NEOPAGAN SYMBOLISM

Today’s lecture has two purposes.  First, we will deal with the legends, meta-legends, and conventions that form the basis for most Neopagan ritual.  Then we will discuss the purposes behind a witchcraft initiation, and walk through the one that the graduates of this class will perform.

NEOPAGAN SYMBOLISM

Today’s lecture has two purposes.  First, we will deal with the legends, meta-legends, and conventions that form the basis for most Neopagan ritual.  Then we will discuss the purposes behind a witchcraft initiation, and walk through the one that the graduates of this class will perform.

 

1. Theology/Thealogy

 

Theology and thealogy (the alpha-ending, Thea, being the Greek feminine ending) are outlined to show how Neopagans relate to their own and other people’s choices of gods.  The hook on which this will all be hung is that most of the Gods represent facets of human experience personified.

40 Meditation Exercises as listed in the Path of Purification

By Bhikkhu Khantipalo

 

If one has no meditation teacher from whom one may request a meditation subject, then one has to rely upon one’s knowledge of one’s character in order to prescribe for oneself a suitable meditation. There are forty meditation exercises (kammatthana) noted by the great teacher Buddhaghosa as being suited to certain types of character. For the purposes of meditation, he considers six characters: faithful, intelligent, and speculative (in which the skillful roots of non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion are variously dominant); and greedy, hating, and deluded (in which greed, hatred and delusion, the unskillful roots, are dominant). The trouble here is twofold: firstly, very few “pure” types can be found, most people being mixtures of two or more of them — and moreover ever-changing mixtures; and secondly, it is rather difficult to judge which class one’s character belongs to since one’s own delusion and pride are apt to blur one’s judgments.