Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal

By Clifton S. Clifton and Christopher Penczak

Selections of poetry, art, letters, and articles from the past forty years, which reflect the history of modern Paganism, are compiled in this richly illustrated anthology that features works from Ralph Metzner, Diana Paxson, Antero Ali, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Anton Wilson, Starhawk, and others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Page Books
• Release date: Nov 26, 2008
• ISBN: 9781601639721

Book preview

Chapter 1.

New Pagans

Introduction

by Chas S. Clifton

EFORE THE 1970 S , EVERYONE KNEW WHAT A PAGAN WAS . That was someone who ate, drank, and made merry, never giving a thought to what happened after death when they would face the awful judgment of God—and, boy, would they be surprised to learn about Hell. But in 2003, New York University Press would publish Michael York's Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion as a serious theological book. Quite a bit had changed in thirty years! Paganism—or various Paganisms—was increasingly seen as designating a collection of new religions, new forms of old religion, and (among the most liberal-minded) could be applied to older animistic or tribal religions that had persisted through the centuries. Green Egg was a big reason for this shift in thinking, because it brought Pagans of all sorts together, rather than serving only one Wiccan tradition, Druid order, or whatever.

Neo-Paganism sought new ways of thinking about religion.¹ It was no longer a case of monotheistic believers versus atheists. As Isaac Bonewits writes in his Aquarian Manifesto (he briefly used Aquarian almost synonymously with Neo-Pagan), Aquarians—NeoPagan, NeoChristian, Agnostic or of any Faith—are by definition tolerant of ALL Pro-Life Beliefs and Organizations. They do not proclaim the existence of any One-True-Right-And-Only-Way; but rather that every Sentient Being must find her or his own Path.² The contrast with the Abrahamic religions could not be stronger.

Tony Kelly, a British Pagan writer, produced an essay called Pagan Musings, which was widely reprinted in the Pagan press. It makes the point that our religious innovation and creation started with sheer wonder at the cosmos: We have walked in the magic forest, bewitched in the old Green Thinks; we have seen the cauldron and the one become many and the many in the one; we know the Silver Maid of the moon-light and the sounds of the cloven feet. We have heard the pipes on the twilight ferns, and we've seen the spells of the Enchantress, and Time be stilled. Not just wonder, but also sadness permeates this piece, a sadness of shrines neglected, old gods and ways forgotten, joy trampled under repression. And so he promises that days of Pagan wonder can be reclaimed.

As the new American Pagans found each other through Forum letters and advertisements in Green Egg, members of different groups began to see what they had in common as Pagans. The statement Common Themes of Neo-Pagan Religious Orientation was a beginning in the process that would produce Professor York's book thirty years later. It includes declarations of ecological wholeness, of an integration of Eros and religion, and an affirmation of the multiplicity of divine forms. This declaration, in effect, makes the point that divinity can appear within the material world, the tangible [and] sentient, as York would later write. And it calls for religious freedom to be extended to Pagans too, foreshadowing a struggle for recognition that continues to this day.

The Neo-Pagan Alternative

by Erinna Northwind, Church of All Worlds

AYDAY , 1971. M ANKIND SEEMS to be locked into a course of Terracide; the murder of the planet upon which he lives. The process involves, among other things:

1. A combination of willful apathy and real helplessness; lack of control over his institutions. Man cannot focus his attention on the problem or get excited about it. Apathy prevents him from acting individually and from organizing to do what he cannot do individually.

2. Inability to distinguish real values from symbols. Not only real enjoyment and happiness, but health and safety are sacrificed in favor of acquiring symbolic wealth and social status.

3. Profit-motivated proliferation of the use of materials and processes not fully understood, with no assurance of the harmlessness of the given use.

It is well-known that both overcrowding (lack of private space) and sex-repression produce fatigue and depression in the individual, among other ills. Both require the victim to develop a rigid, insensitive outer shell as a defense.

He can shut out the world by (going into his shell.) A person whose shell is sufficiently thick may actually experience reduced sensitivity in his skin, and may interpret pleasurable and painful stimuli conversely.

This shell enables him to shut out painful (or pleasurable—therefore painful) contacts, but it also shuts him in. His perception of reality outside himself is distorted. He cannot experience events normally. He may feel like a spectator in his own experiences.

Denied authentic experiences, he lives in an inner world of abstractions and symbols. His thinking becomes inhuman, machine-like. His aims and actions, while preserving a lunatic logic of their own, become irrational in relation to any normal interpretation of reality; inhumane, and rigidly patterned. He cannot himself test abstractions against reality to determine their relative validity. Hence there are hardly any limits to how far his fantasies can go. He is left suggestible to any appeal that does not attack his basic fears or excite his defense mechanisms.

