Matters Arising

[poliphilo]

No, I couldn't go back to being a witch. It's not that I don't believe any longer. It's just that I've heard the latch click shut behind me.

If I went back I'd just be repeating myself. And I hate repeating myself. One of my problems with the Church was we had to speak the same texts over and over again. At least with Wicca I could write a new ritual every time or- even better- improvise.

I threw Christianity away. I've since had to go and retrieve it from the bushes, brush it down, leaf through the pages, draw a moral or two.

I never rejected Wicca as violently. It's more like I pushed it aside- out of my direct line of vision. But the process of reclamation is the same. 

You can't just discard things in your past. Well, I suppose you can, but you'll always feel the absence- like a phantom limb or something.

I have problems with the word belief. Why is it considered virtuous to believe- to have faith? Our society is gentle with people of faith- even when the things they believe are manifestly wrong or wicked. When you believe in something you can't prove and others- maybe- can disprove, where's the virtue in that? It just means you're a fool, an unreflective fool, a sap.

Our society pretends to value independent thought. it doesn't really. People who think things through are a nuisance. They wobble the applecart our rulers sit astride. 

That's why faith is valued. it serves the ends of the rulers of the world. The faithful are easier to govern.

You can't keep politics out of it.

So, "belief". I don't believe in anything. Or rather, I don't use that word if I can possibly help it. What I do is live my truth. This truth is certainly questionable. At lot of what I regard as truth is unacceptable to the current orthodoxy. 

But I don't think my truth contains anything that has been definitively disproved. If it does then more fool me.

And my truth is? Related to Plato's image of the prisoners in the cave. We live an illusion. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players....." OK, I've got Plato and Shakespeare on my side, but I don't feel the need to argue a case. It's not a belief but a feeling. I feel it in here. Arguments aren't going to touch it. 

And following this feeling- this truth-  has taken me through Christianity and Wicca and other changes of scenery to wherever I am now. 

Whatever I am now. 

I had to fill in a questionnaire the other day and when it came to religion I scratched my head for a while, rejected "agnostic" and put "pagan". Doesn't mean I still dance round bonfires. (Not that I object to bonfires- far from it).  Means I entertain superstitions and household gods and a profound scepticism about official dogma after the high Roman fashion. Means my mind is wide open to whatever promptings it may receive from whatever worlds are out there.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Thank you again, Tony. I'm saving this one so I can think about it.

This morning, out walking, I remembered the first house my husband and I lived in, the one with the sulphur in the closets, and wondered if I could ever (say it came up for rent) live in it again, or if I would be haunted by myself? :)

I thought then: for someone who's given up all her beliefs, how stupid that she still believes in ghosts.

What I've given up, actually, is their beliefs, whatever they are--well, the Nicene Creed and all that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

One does hear of houses being haunted by the ghosts of the living, but can people haunt themselves? I don't think I've ever heard of a case.

It might make for a pretty good story though...

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

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<iOne does hear of houses being haunted by the ghosts of the living....</i>

This reminds me of an anecdote Kate told me-

She once worked with a young woman who had recently moved into a house with her husband, and she kept seeing a man, looking puzzled and confused, standing in the hallway and then moving toward the bathroom and disappearing. He was wearing pajamas.

She said she asked neighbors about the former owners of the house, and there had only been one couple, and the man was now in a nursing home with Alzheimers.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I remember a much cheerier story about a house that was haunted by a bunch of little children. Eventually the owner met an old man who had lived there as a child and he told her how he'd been having vivid dreams about running round the old home with his sisters.....