistic tradition that combines cultural survivals with revivals of older practices, is “Pagan”. But I don’t understand Americans who claim to be “traditional” (of any culture) but then perform their rituals in a kind of Generic, Neo-Wiccan structure, or who profess to follow an ethnic tradition but aren’t doing anything to preserve those cultures. Often they seem to know very little beyond the basics about the cultures in question.

I’m also bemused that some think “reconstructionism” and “traditionalism” are distinct, rather than overlapping, categories. I can’t really speak to non-Celtic traditions, but from what I’ve seen as a Gaelic Polytheist, and one of the founders of the Celtic Reconstructionist movement, we are not just sitting around with books and trying to slavishly recreate ancient history. My practice is largely focused on what has survived in the living Gaelic cultures. When we don’t have a surviving practice, we have to piece things back together from a combination of recorded folklore, Old Irish manuscripts, and even archaeology. But these things are only augmentation to what survives. If you grew up in a community that lived these traditions, that’s “traditional”. Once you do anything to augment it or put the pieces back together, that is “reconstruction”. If you are filling in perceived gaps with things from other cultures – that’s an eclectic or syncretic practice and outside the umbrella of reconstructionist or traditional.

As anyone who has worked with me over the years knows, ecstatic practice is a big part of it. But if you’re adding in bits based on UPG, you need to have the checks and balances of people who know the culture well before you assume that what you came up with is harmonious with that ethnic tradition.

While designations between different types of earth-based religious traditions are useful and important, these definitions need to arise from the groups in question. And they do. We’ve all had quite a lot to say about these things. It’s frustrating to feel like those who are trying to define others haven’t been paying attention to these community definitions. I join so many others here who find the designations proposed at the Parliament to be inappropriate and largely inaccurate.

Fortunately, Assman gets right to the point, in Chapter 1.

I submit that the term has failed, in this sense: after all these years it still elicits a negative response, a flinch, from people not, themselves, in the “community.” Even for that group most bonded to the term – Wicca – the case is that where Wicca is socially accepted, it tends not to be called “paganism.” It tends to be called…Wicca.

“Paganism,” as a term, is devoid of content aside from the fact of not being Abrahamic.

There is a fine text which might point the way toward a more useful term. It’s “Moses the Egyptian” by Jan Assman. What Assman does is look at Abrahamic but also Akhnatenite monotheism (he links the two) from the outside, as Christianity looked at nonChristianity in deriving “pagan.” His term for the monotheisms is *counter-religion*. What he means by this is that the prevailing characteristic of monotheism isn’t so much its belief in one God (an unstable basis for identity) as these religions’ insistence on *anathematizing and rejecting other religions.* In short, intolerance.

This term, counter-religion, is one we would do well to put into the air, as it were. What is it,finally, that each of us, whether Wiccan in Spokane or Hellene in Athens, reliably has in common? This thread has pretty well established that it isn’t any sort of indigenous status. It isn’t being Earth-based (which would exclude Hellenismos that follows Orphicopythagorean lineage, as well as much of the Indian traditions). It isn’t polytheism. It’s that we tolerate each each other, to the point of being ritually allowed to participate in each others’ rituals.

Forget about dividing us between “indigenous” and “NRM.” Accept Wicca as a modern irruption of the indigenous.

They, the Abrahamics, are *counter-religion*. In other words, our collective posture toward Christianity is “You are exclusivist. Fine. You are a counter-religion.” Notice that we would also now have a way to bring progressive friendlies within the Abrahamics, whether Sufis, Kabbalists, or Gnostics, who certainly wouldn’t call themselves “pagan,” under our tent. We, who once were “pagan,” now take up the mantle of “religion.” Of course we’d need to tweak that so as not to confuse the public.

“World Path.”
“PanReligion”

Or shorten the California “pagan” meeting, “Pantheacon,” and derive from it: “Panthea”

The short 16 year history of the Parliament shows that great advances in communication and understanding among religious leaders have been achieved. I really do appreciate the hard work of the Pagans, neoPagans, and others who have been involved in calmly and articulately presenting the many and varied practices and beliefs of “us” to religious leaders who used to reject us, and are now willing to have meaningful conversations with “us”.

This may make little difference in our own personal practices. But it can eventually make a HUGE difference in reducing persecution and getting our rights recognized around the world.

I do have a complaint, however. Those of us practicing Southwest Asian paganisms have been left out. Where are we, the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Mesopotamians, Sumerians, in their definition? I’m not entirely surprised we’re not there yet, since we are often not as well organized in a public presence as neoPagans, neoWiccans, Brit Trad Wiccans, etc., and various European oriented Reconstructionists.

I look forward to the PotWR continuing to further communication and understanding among religions. And i look forward to the eventual inclusion of Southwest Asian pagans, and others who have been omitted from the dialogue.

Look, I have nothing against Ed and the work he has done to try and report on pagan news. But I have never found him to be terribly articulate as a writer or as a speaker (and I have read plenty of his articles and heard him speak in a number of different contexts). And perhaps by doing this kind of writing more often his skills will improve. Perhaps not.

But in the meantime, it may be best to simply consider the source and read carefully to make sure there may not be a possible distortion of meaning stemming from a lack of clarity of language. In other words, we should all approach journalistic accounts in as discriminating a manner as we might, say, an account of someone’s magical initiation by their Scottish grandmother.

I read passages like the following and immediately the writing instructor in me starts wielding a red pen:

“This has been considered a derogatory term by many faiths, and seen as insult to many including members of Hinduism, Buddhism, Native and Indigenous faiths. They each desired that they be seen as an equal religion with their own title and definitions to be used. In this, by agreement, Paganism is not used to directly describe any faith simply because it is not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. This agreement has allowed each faith attending to put aside the use of this word as a central description of their faith.”

This kind of writing would very likely not pass muster in most legitimate news venues (although these days online news “reporting” does tend to contain a surprisingly-high incidence of misspellings and grammatical errors), but since Ed does not (as far as we are aware) have an editor going over his work before it is published, this is what we end up having as an example of reportage on this important event. We may wish for it to be more clearly written, but it’s certainly better than having no reportage at all. And I for one appreciate the perspective of someone who is there in person. I attended the first Parliament in Chicago in 1993; I’m afraid a two-week trip to Australia (or Barcelona) is not within my modest means as an adjunct professor.

BTW, I have been reading the resulting discussions with great interest, both here and on the Wild Hunt Blog.