NATURE WORSHIP: - Wicca and witchcraft or other shamanic attunements akin to the kind of ethic and awe the great and beautiful (FREE) North American Indians had before the arrival of the 'civilized' men from the Old World. "A Guide to Nature Spirituality Terms

Selena FoxFounder and leader of Circle Sanctuary, an internationally linked Nature Spirituality resource center and Shamanic Wiccan church based in Mt.

Horeb, Wisconsin. Animism: ancient philosophy that views everything in Nature as having an indwelling spirit/soul, including the plants, rocks, waters, winds, t tires, animals, humans,

and other life forms. Animism is the foundation of shamanism and has been considered the earliest form of human religion on planet Earth. {Sorry, philosophy students, who are often told Aristotle and his work 'Anima' is original, these same students aren't told about his Secretum Secretorum which is an alchemic treatise covering what he was taught that he sent to his pupil Alexander the Great.

}Earth-Centered Spirituality: honoring the spiritual interconnectedness of life on planet Earth, often as Mother Earth or Gaia, but sometimes as a gender neutral Earth Spirit. Sometimes called 'Earth religion' and 'Gaian' (Gaean) religion.

Related Eco-Christian form is Creation- Centered Spirituality. Ecofeminism: feminist environmental philosophy that draws parallels between the oppression of women and the oppression of Nature by patriarchy and which advocates the spiritual and political liberation of both. Goddess Spirituality: revering Nature and honoring the Great Goddess in one or more of Her many forms.

Usually polytheistic and sometimes multicultural in practice. Usually incorporates feminist perspectives. Heathen: Another name for Pagan. Many contemporary practitioners of Teutonic nature religions prefer this term for themselves and their spirituality. Nature Religions: religions that include an honoring of the Divine as immanent in Nature. May be premodern, modern, or postmodern in philosophical orientation.

Usually polytheistic, animistic, and pantheistic. Include traditional ways of various native peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, Polynesia, Europe, and elsewhere; religions of ancient Pagan cultures, such as Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Minoan, Assyrian, Celtic, Teutonic, and others; and contemporary Paganism. Nature Spirituality: honoring the spiritual interconnectedness of life not only on planet Earth but throughout the Universe/Cosmos; ,ore encompassing term than Earth-Centered Spirituality because it also includes Celestial religions; used by some as synonymous with contemporary Paganism and by others as also including interfaith blends, such as those that combine Paganism and Eco-Christianity or Eco-Buddhism.

{Is nature worship doing the denominational rag and differentiating itself with real intent to discriminate of claim special status?}Neo-Pagan: Contemporary Pagan.

Pagan: pertains to a nature religion or a practitioner of an ancient and/or contemporary nature religion; also used to refer to a Nature Spirituality, Earth-Centered Spirituality, and/or Goddess Spirituality group or practitioner. Pantheism: the Divine as immanent; the Divine is in everything and everything has a Divine aspect.

Panentheism: Pantheism that also includes a transcendent component conceptualized as the Sacred Whole or Divine Unity. {Use and misuse of language allows epithets and degrading remarks to minimalize or depreciate very similar concepts. Is it not better to say religion is 'what you DO?' and not what rationalistic construct that might move your thought at some moment?}Polytheism: honoring Divinity in two or more forms.

{Does that include the three as one or one in three 'Trinity' originally taken from the Triune Nature of Man?} Can be belief in/worship of multiple aspects of a particular deity; of the Divine as Goddess and God; or of many Goddesses, Gods, Nature Spirits, and/or other Divine forms. Some, but not all, polytheistic nature religions acknowledge an all- encompassing Divine Unity.

{This seems more 'open' and less than the kind of anthropomorphing that ego often does. }Shaman: an adept who serves as healer and spirit world communicator for her/his tribe or community. Sometimes known as a 'Medicine person'. This role is tribal culture/community defined. Shamanic Practitioner: someone learning and working with shamanistic healing practices for self-development, and in some cases, also for helping others.

Sometimes known as a 'Medicine worker'. This role is self-defined. Shamanism: animistic spiritual healing practices usually involving trance (ecstatic) and spirit world journeys by adepts. Forms of shamanism include 'Traditional', which are rooted in specific indigenous tribal people's cultures, and 'Multicultural', which are contemporary forms that integrate old and new spirit wisdom from more than one culture.