Thus he can be brainwashed to accept premises any sensible person would dismiss as nonsense, such as: that it is immoral to steal a loaf of bread from a supermarket, virtuous to let one's family starve for want of it, commendably good business to misrepresent the weight and the contents of the bread one offers for sale, and one's civic duty to punish the bread-thief. Or, that we are condemned to eternal torment for the sin of coming into existence; that the God who condemns us is all-powerful, yet at the same time is unable to save mankind from hell except by submitting his only son to unspeakable tortures; that we please this God by suffering and self-mutilation, yet must regard him as a loving father. As Tom Paine put it while still a child, any human father that behaved that way would be hanged.

That society in the mass is afflicted with these malaises can be seen in the artificial lifestyle that is accepted as standard. People today live so far removed from direct contact with natural realities that they have only the dimmest ideas of how or where their food is produced, far less any idea of what the surface of their planet is like in the wild state. Many see the sky only through a veil of dirty air.

These causes of human impotence, seemingly a tangle of many strands, are merely different aspects of a single phenomenon: defiance of the elastic and gentle laws (but laws nonetheless, with definite penalties for violation) of Nature.

Man defies Nature by exceeding wise limits on his own numbers, and reproduces the behavior of overcrowded laboratory rats: he turns to sexual perversions (of which chastity is the most bizarre), he fouls his own nest, he kills his Children. He defies Nature by rejecting reality in favor of symbols; by exploiting Nature's mysterious powers without first understanding them, in the arrogant belief that there is nothing he does not know. The most primitive creatures that could be called human knew better than that.

The Church of All Worlds attempts to get at and correct the root causes of Terracide before the crime can be fully accomplished. The tools used include:

1. RELIGION. This is merely saying that there are processes we don't understand yet, and therefore we must not exploit them carelessly. But neither can we afford to ignore their existence, because by doing so we may run afoul of them. Since we do not understand them fully, and perceive them only intuitively, we can best talk about them metaphorically, in the language of myth. There are certain things we must do that bring no immediate concrete gain, yet we must do them for an object bigger than our individual selves: the saving of the planet. It is a religious act to use bio-degradable, phosphate-free detergent, which may be more expensive than the polluting kind. By acknowledging the religious nature of these concerns, Neo-Pagans are fighting apathy with a very powerful, very old force: the instinct to worship, which can be, and is in the case of the Church of All Worlds, superstition-free. Certainly a CAW Neo-Pagan is freer from superstition than the hard-headed businessman, who values figures on paper above a life richly lived.

2. RETURN TO NATURE. By getting his fingers in the Earth the typical alienated man of today may experience healing of his riven self. Living close to Nature and working in cooperation with Her to produce his necessities and pleasures, daily experiencing the flavors of raw life, must work to reacquaint man with his own nature.

The natural environment is capable of pouring into us masses of subtle information about our own nature and identity and about the universe and our place in it, if we will only approach and be receptive. CAW works to preserve and restore natural wilderness, and to provide opportunities for people to experience contact with Nature and participate in producing their own food, by health-giving organic methods.

Members of the Church of All Worlds are asked to search for the difference between healthy natural desire and neurotic compulsion, and be guided by the former. Thus we serve Nature manifested in ourselves. We are encouraged to turn to Nature as a source of spiritual refreshment and bodily health, so that we can be of more use to ourselves and to our human family.

3. SMALL-VILLAGE LIFE. The Church of All Worlds is working towards establishing new communities to bring institutions down to manageable size. We wish to rely increasingly on the use of village-scale institutions of our own making, which are controllable, and work out solutions to them using our own cognitive apparatus and intelligence. This is in sharp contrast to the method in use today.

People are accustomed to having their personal problems, values, goals and methods selected and defined for them and imprinted on their passive brains by means of the hypnotic tube.

CAW's motto, Thou art God/dess, is particularly relevant when we realize that most of humanity's problems come from thinking that someone or something else is God: money, the great father in Washington, the Church, our parents, General Motors; whatever we allow to make our decisions for us. When a man shares Godhood with all Nature he has the freedom and responsibility to act in his own behalf. He and no other is the architect of his own life. He and no other is responsible for his own decisions.

