(As an aside, I’m also posting this over at Per Sebek, due to relevance.)

Now, I know religion can be a touchy subject for some, and for those who are Pagan of some sort, it can be a subject they are unwilling to talk about due to a fear of harrassment. I get it. However, I don’t think that can really justify the notion that all these little pagan groups need to cut themselves off from anyone who doesn’t agree with them, as if somehow an alternative experience or view point might be the cause of the apocalypse.

‘They’re just a troll, ignore them’. I find this excuse somewhat pathetic. Sure, some might be genuine trolls, and fair enough, if they’re genuine trolls, so be it. But if it’s more of an issue of someone saying something you don’t like, or maybe expressing a belief that’s not necessarily one you hold, I am not inclined to call troll. I don’t think cutting yourself off from alternative perspectives helps anyone, and I think it gives the perception of a closed community, one that is conformist and not accepting of differing views.

This is something that irritates the shit out of me. Just because they don’t see your God in the same way doesn’t mean their experience is any less valid. It just causes animosity and frustration and the sort of energy that says ‘you should conform to the way we see the Gods’.

As an example, one argument I remember seeing over and over again on a certain pagan forum was the whole Aset/Isis debate about whether They were separate Gods or not. (Don’t get me started on it; I am sick of these kinds of arguments.) I could also lump into this all the other threads about experiences with varying Gods and who It might be and such. There were times when people were told it can’t be X because X doesn’t appear/behave/talk/etc that way (with or without ín my opinion’ disclaimer).

I just… Gods are not so simple. We experience Them in ways that we will understand. It’s a very personal and individual relationship. The face They show me might not be the same face They show another. Who are we to say whose experience is invalid because their experience with a certain God doesn’t add up to the way you see Them? They’re not characters from a TV show. They’re Gods, ffs. Get some perspective. >.<

I also think it’s rather dangerous to immediately dismiss someone who’s had a different experience than you. It can lead to isolationism and a definite fear of Others who think differently. You can say you’re protecting yourself from abuse, but it’s a hollow excuse and I don’t buy it.

Djehuty once told me that wisdom can be found anywhere. I agree with Him, and I appreciate the freedom both He and Sobek have given me to explore my own spirituality wherever I happen to wander to.

Learning about another faith, or even talking to someone who believes different things to you, can teach you shitloads about your own faith, and I think that’s far better than running away or outright ignoring someone because someone says something that doesn’t agree with your view of X.

You can’t grow spiritually if you don’t question your own faith and occasionally hear stuff you don’t like. Spirituality is not supposed to be easy. Challenges build you up and strengthen your character, and your own beliefs. Seeing something in a different light can often be what you need to grow, even if it goes against what you currently believe. If it hurts, so be it. Earn your faith, don’t just accept it and expect it to remain unchanged, as if you’re merely babysitting an electronic pet. Take the hits, deal with the consequences, and perhaps there’d be more understanding between differing groups rather than bitching and animosity.

So says me, apparently channeling Set. >.<

There. I’m done now.

I still remember her telling me once to go home, home meaning the UK. I’ve never forgotten that, and I suppose that’s when I had this dawning sense of being half-English. Okay, if I’m honest, a third Australian, a third British, and a third Welsh. Mum’s mother’s family are Welsh, and Granddad carried a Welsh flag when he used to march with the Normandy vets in the ANZAC Day marches.

I suppose part of my ignorance/apathy towards the British side of my ancestry was that I didn’t particularly see them as vastly different cultures, even though I know intellectually that they are. Okay, so I’ve always had a love of Britain and British things and the UK is somewhere I have wanted to visit for years. Still, I never really saw it as a second ‘home’ like I do now.

It was in this realisation that I figured out where I sat on the republican/monarchist side with regards to Australia, and the British side of me won. In spite of the fact that Australia is rather much like a republic anyway, cutting ties with Britain would, to me, feel really wrong. It’s not a rational, fact-based argument for me. It’s tied in with my identity, and my half-Englishness. Both Britain and Australia are my home.

It’s funny, I remember my mum telling me that my (paternal) gran didn’t like mum because she was too English, and she felt she was bringing up her grandkids to be British rather than Australian. I suppose I was doomed from the beginning. Even later, I felt gran wasn’t as keen on me as much as my brother because I was too like my mum.

You could argue that identification has stuck in my mind and I’ve grown into it over the years. I mean, shit, even I’ve noticed my vowels are becoming more British.

And yet… I have such an attachment to Australia and the places I’ve grown up here that it would be impossible for me to cut ties with Australia. I’m still wholeheartedly and proudly Australian. If you live on the same land long enough, you become part of it. No matter how much I might yearn for other pastures, I grew up on this land and I’ve lived most of my life here. I know the plants, the seasons, the animals, the way the year progresses. I have a connection to this land and cutting ties with that would feel the same as cutting ties with Britain. Both are important to me.

I think the internet has vastly changed the way humans perceive the notion of ‘community’ and ‘nationality’. Nations are not just bound by physical borders; Indeed, I’d argue that a nation is only as big as the people who belong to it, whether by self-identification or by acceptance by the wider community. The internet allows for people to belong to communities or ‘nations’ in a way they might not’ve been able to do before.

I think even more now than before there has become a need to label and identify yourself, to announce/declare to the world who, where and with what you identify. You, as a person, are judged based on your identification before anyone gets to know you. I realise this has always been the case, that people judge before they get to know someone, but my point is the internet makes it stupidly easy to merely list every group or affiliation or identity we hold, and reduce ourselves to a group of words on a profile. I think in doing this we are selling ourselves short, and turning complete people into tiny little bits of information. The different groups we identify with are not seen as smaller parts of the whole, they are seen as separate things, separate sides, and we have to juggle these differeing sides so that one group doesn’t find out about the others.

I’m doing it all the time, juggling my queer, pagan side with my other sides. Every time I join a new group, I’m constantly trying to judge how much and what information to tell them. Which side do I show to them? Which would they be most accepting of? Which groups am I willing for them to know about? Which ones will I hide? I think it causes more fractures than anything.

*sighs* I think I have run out of thoughts. But at least I got this out. I don’t think I can use this for the unit I was thinking of using these thoughts for, but I’ll have to find some sort of angle I can use that I’m interested enough to research. I am not convinced my tutor will be as open to my strange ideas as the tutor I had last semester who allowed me to interpret an essay question in such a way that it allowed me to discuss God, religion, alien/UFO cults and the Mongolian Empire. But we’ll see. I’ve got the week to find some angle that might interest me so I’ll leave it for now and head to bed.