Despite thinking often about my beliefs, my connection to mother earth and the fact that we are all part of an interconnecting whole, I haven’t tried to categorise or label it as part of any particular group. I have just thought of it as my own path and one that feels so blindingly obvious to be true that it didn’t need to have a label attached to it. But this week someone lent me a book on Paganism: Paganism, a beginner’s guide by Teresa Moorey. Interestingly, despite not knowing what Paganism is, something within me felt repelled as though there was something to be feared within. Nevertheless I decided yesterday to read it and was pleasantly surprised to find myself and my own perceptions and actions described within its pages.

Within the introduction Moorey says ‘pagans happily acknowledge their unrestrained love of life and its pleasures, but they also undertake responsibility, for themselves, humanity and the earth’. It goes on to encourage us to ‘explore further for yourself. To think for yourself, for life is an exciting journey; you select your own path in your own way’ and to ‘Take your time to reclaim your personal heritage and your links with the earth, and discover the joy and fulfilment this can yield’. That describes me and my journey completely. I had no idea that paganism was about that; my inner feeling towards it had been images of some kind of mystical cult that wore robes, had dreadlocks and carried out rituals that were weird and intimidating. Where does that ignorant judgement come from? I didn’t consciously know I held those thoughts but when I thought about the word ‘pagan’ that is what I felt, so it must have come from somewhere.

‘Pagans love and honour the earth as Mother Goddess, celebrating her cycles and receiving her gifts with joy. They feel a part of all that lives in animals, plants and the soil itself and so they treat all with respect.’ All this echoes just what I have come to believe and is what am trying to create across this landscape and it isn’t from having been given this set of guidelines, but rather this is what I perceived when I stopped and listened to the land when I asked it the question: ‘what do you want me to do?’. The wisdom is all there if we stop and shut ourselves up for a moment so that we can hear it. Paganism seems therefore to simply be the wisdom of reciprocal respect that exists when you live connected to and working with the land. Perhaps that explains that the word ‘Pagan’ is derived from the Latin for ‘rustic’ or ‘peasant’. That latter word too conjures up a negative feeling within me, as something that is lesser and to be looked down upon. Interesting how we have such feelings and images towards certain words. We are given such a bias by society and we don’t even realise it is there.

For me, another compelling attraction to Paganism that is described in the opening pages of this book, is that it ‘makes no claims to being the only right way. There are no creeds and no single source of ‘Truth’.’ Pagans are nature-worshippers that come from all walks of life. They find joy and a sense of true belonging in places of natural beauty and many pagans are found within healing professions. They are also about rediscovering and putting into practice, old traditions and wisdom, whilst leaving destruction behind. So with this new perspective, I am and, unknowingly have always been, a pagan then. Interesting that I had an inner aversion to the word and what I thought it represented. This aligns with the inner aversion I had to parts of myself that I discussed a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps I have uncovered the source, but I don’t think that matters anyway. The question is what to do now.

According to Moorey, pagan worship is about ‘action, rather than belief – about what you do, how you feel, the rhythms of your life, how you participate in the world around you’ and it is the journey that counts. Paganism is a mystical thing that can’t be communicated or defined but I resonate deeply with what I have found in this book so far. I like even more that there are no rules or dictations as we are all individuals and need to find our own relationship with our experience on earth in this lifetime and, then do what it is that feels right to give our soul a sense of purpose. Finding that requires quietly listening to ourselves with no expectation or judgement. What we find within may be surprising but may also bring about a sense of understanding and clarity, as well as a sense of our soul belonging to something much deeper, richer than ever could have been imagined.