The Church of All Worlds is Paganism grown up. Where the ancient Pagans bowed before awesome Nature in their own helplessness, Neo-Pagans make peace with Her in the strength of our terrible technological arsenal. In maturity we know our power to preserve or destroy, and we also know on what we depend for life, and what it is we must be careful not to destroy but to preserve.

GE Vol. IV, No. 39 (5/30/71) 3–4

Reprinted, GE Vol. VIII, No. 70 (Beltane 1975)

The Rising Tide of Pagan Tradition

by W. Holman Keith

(author of Divinity as the Eternal Feminine)

NUMBER OF TRENDS ARE EMERG ing at this dawn of the Aquarian Age: the ascendancy of woman, the emancipation of sex, the shaking of the foundations of our secular and spiritual institutions. We are at the crossroads, and a choice of path must be made. Science, technology and collectivism are the prospects of the future—all of which tend to robotize man. Or, regression because of human failure and folly on a wide scale to the ancient rule of violence and force. If a great religion is to counter both of these possibilities it will be a religion in which man's deepest sensibilities are re-awakened as to the divinity of Nature, sex, the human person, as to the sacredness of life as of both time and eternity, aid as ideally and rightly itself the worship of the Divine. Of all the new religious developments of our time this presents the livest and profoundest issue.

In the days of the Apostle Paul, Diana of Ephesus and Her craftsmen who lived from the trade of Her cultus caused the Apostle some uneasy moments and no small opposition. The days of the great Temple at Ephesus were numbered, and Demetrius and his silversmiths were identified not with a lost cause—not in the larger perspective of history—but with their own utterly inadequate and unworthy version of the Goddess truth, in which commercialism predominated. This timeless truth was not timely at this stage. Christianity was to prevail, as both the destroyer and yet incorporator of Paganism. The Temple at Ephesus (one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world) and the Temple at Jerusalem were both to pass off the scene.

But the truth of Nature, sex and femininity as divine manifestations of Supreme Being—to which the Temple of the Seven Wonders bore witness, however unworthily, as did an earlier temple at Jerusalem in its sexual rites—this truth is more durable and beautiful than those great worship centers of antiquity which were destroyed. This truth cannot be destroyed. Its recovery and full realization ethically will not mean a return of the decadence of Greece and Rome, reflected in their depraved debauchery, from which the asceticism of primitive Christianity was a rebound. This latter may have been the only possible and right response at the time, for all the right-thinking and well-intentioned, Christian or otherwise. But not to mention the ascetic excesses that developed in the early Christian Church, that were often unwittingly a kind of sensuality in reverse and a perversion, such austerity could not rehabilitate the flesh and its pleasure into any kind of nobility. Such precisely is the ethics and esthetics of the Goddess faith. Spirit must elevate and ennoble all the fullness of sense, in the name, spirit, and worship of the Divine. This is the only alternative, by the highest idealism and in the long run, to the debased sensuality that drags the spirit down into a loss of its integrity.

The ancient fertility faith and Goddess worship persisted well into historic times, even after the patriarchal social revolution, in such cult mysteries as those of Ishtar and Tammuz, Aphrodite and Adonis, Cybele and Attis, and in such great worship centers as those at Cyprus, Cyrene and Ephesus. The worship of Goddesses as subordinate to the All-Father (Zeus or Jupiter) persisted of course until the fall of Greco-Roman polytheism, brought about by the triumph of Christianity. This triumph must be re-assessed, in the name of an older and a newer truth.

The Goddess Venus, for all the Romans, including Emperor Augustus, the most proper Roman of them all, was the exemplar, guarantor, guardian of the effulgence of life, in Nature, in history, in human affairs and high adventure. For the Pagans the grandeur of Rome was inseparable from the glory of Venus, Venus Genetrix. The neo-Dianic religion—Aphrodisian, Feraferian, Wiccan—in claiming an indispensible truth and message for our time and crisis, is seeking to awaken the modern mind to a glory of the Divine that is lost to our orthodox religious thought. The complete routing of the Goddess truth in the three great monotheism except for certain disguised and minor survivals, principally in Christianity, made its eventual and triumphant return all the more inevitable. And the living Goddess will mean more in this day of desperate coming to grips with life and reality than in pre-Christian Paganism.

GOD IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE GODDESS!

GE Vol. IV, No. 41 (Lughnasadh 1971) 6

The Very Model of a Modern Esotericist

by Bill Beattie, from Shadowplay

(with minor tweaking by Otter G'Zell)

Sung to the tune of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General

by Gilbert & Sullivan (from Pirates of Penzance)

I am the very model of a modern esotericist,

A seasoned astral traveler and an edifying exorcist,

A sparkling star astrologer, a dead adroit necromancer.

