FEDERAZIONE
PAGANA
At the WCER
congress,
Bologna 26-29th
August 2010 c.e.
THREE BASES
FOR A PAGAN TRADITIONAL
ETHIC IN THE
PRESENT WORLD
Warning: In these pages I make a wide use of the words “Pagan”
and “Paganism”, even though I know that these words aren’t adopted or approved
by every group here. But since I’m going to talk about some general principles
that should be common to several ancient non-monotheistic traditions and since
here in Italy we are used to hear many people saying that Italian tradition is
only catholic tradition, I’ve decided to use the word “pagan” only to mean a
tradition coming from these ancient non-monotheistic religions.
The theme of this congress is “Traditional
Ethics” and many of the delegations here will talk about their own ethics and
their way to follow their tradition. But since here there are many traditions
and the Federazione Pagana
itself gathers people from different traditions without choosing one in
particular, I would like to propose to this meeting three of what we consider
cardinal points, three bases for a Pagan traditional ethic in the present
world.
The first is the consideration
of what we call tradition: we usually mean something that comes to us from the
past, that has been handed down to us. Sometimes, this is also considered
someway unchangeable. But we should ask ourselves what do we take from the
past. We must be aware that there has been a gap between Europe’s pagan past
and our present days: this gap is due obviously to the arrival of monotheism
and can be wider or narrower according to what country or culture we are
considering, but certainly there is one. Baltic religions probably suffered
less of this gap because they really preserved part of their culture, but for
what concerns Pagan cultures of Southern Europe we must admit that this wound
has been considerable. Even though I know there are people who prefer to
believe that Paganism always continued, we must understand that many of the
sources and interpretations of ancient religions have a Christian point of
view. Many tales about Celtic and German gods and goddesses, for example, but
also some descriptions of ancient gods come from Christian writers, who had a
so different view about the world and the deity that we can’t fully trust on
their tales. The presence of monotheism also forces us to often define our
worldview and so our ethics in opposition to monotheistic worldview and ethics.
Sometimes only the shape of
ancient religions remained: if you’re going to visit Venice, you’ll find that
there are many statues depicting ancient gods, statues that have been cast or
sculpted during the Christian history of Venice, but this doesn’t mean that
Venice remained a secretly pagan city. Venice’s rulers used ancient gods as
symbols and we can admire the statues, but can’t assume their meaning as a
pagan one.
This looks like a dead end: how
can we take a tradition from ancient religions if we risk to assume
monotheistic features? Well, first of all studying our ancient religions and
traditions, but we aren’t here to make simply historical reconstruction, we are
here because we are religious people, so we have to apply a concept well
expressed by Cicero, the Roman orator, while explaining the meaning of the word
religio. Religio
is the Latin word from which the word Religion comes; in particular, Cicero
insisted on the opposition between religio,
the committed practice of religious acts, and superstitio,
superstition, the mere repetition of the act without paying attention to it.
This means that we have to put ourselves, with our sensibility and ideas, all
ourselves in the religion and so in the tradition and in the ethics we
practice. We must experience it. Our religio
is the attention we put in our practices towards the gods and the world and
it’s the presence of this attention that makes those practices religious.
So the first basis is: personal
commitment in the relation with the traditional past and in religion itself.
Values must be felt, not coming from above us.
Why should we pay so much
attention to the world? To answer, let’s begin talking about the second basis
for a traditional ethics: the ancient idea of gods and goddesses and the
relation they have with us.
As Pagans, when we say “the
goddess of the Earth” whatever her name is, we don’t mean that there is a
goddess somewhere in the sky playing cards with so-called “powers of the
earth”; we mean the earth herself, or at least her divine part. When we say
“the city of Bologna”, we simply mean Bologna, and not something else that
rules over Bologna. The same is when we say “the goddess of the Earth, the god
of the sky” and so on. The acknowledgement of this fact leads Pagan people to a
respectful relation with the world, other Human Beings included. This respect
was called by the Romans pietas, and from this behavior other
institution of Pagan religions have originated. This respect has more to do
with harmony with the surrounding world than with awe of the world, because
it’s due to the acknowledgement of the gods’ presence inside the world. Since
the gods are inside the world, we can’t be outside it and this is why we pay a
“religious” attention towards the world and must respect and be in harmony with
it, because we are part of it and in it we are linked to the Gods.
So the second basis for a pagan
ethic is: respect and harmony with the world, since it’s in the world that we
experience the presence of the gods and towards the world, towards gods and men
(erga deos
and erga homines,
as the Romans used to say to define the pietas) our ethics is directed.
And here is the third point:
starting from the world, our traditional ethics starts from the present, not
only from the past, as we said before. But the word “tradition” has another
important aspect, that is our third basis for a Pagan ethics. The word comes
from the Latin traditio, that in turn comes
from the verb tradere, to deliver. Not only
what is delivered to us, but also what we are going to deliver, to hand down to
future generations. From this point of view we “adapt” the tradition:
considering what we get from the past and what we want to live in the present
and pass on to the future. The tradition we get is certainly worthy of honour and respect, but even more important is what we
choose to pass on: even towards the future generations we have to apply the
respect, the pietas, with the due personal commitment, the religio. This attitude also prevents us from giving
too much importance to the formal aspects of the tradition, to the detriment of
its inner values.
So the third basis is this: to
think to tradition and therefore to traditional ethics as to something to pass
on, more than something we receive, so that to assume an active role towards
the past. Like the Roman god Janus who had two faces, one towards the past and
one towards the future and was the guardian of the doors, so everyone of us
should find a balance between past and future in the construction of a pagan
traditional ethics in the present world.
Manuela Simeoni
FEDERAZIONE PAGANA
EUROPEAN PAGAN MEMORY DAY