My Word of the Week is “Metanaturality.” You won’t find it in Oxford’s. I’ve coined it because modern religion and philosophy haven’t coined a word that describes my belief system.
In recent weeks, I have been asked about my religion by four different people. This is always an odd experience because my religion is hard to explain, and it doesn’t come with a pre-wrapped evangelical sales package. Paganism is an umbrella term that encompasses nearly every kind of anti-monotheistic belief system that still uses deity archetypes. Pagans aren’t out to convert anyone because there is no unifying creed to which people can be converted. Even trying to explain “Why Paganism?” becomes a semantic challenge, because the language we use to describe our spiritual reality relies heavily on metaphysics and very little on common myths and theories of transcendental rewards.
It has been a long time since anyone has questioned me about my beliefs. My own practice tells me that when the Universe keeps throwing something at you, it’s for cause or reason. Since I do not doubt my own beliefs, perhaps I’m being asked because it is a service I can perform. That there is a need for someone to say what I can say, or for someone to hear it.
So, here is the RDC version of what I believe. I think it holds true, as a philosophy, for many other pagans, regardless of which religion has been adopted and how closely s/he follows a particular spiritual path.
I believe that the Universe is at least sentient, and perhaps even fully conscious. I do not believe it is god, because it is natural. In fact, since we and everything we experience is a part of the physical Universe, there is nothing supernatural, and therefore nothing transcendental. However, I believe that many of the phenomenon that others call “supernatural” (e.g., ghosts, after-life experiences, reincarnation, psychism, paranormal activity, occultism) exist as real, in this Universe and they are all natural occurences. We have not yet discovered and codified the natural laws that create such phenomena, but we experience them and, lacking a better method of explaining them, we resort to spiritual or religious practices to explain them to ourselves. Some of these stories may be more accurate than others, in that their analogies are more precise. The more precise analogies eventually engender more followers because they “feel true.” But all of them are stories we tell ourselves to explain what we do not fully understand.
The best of us recognize that these are stories and that we use our creative ability to draw parallels to actual physical truths; when we have better knowledge of the underlying physical truths, we can adapt the stories to reflect that. The worst of us believe the stories themselves are the truth, and stop looking beyond the analogies to find deeper meaning and connectedness in the natural world.
For here is the physical truth which underpins the metaphysics of a pagan: Everything is interconnected. Anyone who can quietly observe nature for a half a day can see this truth in action for himself. Ecology shows us how air, soil, water, plants and animals are intricately tied together. Sometimes the loss of one species in an ecosystem will presage the collapse of the whole.
And I believe that what is true on Earth, to good extent, can be extrapolated to be true for the Universe as a whole. I will use the human body as my analogy here. If the Universe is All There Is (the whole body), then it would have to be sentient, since we find sentience here. The galaxies within it would have to be interconnected, as our own bodily functions are, and even our ecosystems are, here. Every element you find in space is also a part of us. It is not by accident that there are so few Earth-like planets in the Universe. It is logical to me that Earth, which has a rare self-sustaining, organically living system, is a part of the central nervous system of the Universe. It is also makes sense to me that we aren’t necessarily the brain. If we are, then it would be Earth as a whole–interconnected, growing, and experiencing itself–that is the brain, not just the humans on it. The other possible conclusion is that we are one of several “Earths” out there. To carry the anatomical analogy forward, we haven’t found another Earth because the Universe would not require as many “brain cells” as it would other cells for other functions, as a percentage of its entire “body.”
Many people when they look at the Universe and try to find their place in it are awed, humbled, lost in and depressed by the vastness. I believe that Earth is significant, but the humans on it are not as important to the Universe as the experience of the whole is. The Universe is quite copacetic with humans eradicating themselves from its face—if it happens, it makes way for a different kind of life with a difference kind of experience to take over and inform.
This is my own philosophical belief and the premise for my spiritual and religious practice. I call it metanaturality, since I haven’t found a term already in existence for it.
As for why I am pagan, and what specific religious practices I use, it is nearly, but not quite, moot. I have a couple of traditions that I am most comfortable with, and a couple of others from whom I borrow liberally because they speak to the way my mind organizes information and tells stories. In practice, I use the rituals I need to use when I feel a need to connect into the greater web of life. The web is there, whether or not I follow a particular practice, or use a ritual. Sometimes I choose the ritual because it is simply soothing—like a call and answer or a communion service—and it helps me ground and center. Sometimes the ritual is a device for gathering energy to me, or for focusing/directing my energy outward—like a gospel song or a prayer. Since I have a very natural, metaphysical world view, I find the pagan archetypes with their animal and plant spirits and their nature deities, much more conducive to making that connection happen, and their language for explaining the “as yet unexplained” phenomena more accurate to my own experience than the language in any monotheistic belief system.
morementum 