Indeed. In this vein, I remember feeling a wake-up call after reading Robert Fuller’s book “Spiritual but not Religious”, which traced the history of alternative spirituality movements in America. I realized that movement after movement had replaced its predescesor(s), e.g. Transcendentalism, Freemasonry, Theosophy, Spiritism, New Thought, Transcendental Meditation, etc. This made me wonder if Wicca and Paganism were not the current vogue in this same lineage of alternative movements, to be replaced soon enough by something else.

Nowadays, it seems like that just might happen. A self-destruct sequence seems to have been initiated around the label “Pagan”, and if enough people keep that going, that’s going to be the end of this movement – to be replaced by what? I dunno. Perhaps “Polytheism”, newly separate from various green spiritualities and naturalistic spiritualities. Or not. Maybe all will still find a way to play happily together. Who knows?

I also very much agree with what Alison has to say about hard polytheism. Our overall culture puts a lot of emphasis on physical reality and de-emphasizes/de-values the very real but non-physical aspects of human experience (or worse reduces the significance of these by interpreting them as merely mental processes). For many Christians if Jesus did not literally rise from the dead and physically ascend into heaven, than the whole Christian tradition, the sense of meaning and purpose derived from participating in the Christian community and the very real and powerful spiritual experience that many Christians have, is a baseless delusion, without real value. I think some of these same forces/values (either knowingly or not) are at work pushing paganism toward a harder, more literalistic theology. (I think of this as a kind of metaphysical materialism.)

I think B.T. is correct that naturalistic paganism is also an attempt to legitimize pagan beliefs and practices from within (as oppose to against) the modern scientific understanding of reality. Not surprisingly my own turn toward a more naturalistic spirituality occurred in college when I was studying science. I came to feel that my belief and desire to believe in a world with a supernatural magical superstructure with all its enchanting denizens of gods, devas, faeries and the likes could not be justified, that I could not justify such beliefs to my scientifically minded colleagues. I didn’t give up my spirituality as some would, but reinterpreted it within a naturalistic framework. Now my own sense of spirituality is so enmeshed with a naturalistic worldview that supernaturalism seems to me to be a diminishment of meaning compared to a naturalistic/humanistic view of religion.

“Right now, there are many folks out there experimenting with different solutions — some borrowed from more mainstream religious traditions, , some set up as alternatives to redress problems of the mainstream.”

Alison, can you give some examples of what you are thinking of?