Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Blue Eyes Huwhyte Dragon's avatar

I can't help but note how telling it is that most pagans' response to this call out is to either quibble with the language used, to deflect, or to find ways to take potshots at Christianity.

That they can't refute what you've said, that they're focused on issues that are miniscule in comparison to what you've brought up, is all we need to know on how wrong they are.

Expand full comment
Sectionalism Archive's avatar

> Greene systematically eviscerates neo-paganism like some kind of flensing knife wielding serial killer. He lures the victim in and starts removing the skin so delicately that it doesn't hurt at all, just a bit of pressure and a cool breeze on the senses. Before long, neo-paganism is skinned, vivisected, pickled, and labeled.

Okay, enough glazing... Are you gonna give him a blowjob awhile you’re at it? We pagans responded to that post in droves with long comments. I wrote two actually, because substack has a comment length limit. If he “eviscerated” us so devastatingly, why are we not left speechless?

> All we know of paganism comes from the societies that destroyed it. As a memeplex, as a discrete and coherent interpretive rhetorical framework1, it was insufficient to the challenge in the forge of nations.

Well, no, not really. We have plenty of means of comparing different but related pagan traditions and finding out which traits are most likely to have the deepest origins. Also, plenty of pagan records were recorded by multiple different groups at different times, so they can be cross-validated. Also, your argument could be expanded to the entire record of human history.

> Indeed, polytheism is always inferior to monotheism when directly contrasted. When it's time to fight, the side with One Name to call upon always trumps the quivering thralls of the pantheon.

Ah yes, because Christians are so well-known for only calling upon one name in battle! It’s not like entire nations fly the banners of their patron saints into battle… Face it, if Polytheism was so inferior then Christians would not have spent so much time in history trying to adopt polytheistic attitudes via the cult of the saints.

> The managerial elite of the United States has a rotten core of practicing paganism at its very heart. They don't flaunt it, but they also don't allow access without it. The Comet Ping Pong Nightmare2 is a glimpse of it. The secretive retreats, the dress-up play at the LHC facility, the tunnel opening ceremony; these are all signals between elites of what it takes to participate, to belong

Occultism need not be pagan, in fact I would call something like Satanism intrinsically anti-Pagan because it is entirely focused on a rejection of metaphysical order. If anything, the most “pagan” secret society today is the Freemasons and only due to their vague association with the Rosicrucians, who were Hermeticists. But, that’s a very loose connection and obviously plenty of Freemasons historically considered themselves Christian.

> Here is the deeper truth, the ugly nightmare reality we won't be hearing from the Voices That Speak anytime soon: Epstein was not some sadistic flesh trader sitting on top of a massive blackmail generating network; he was a cog in a larger machine whose job was to identify the real freaks and perverts out of the run-of-the-mill hyper-hedonic elite and pass them up and in further for “cultivation.

A little off topic, but Epstein was a glorified pimp. The girls he was “trafficking” (paying tens of thousands of dollars to fuck celebs) were high school aged and up, he wasn’t kidnapping 5 year olds off the street and stealing their adrenochrome. Do you really think the average inner city pimp is not also working with high school aged girls? They’re already committing a crime, they’re not gonna get all conscientious when they find out the girl they’re prostituting is 15.

> Paganism always, always, ALWAYS leads to the adoption of human sacrifice as a core tenet of faith.

Human sacrifice in most Pagan societies, like all sacrifice for that matter, is a form of ritualized slaughter. Criminals, POWs, homosexuals etc were the ones being sacrificed. Societies like the Aztecs and Carthaginians are the exception, not the rule. Plenty of Pagan societies did not have sacrifice, so you’re wrong anyways, but the idea that there is a fine line between religiously sanctioned execution and human sacrifice only comes from a place of ignorance.

> This essay just refused to comply with my wishes. Even now, I am convinced it is a failure. It’s a mess, I can’t fix it, and it is maybe the most important topic I have ever tried to write about. I have backspaced for fucking weeks, trying to find the right words. Alas.

Perhaps some pagan god stopped you in your tracks…

Expand full comment
38 more comments...

No posts