The only interesting elements I found when reading around *Paganism*, were the works of Bill Yeats. Not only do I find his poetic cadence strangely hypnotic, but try reading something like
The Song of Wandering Aengus, sat with a person you love, with a carefully prepared picnic, on the edge of a wheat field that is sided by a mature wood of Ash and Hazel and the feeling of liminality (certainly for me anyway), brought a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat – maybe that was just the wine though?
Personally, I have absolutely no doubt that Yeats is the most authentic of all modern “Pagan” practicioners. Although his poems are superb, of a universally high quality, and (in many cases) laced with Celtic/Bardic/Pagan references, the over-arching “system” he and his wife George created is as impressive as anything expounded by Dee, Crowley, Gardner or Aquino.
“A Vision”, like all good magical systems, relies on layer upon layer of meaning, sometimes seeming utterly contradictory. If you are lucky, and get a “picnic in the wheat field” moment, then this perceived dichotomy drops away. Literally the “scales fall from the eyes”, if only momentarily.
Like all Magical systems, it is undeniably open to ridicule, disbelief and scepticism, but as other posters on other threads have noted, the concept of “does it universally work?” is a nonsense – It worked for him, as he states:
“I put The Tower and The Winding Stair into evidence to show that my poetry has gained in self-possession and power. I owe this change to an incredible experience’.
Whilst his “Vision” can be taken, at the centre point, as a study and effects into phases of the moon, it can also be expressed as a system that uses the workings of “sacred trees”, that is to say trees sacred to the Celts of Ireland in prehistory. This may be an area that is of particular interest to your bro, GR?
Whilst much of what is touted as Paganism is a BS construct of the 20th Century – and can be “traced back” (as the current initiators of these movements claim) to whatever original source, it is undisputed that nature worship, of a specific nature was observed by these peoples.
Tacitus wrote of the Pagan tribes (in this instance of the Germanic tribes, but there is good reason to postulate these practices occurred across the face of “barbarian” N. Europe), nearly 2,000 years ago, and had this to say:
“the grove is the centre of their whole religion. It is regarded as the cradle of the race and the dwelling place of the supreme god to whom all things are subject and obedient”.
Like I say, you can enjoy the man for his poetry, or his magic, or indeed for both. But certainly never, for neither.