A dab hand as a palmist and a card as a Tarotmancer.

I've folk tradition lineage—both Celtic and Germanical;

I've channeled Robert Heinlein and I've busted cults Satanical;

Elusively mysterious in Eleusinian Mysteries,

I've proven eighty-three per cent of Velikovsky's histories.

My patent aphrodisiacs would make a satyr hornier;

I've manufactured unicorns in northern California.

In short, in matters magical I'm manic as a terrorist;

I am the very model of a modern esotericist!

I am the very model of a modern esotericist.

My mystic methodology's inherently empiricist;

I've tread the Cretan labyrinth on pathways that I travel on;

I won't deny the rumors that I ghostwrote Mists of Avalon.

A truly great Great Riter and a master of tantrickery,

I'm up the Shining Pathways ‘til the Guardians are sick of me.

I dazzle Neo-Pagans as I breakdance round the Wicca ring

And, miracle of miracles, I even stop them bickering!

I've raised the ghost of Crowley in a Gnostic Mass invoking in

Sumerian, Bavarian, Etruscan and Enochian.

I'd sing another chorus, but I have to see my therapist;

I am the very model of a modern esotericist!

GE Vol. XXIV, No. 95 (Yule 1992) 2

Biotheology: The Neo-Pagan Mission

by Tim Zell, Primate, Church of All Worlds

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article was originally written in mid-1971, about nine months following a profound Vision I had on September 6, 1970, of our entire Earth as a single great living organism—a revelation I articulated the next weekend as a sermon to the congregation of the Church of All Worlds, titled TheaGenesis: The Birth of the Goddess. I finally published it as an article in Green Egg #40—Litha, 1971. I followed it with an ongoing series in each issue over the next few years, expanding upon the implications of this paradigm; this piece was the first of those sequel articles. For this and my other writings of the time, I coined the term Terrebios—later Terrabia (f.) —Latin for Earthlife. This was in accord with the convention of scientific nomenclature in which Greek names are used for extinct creatures, and Latin for living ones. However, when, a year later, British atmospheric biochemist James Lovelock published his first essay—a letter to the editor—on the Earth as a living organism (Gaia as Seen Through the Atmosphere, Atmospheric Environment, 1972), in which he used a variant of the ancient Greek name Ge, as proposed by novelist William Golding, I replaced Terrebia with Gaea or Gaia in my own subsequent writings and reprints. These writings were widely reprinted in other Pagan periodicals of the time, having, according to Margot Adler, a profound and transformative impact of imparting a passionate sense of mission and purpose to the emerging Neo-Pagan movement. –OZ, 4/17/08

E NOW KNOW THAT OUR PLAN et, Mother Earth, is inhabited not by myriad separate and distinct organisms, each going its own way independent of all the others, but rather that the aggregate total of all the livings beings of Earth comprises the vast body of a single organism—the planetary Biosphere itself. Literally, we are all One. Further, we now realize that the being we have intuitively referred to as Mother Earth, The Goddess, Mother Nature, The Lady, is not merely a mythical projection of our own limited visions, but an actual living entity, Terrabia, the very biosphere of Earth, in whose body we are mere cells. Forced by this discovery to re-examine our. religious language and conceptualizations, we have arrived at the following definition of Divinity (which, incidentally, includes within it the essential nature of the Divine as expressed by all other religions): Divinity is the highest level of aware consciousness accessible to each living being, manifesting itself in the self-actualization of that being. Thus the living Biosphere is Goddess in Her evolving self-actualization. As in the corporate body of the great planetary organism we are all One, so are we all God! (More correctly, we are all Goddess, since Mother Earth is of feminine gender.) This concept has been recognized, though not heretofore fully understood, in the basic aphorism of Neo-Pagan religion; the phrase. Thou art God.

For generations untold people have looked in vain outside themselves for their Divinity—seeing an image reflected in the macrocosmic mirror, they recognized not their own selves, believing the image was in itself reality. In a sense, all religions are true, as they all describe that image mere or less accurately, but all before have failed to recognize that what they experienced was not without, but within; not transcendent, but immanent. Thus we see that the Humanists are right: God is Mankind. Also correct are the Pantheists in their recognition that God is all Nature. Even the Christians touch upon the truth when they realize that God is revealed in the forests, the glens, the meadows.... The religious experience of mystics, which seems to show them the naked face of God, is actually an experience of coming into complete attunement with this highest level of aware consciousness, often verbalized as a vision of The Clear White Light.

