Paganism and Honoring the Elements
From The Huffington Post
“My family is Jewish,” he said to me.
“My family is Protestant,” she added.
“But we’re pagan,” he continued, “and we want our wedding to have some pagan element.”
“Only we want it to be subtle,” she said. “We don’t want our families to feel uncomfortable.”
“That’s simple,” I answered. “We’ll honor the elements.” It’s a feature of most contemporary pagan rituals. “We all have to breathe. We all need light and warmth. We all stand on the earth that feeds and shelters us. We all need water to stay alive, whatever else we believe or don’t believe.”
The word pagan simply means country-dweller, although many contemporary neo-pagans are urban dwellers, as were many pagans in classical times. From the Judeo-Christian perspective, the designation came to describe anyone who was not a monotheist. Paganism isn’t really an “ism” at all. Pagan practices are specific to a time, place, and culture. Although Isis was at one time worshiped all over the Mediterranean world and the Rites of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis drew pilgrims from everywhere, no pagan community or practice (to avoid the charged word “cult”) has ever been hailed as a world religion. Yet all so-called world religions have pagan roots and practices that vary from one region to another. All the world religions have splintered into sometimes violently opposing sects. They also continue to make war against each other, or their more extreme practitioners do.