{Does this seem to be an 'open' and positively ecumenical spirituality? Why would there be any problem if anyone and indeed everyone started to learn all wisdom?}Wiccan Spirituality: contemporary paths rooted in one or more nature folk religions of old Europe. Also known as the Old Religion, the Craft, Wicca, Wicce, Ways of the Wise, Neo-Pagan Witchcraft, and Benevolent Witchcraft.

Witch: some Wiccan practitioners use the word "Witch" for themselves in connection with their spirituality to bring back its pre-Inquisition use in Europe as a term of honor and respect, meaning "medicine person/medicine worker," "shaman/Shamanic practitioner," "wise woman/man," "priestess/priest of the Old Religion.

" Other Wiccans refuse to use the word "Witch" because of later negative definitions of the word which led to its use as a tool of Pagan genocide and religious oppression in Europe and North America for hundreds of years. {Do you know when it ended? Did it end when Blasphemy Laws were overturned in England in 1951? Some would like you to believe it ended when the last person was burned at the stake in Seville, Spain in the early 19th century.

It still exists in career and government as well as social situations. Therapeutae like Jesus and Pythagoras or other syncretic religions are definitely the real models of discipline that are "Witches"!} During the "Burning Times" of the Middle Ages, bigots in power changed its definition, making it a term linked with evil, and used it as a brand to mark and exterminate folk healers, {The supposed one god church actually believed illness was created by "sins and demons".

The guilt trips are more refined as time allows more control and programming through the destruction of open discussion and free-thinking. } those who refused to convert to state-sanctioned forms of Christianity, political rivals, and others. Contemporary usage of the word "Witch" by non-Wiccans is diverse but in recent years has been changing in academia and elsewhere {IT is the position of the American Psychiatric Association that trances, and possessions, are mental illness.

They do not study or deal with the soul and most avoid discussion of it, but when pressed are only acting out the old propaganda and prejudice still. Anthropologists seek to make Trances an area of specialized study and these scientists (?) want to create a legal and druggable disorder called 'Trance Possession Disorder Syndrome'.

Real disorders including hallucinations do exist, and are treatable by witches and shamans. Vitamin B is often a missing ingredient in the nutritional intake and stresses or coping skills must be learned. Compassion is better than drugs and even massage or acupuncture work better in many studies such as one done at the U of Toronto in 2000.

This author may be right when she says there is a "growing awareness" but that awareness may be managed to a degree she does not know. } to reflect the growing public awareness and understanding of Wiccan Spirituality's reclaiming of the word. ?(1)In fairness to psychiatry they are equal opportunity drug pushers and will drug a Christian with visions, too.

There are many instances of religious obsessiveness and out of control behavior. One of the worst, is believing you have the right to lie to people about things like ECT in order to meet societal goals. That, of course is the subject of discussion in our 'Science' segment and it is no great mystery. Deepak Chopra has a little input of value to balance my overly passionate comments.

"If bliss is basic to life, there should be a physical counterpart for it in the body, and indeed there is. According to Ayurveda, the body's counterpart to pure joy is a subtle substance called 'ojas', which is extracted from food once it has been perfectly digested. Like the doshas, ojas is just on the edge of being physical; one could call it a subtle substance that registers on both mind and body.

The final and most valuable result of eating a good diet is to extract every drop of this subtle substance from your food. That enables the cells to "feel happy," to experience the cellular equivalent of bliss. {Do you think attuning and visualizing with the process helps?}Twenty years ago, the idea of a happy cell would have made little sense in scientific terms.

Now we know that the body in fact is capable of generating a complex network of chemicals (neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and related molecules) that the brain uses to communicate emotions throughout the body. It is also known that a single meal can change the brain's biochemistry quite radically. A brain chemical connected with feelings of well-being, such as serotonin, goes up and down in response to the food being digested in the intestinal tract.

This has opened up the exciting possibility of a "food pharmacy" to correct depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders, just as fiber helps to control cholesterol. In Ayurveda {A very ancient herbalistic shamanic process related to Nyaya Yoga said to date back to 6000 BC. } we can bypass the bewildering complexity of brain chemistry.

Nature has given us ojas, a single substance for happiness that the body makes all the time. ?(2)For me Nature worship of the modern variety is whatever works (!): and the wholistic integration of the mind body operating system that has knowledge. Science has learned such things as the lymph system and chakras act to bring soulful knowledge to our soulful potential. Author of Diverse Druids, Columnist for The ES Press Magazine, Guest writer at World-Mysteries.

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Author:
Robert Baird