Unfortunately, this experience of meeting ourselves face-to-face is all too rare, and generally interpreted with little comprehension and less insight. It can be brought about by intense meditation, fasting, sexual or religious ecstasy, or by various hallucinogenic chemicals. In all cases, the experience itself appears to be identical: an experience of total beingness, of ecstatic revelation. When it reaches the level of whole-species identification, it is known as Gemeinschaftsgefühl: The Oceanic Experience, as described by Abraham Maslow, who says that the ability to have such experiences is one of the qualities of self-actualizing people. To anyone having such an experience, the phrase Thou art God becomes not merely an interesting philosophical speculation, but an amusingly obvious statement of an a priori fact of existence. It is equivalent to stating Thou art That, or I am alive!

Thou art God! This bold proclamation of immanent Divinity is the cornerstone of the entire Neo-Pagan philosophy. Everything else is derivation. (Spoken while standing on one foot...) Heinlein says all that groks is God. The key concept here is included in the word grok. It is commonly understood to mean a kind of total empathic understanding, in which identity of subject and object merge into One. To say all that groks is God, however, and to be able to say thou art God to a grasshopper, entails either stretching this definition, or including it in a larger concept. Let us submit that such an all-embracing concept of grokkingness might be that of self-actualization: becoming what one potentially is (evolution). To say that a being groks, then, would be to say that it is being fully itself. To grok something would thus be to relate to it with ones full potential.

Thus, all plants and wild animals, all biomic organs, Terrabios, and the universe itself, grok. Self. Oneness. Identity. Purpose. Place. Only man and some of his domesticates do not, as a matter of course, grok. Only we do not instinctively know who we are and act accordingly. (We must recognize, however, that this root of virtually all human suffering is also the root of virtually all human greatness. Without the possibility of failure, success is meaningless.) So man has little species awareness, and kills his fellow man. So he has little life awareness, and exterminates other species. So he has little environmental awareness, and desecrates his planet. And of course, man has too little self-awareness, and destroys his own being with his fears, anxieties, hates, doubts, and purposelessness, which he institutes into his religions, so shaping his societies.

For too long has man searched for his Divinity—always in the wrong places; without himself, rather than within. Prophets have glimpsed the truth, and have tried to point the way: You are God(s) (Elohim) (Psalm 82:6, John 10:34). Yet man has insisted on searching above, beyond, in stone, cloud, ether, whirlwind, pillar of fire or cathedral. And behold, nobody out there answered him. Not finding God where man looked, man concluded that God was dead, or never was at all.

And yet always there were some who did look inward, and knew. They found Divinity within themselves, and turning outward, saw this same Divinity manifest in each living creature, and in trees, seasons, sex, nature—Life itself. They celebrated Life, and their joy was an affront to the deadened sensitivities of the death-dancers, the Puritans, the monotheistic followers of the fanatic priests of anti-Life. And the celebrants of Life and Nature, the lovers of the great trees, the naked dancers of moonlit groves, were called Pagans—country people—and they were hunted out and put to death.

Monotheism is a synonym for genocide. The ancient Hebrews, waged war on the uncircumcised; the Moslems killed the Christians, Hindus and Jews; and the Christians—most efficient mass murderers of all—have decimated the ranks of American Indians, Jews, Africans, Islanders, Asians, and each other. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. The only good Gook is a dead Gook. And by their witch hunts, inquisitions, and stake they virtually exterminated our Paleo-Pagan predecessors.

But we are a Phoenix. In the midst of the most monolithic monotheistic state ever erected, Neo-Pagans are arising, coming together. We have rejected the sterility of transcendent Deity, and have found Divinity where it was all along: within each of us. Thou art God! Goddess bless us, everyone!

What, then, is the particular function of Neo-Paganism in the vast organism of Terrabios? As the only cells of the Noosphere yet to recognize the unity of our entire Biosphere, we are inevitably in the vanguard of the advancing consciousness that will ultimately result in the awakening of the great planetary Mind. Yet at this moment, in the hour before Dawn, we find Terraba—our Earthly Biosphere, our Great Mother Earth Goddess—is already dying from cancer of the brain. And what is worse, we find that this cancer is we ourselves—Mankind. We have met the enemy and he is us (Pogo). What can we do? Well, first we must cure the cancer. Of course, it is highly possible that the cancer may cure itself through radiation therapy—a global nuclear holocaust—but at what price to the Earth? Some have said that the Earth would probably be better off without man, but decapitation is a rather drastic cure for a brain tumor.

