Being Pagan is a matter of adopting (in many cases changing) our worldview to a different, and an older way of Seeing and Being, and making them relevant to us today.

However, can we really talk about a contemporary “Pagan Worldview” when our Pagan community is so eclectic and diverse in its beliefs and practices? I think we can.

What is a worldview and why is it important? A worldview is an everyday description of the world that shapes and guides our lives, helping us to understand, explain and explore the world around us and everything in it, and how these are all related to each other, by giving us a way in which we can see them. In this sense then, it is: “a comprehensive and connected framework of one’s basic beliefs about things and their relationships.”

Thus we speak of a worldview as entailing “basic beliefs”: matters of general principle or ultimate questions, issues of real importance to human life (for the purpose of this article “Worldview” is not synonymous to “cosmology” or “theology”, although both of these do touch and shape much of our worldview).

Many people are looking for understanding and wisdom and some, such as contemporary Pagans, also look back to the past for hints about how others once found it, and this is a good path to follow as the past has indeed much to teach us. But looking back into the past can be a struggle especially for Pagan seekers because mainstream religions often strongly disapprove of people looking too far back into the past, especially since these religions fail to comprehend that Pagans do not live in their cosmological universe.

Because as Pagans we tend, as a rule, to embrace A Nature Spirituality, we also see the world in a holistic way. We see the connectedness and unity of the living and nonliving and strive for the preservation of our planet’s ecological balance. We also recognise the need for a new synthesis of the best of older spirituality with the scientific.

While most organised religions have never accepted science in either its rigidly materialistic or more open-minded aspects, Pagans are in fact uniquely positioned to begin what has been called the “re-enchantment of science”. To non-Pagans, this “magical thinking” is anathema, but it seems that science may find itself converging with “magic” in the very near future - a process which in fact may have already begun.

Mainstream religions “win” the “struggle of the spirit” in a totally different way - they win when people do not really question where the features of their worldviews come from. In the old days the church converted rulers, got influence over the laws and killed the “heretics”. This took many centuries but the religious authorities made a mistake in their planning, believing that to become “a true follower” of their religion a person had to rigidly embrace the worldview as designed by the church, without questioning - forgetting and ignoring the reality that it is within our nature as humans to question.

Part and parcel of the standard Pagan Worldview, ancient or modern, is a sense of the Sacredness of the Land; that the Sacred Land is alive and inhabited by spiritual forces ranging from Gods, a large variety of spirits to the souls of the dead, and that all life emerged from the Land or from Nature, and that all will return to it cyclically, on the tides of birth and death.

The relationship between men and women is also vital to the modern Pagan Worldview.

Pagan mythologies often present men and women as being created simultaneously, not one before the other, or one from the other or one for the others. Men and women have different biological functions with respect to reproduction, but no spiritual, mental, or any other ontological inequalities (ontology refers to the nature of being as well as the basic categories of being and their relations). Man’s physical strength is not here to hold down and control the feminine, but to protect it and support it, for the feminine is the source of his life and his generations. There is a great reciprocity between the sexes, they are needful to each other, and Pagans tend to stand strongly on this issue - as all should.

Pagan polytheism is exceptionally egalitarian. It grants its Goddesses (and by extension, their priestesses) an importance comparable to that of its Gods. For example, on Mount Olympus there were six major gods and six major goddesses. Whatever faults one may want to find with polytheism, however much one may question the equality of rights accorded to the old Gods and Goddesses, at the very least the issue was raised. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam there have been, for all practical purposes, no discussion whatever. The structure of power and its sharing is never debated between Christ and his Mother: whereas it is discussed between Zeus and Gaia. It is not argued between Christ and Mary Magdalene, but it is between Zeus and Aphrodite. In fact, within these high monotheistic religions, no feminine figure, has enough character to argue over a power issue, as does, for example, Athena with Poseidon, Aphrodite with Dionysus, Hera with Zeus, etc.

However, this does not mean that polytheism is superior to monotheism – as for me that would be contrary to the very idea of a plurality. But I do think that polytheism does, for today’s world, more adequately represent an already inherently pluralistic reality. Why replace a male monotheism with a female version? Both patriarchal and matriarchal values are corruptible if you set one before the other

In Paganism, for the most, there is also no sense of “hard absolutes” - there is ambiguity in all things, for Nature herself is nowhere clear-cut. Humans must decide, within the context of every situation, what actions are proper and try to bring their actions into alignment with whatever course brings about a harmony. This worldview requires humans to be flexible and responsible. Because of this, there is no sense of the necessity of salvific revelations or the prophets and saviours of revealed religions; “revelations” for those who live on the Land, and who live as part of the Land, are in fact ongoing For most Pagans, the “meaning” in/of of life is not to be found at life’s end, or at the end of the world, but every day, in every action and breath we take.

