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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George S. Montgomery who wrote (24015)	7/30/1998 1:39:00 PM
From: Skipper	Respond to of 108807

Hi George, The Luzon pagans seem to have based their society on careful observance of their environment and the laws of cause and effect. I think this is easier to do in a simple environment, i.e. few neighbors, just the basic concerns of life. In a large, complex society such as most of us live in, there seems to be a greater risk of bizarre religious and political ideas, and their attendant conflicts. Someone recently labeled this area of concern for me "environmental psychology". I wonder whether a beneficial society can exist on an indefinitely large scale? Skipper

To: George S. Montgomery who wrote (24015)	7/30/1998 1:43:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

This is gonna be seat-of-pants subjective, but to me "pagan" more or less equates with "animist". This is the vast grouping of beliefs which share a theme: that the natural world is suffused with the spirit or spirits of god[s]. Native Americans are animists. The old Greeks were transitional animists. Nexct to their Olympian abstractions they dealt in nymphs, dryads and other spirits dwelling in living things. I suspect that modern animism got a big boost from the widespread use of psychedelic drugs. One of these drugs' striking features is that they promote an awareness of a cosmic Spirit or Principle. Another is that this spirit-awareness is translated onto the psychonaut's material surroundings. Rocks, trees, clouds are ineffably and vibrantly alive. Apparently psychedelics (acid, mescaline, mushrooms...) unlock the mystical part of our brains, the driver for religious thought. John Ott has renamed these compounds entheogens, things which reveal the God within. Much nicer than the pejorative hallucinogens. Animistic features are present in Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism. It's the western thinkers and religious teachers who have drawn a sharp line between the spiritual and material world, leaving it stone dead. (sic) The stereotypical Christian missionary feels threatened by beliefs which allow material objects to have spiritual dimension. They arer denounced as sorcery and, well, paganism.