No, it is plain that the solution depends on Mankind awakening to a sense of his function and responsibility as a vital organ in the larger body of the planetary biosphere. It is an essential duty of all aware, intelligent people—and Neo-Pagans especially—to get behind every peace, ecological, and population-oriented movement we can find with all the support we can muster; to work for increased awareness and sensitivity of all to our present crisis; to initiate and encourage massive responses, creative and constructive, all levels. If we succeed, a glorious new stage in planetary evolution awaits us. If we fail, we lose all. For if Terrebia dies, we die with Her.

How can we shine this light into eyes blinded by generations of living in darkness? By telling about it, of course, but most of all, BY LIVING IT! We must each live our own lives as conscious Gods: aware, courageous and resolute. We must show by living examples what Man can be—and help others to follow in our footsteps. We must ourselves continue learning—growing and grokking—and become as guides and torchbearers to others who seek our path. We must establish alternate societies and communities, in which humans live in eco-psychic harmony with themselves, each other, and all life of their biome, demonstrating on a small scale the larger role of mankind upon the planet.

We must spread this message by any and all means possible, until it appears to all people everywhere as clear and as obvious as sunshine, and we must learn and teach others how and what must be done. If nothing else (and it is a great deal else!), it is a matter of survival. It is estimated by ecologists, that, at our present rate of population growth and environmental desecration, our Earth (and, just incidentally, Mankind) has less than thirty years of life. WE MUST SUCCEED! Or die trying....

GE Vol. IV, No. 41 (Lugnhasadh 1971) 67-8

Sabbat Songs

I hear the spirits beckon call

In quiet, wind-borne whisperings;

And Mother Earth has given birth

To dark, enchanting mysteries.

Come and sing the night with me;

In Sabbat songs our lives commune.

And we will love with heart and mind,

And dance with Sun and Moon.

See the fires upon the hill

Whose flames proclaim the Sabbat ground,

And hear the drums that bid us come

With pulsing, vibrant sound.

Below the castle towers we'll run,

While kings and Christians sleep,

And sing the ancient Sabbat songs

As through the flames we leap.

Those vernal flames will warm our blood,

And autumn winds will chill our souls.

You will wear your crescent crown,

And I my crown of gold.

—Samm Dickens, CAW

GE Vol. VIII, No. 75 (Yule 1975) 10

Common Themes of Neo-Pagan Religious Orientation

Abstracted from meetings of the ecumenical Council of Themis Califia South Members, Summer 1970

Polytheism

Polytheism begins with the Female and Male principles, the Goddess and God, or Divine Lovers, from Whose love all creation is derived. The multiplicity of Goddess and God individualities are aspects of the infinite variety of creation stemming from Goddess and God. Slightly revising a saying, it may be asserted that the omnipotence of Divinity is merely another word for Its polytheistic unity. We find agreement with Star Trek’s Vulcan Edict that the glory of creation is in its infinite diversity; and in the myriad ways in which our differences combine to create beauty and meaning.

Freedom of Worship

Through religious practice we, as individuals, strive to intensify and expand our experience of Divinity and our sense of dynamically harmonious relation with Great Nature.

Worship, as an essential part of religious practice, is both a venerating of and a communing with Divinity. Because people are unique individuals, we differ in our images, conceptions, and experience of Divinity and in our ways of worshipping this Divinity.

Therefore, freedom of worship is an indispensable condition of our development and fulfillment as human beings, so long as our worship is not seriously hurtful to others.

Full support may be asserted for Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observation.

Pantheism & Ecology

Nature is Divinity made manifest, the perennial Love Feast of the Divine Lovers, Goddess and God, made manifest. It is creativity, continuity, balance, beauty and truth of Life.

Everything we encounter in the biosphere is a part of Nature, and ecology reveals the pattern of that is-ness, the natural relationships among all these things and the organic unity of all of them as a biospheric whole. Thus ecology shows the pattern of humanity's proper and creative involvement with Nature—that Nature which encompasses our own life and on proper relation to which our life and development depend.

Of all humanity's secular studies, ecology comes closest to bringing us to the threshold of religious relationship to our world. Ecology not only confirms the wonders of form and function that other secular studies have revealed, but it brings these into organic union with each other as one dynamic, living Whole; and it points out the conditions for the well-being of both this overall Unity and the parts that compose it.

An intensive realization of these conditions, and of one's own immediate role in their sustainment and development, brings one to the threshold of religious awe. To worship Nature, therefore, is to venerate and commune with Divinity as the dynamically organic perfection of the