However, when refering to “end-of-times” beliefs, I have been speaking in very very general terms.

For example in Heathenism (Norse mythology), Ragnarök - often rendered as “fate of the gods”, though earlier sources used the term Ragnarök, Snorri Sturluson in the Prose Edda spelled it Ragnarøkr (sometimes Ragnarøkkr), which means “Twilight of the Gods” - refers to the eschatological battle that will end the current cosmic order. It will be waged between the Aesir, led by Odin, and the forces of chaos.

What seems eschatologically unique about Ragnarök is the central role of precognition amongst the participants, as the gods (specifically Odin and Frigg) know through prophecy exactly what is going to happen. However, though they realise that they are powerless to prevent Ragnarök, they are still described as facing their bleak destiny with both bravery and defiance.

This unavoidable conflict is thought by many scholars to represent the ordered world (the Æsir) eventually succumbing to the unavoidable forces of chaos and entropy (the giants).This is similar to the representation of the children of Uranus in Greek mythology and the creations of Tiamat in the Enuma Elish as the primordial forces of chaos.

However, even here, one should recognise that Ragnarök is not simply a moral conflict between dualistic notions of good and evil like the Christian notion of Armageddon, but rather it is the result of extended, intricate conflict between the Æsir and those allied with chaos.

In a “contemporary Pagan Worldview”, Ragnarök can perhaps be seen as the end of one expression of creation, and with the death of the old Gods, the opportunity of the birth of a new world.

In 1942 Julius Evola (Barone Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola - May 19, 1898 - June 11, 1974 - an Italian philosopher, esotericist and author) wrote:

“What most distinguished the pre-Christian world, in all its normal forms, was not the superstitious divinisation of nature, but a symbolic understanding of it, by virtue of which every phenomenon and every event appeared as the sensible revelation of a supra-sensible world. The pagan understanding of the world and of man was essentially marked by sacred symbolism.

“Moreover, the pagan way of life was absolutely not that of a mindless innocence, nor a natural abandonment to the passions…. It was already aware of a healthy dualism, which is reflected in its universal religious or metaphysical conceptions. Here we can mention the dualistic warrior-religion of the ancient Iranian Aryans…; the Hellenistic antithesis between the ‘two natures’, between World and Underworld, or the Nordic one between the race of the Ases and the elementary beings; and lastly the Indo-Aryan contrast between sams’ra, the “stream of forms”, and m(o)kthi, “liberation” and “perfection”.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Pagan Worldview has a strong emphasis on the presence of the Otherworld, the immense reality that lies beyond the boundaries of our own human perceptions and notions, and which occasionally breaks through into our “world” in exhilarating ways. This great presence is the force behind pagan myths and legends and the single, pervasive principle by which otherwise inexpressible universal truths can penetrate the world and mind of man or woman. This reality can be seen as the source of Divine inspiration.

Myths reflect inner states of attitudes of mind at the deepest levels of thought and feeling, Myths also enclose belief systems in metaphorical terms. In today's society we can understand that while myths are not meant to be taken literally, they do contain a layer of historical fact along with their storehouses of insight into social customs and psychological states.

A myth is also a support for meditation upon one's own relationship with oneself, with others, with Nature and with the Sacred. For each myth there is more than one possible and valuable interpretation, the value that it brings being determined by its effect.

Myths are complex. They do not lend themselves to simplistic or dogmatic teaching. The adventures of the mythic personage are movements of consciousness; and therefore they illustrate our interpersonal conflicts, our relationships, and our participation in the Sacred - as such insight, and not doctrine, is the result.

SOURCES:
- http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rauhn/ancrelig.htm;
- http://ulfjoronen.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/choosing-a-path/:
- http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~faithact/study.htm;
- http://pagantheologies.pbworks.com/Eschatology;
- http://www.unicorntrad.org;
- Wikipedia;
- Reclaiming the Pagan Worldview: The Heart of Mysticism and the Return of the Old Ways by Robin Artisson;