Reincarnation

                             ME    :   Tony Kelly

   I have given what might loosely be called a proof of reincarnation which doesn't depend on arbitrary belief or on the dubious interpretation of supposed memories.  Summarising it: I'm alive and aware now and might be expected to be in this state of being alive and aware for something like an average lifetime before I die.  Now if I first came into existence at the beginning of this life, and if when I die I cease to exist for ever after, it's remarkable that, of all the vast stretch of time from the remote past to the immensely distant future, during most of which I have no existence at all, the present moment of time by sheer chance falls in the tiny period during which I am actually alive and aware.  It's so improbable a chance, in fact, that it can be rejected.  So the fact that I am actually alive and aware now in the face of this extreme improbability means that I must also have been alive and aware during the infinite past, and will also be alive and aware during the infinite future.

   But who am I who am eternal?  And what in fact is proved or disproved?  What is disproved are all possibilities in which there is any special or unique change.  An actual time of coming into being would be a special change as would be a time of ceasing to exist for ever after; so too would be a change involving the escape from a cyclic existence into ‘a state of perfection’ (whatever that might mean) or into a state or unstate called Nirvana' (whatever that might mean).  All such changes would be special, or indeed unique, and so they can't occur within a finite time from the present moment, which is the same as saying that they can't occur at all.  So my present life must be an essentially unspecial life in a series of unspecial lives.  This is not to say each life is identical with others, or that all lives have been or will be in human form, but rather, that no life in the infinite series of lives could be picked out as being in any way specially different.  Of course I might, let's say for the moment, have been a king or a queen in a past life, or a beggar, or a rattlesnake, or a fly or a gooseberry bush, but all these are essentially variations on a theme, a continuous evolutionary chain all the way from an atom and what went before to what I am now.  None of them requires a sudden break; no point in the chain or chains is a special point.  So let's look back into history.....  Who is that queen who emerges from the mists of the past?  Was that me?  Or what of the beggar at the town walls?  Was that me instead?  What if I were both the queen and the beggar at her walls?  Was I the fly that bit the beggar's nose?  Or was I the whole swarm of flies?

   Let's not become entangled looking for answers to these questions (There probably aren't any) but let's think about the questions which are far more interesting than any hypothetical answers.  If I have any special connection with a particular person, creature or gooseberry bush in the past, I know nothing of this connection, not in all the infinite past.  Will I sometime in a future life perhaps acquire a memory of my past lives?  No, I won't, because if at some time in the future I were to begin to remember my past lives and had not done so before, this would be a ‘special’ change, a unique event, and a change which is special or unique may not occur within a finite time from any specified time, such as the present.  So there is nobody in the past, human or otherwise, with whom I can identify myself, and nobody in the future who will identify themself with me.  Those people, those creatures, of the past were not me, and the creatures who people the future will not be me.  Yet, I've shown (and summarised the argument above) that I live and am aware for all time.  So how should we resolve this apparent contradiction?

   Let's suppose there is a lake and a wind upon it, and the wind makes waves on the surface of the lake.  We see a wave travelling the surface, reaching the shore, and finally vanishing into the shingle of the lakeside.  We look again and see many more waves travelling the lake surface towards the shingle shore.  Which of these new waves is the re-enactment of the wave that previously perished on the shore?  It isn't a sensible question, is it?  No particular wave now corresponds with any particular wave in the past or with any particular wave in the future.  Each wave lives for only a few moments on that shimmering surface.  But the water that spilt onto the shingle shore is nevertheless there again in the lake and is still coming in waves on the surface.  The waving is as old as the lake; but the individual waves and their individual identities are ephemera in the unchanging and everchanging flux.

   Waves on the lake are objective things that I can look at, point to, think about and feel about.  But what if I were a wave?  Which one would I be?  Not the one that had died on the shingle shore; not the ones yet to be raised by the passing wind.  No, I'd be one that was coming now over that surface.  Now?  How long is now?  All time is fictitious except now.  ‘Now’ is the only time in which I have ever lived.  And how, as a wave on that surface, would I know I was travelling?  It would look for all the world as though I was still, and all around me was flux.  I see other waves, always the same distance in front of me or the same distance behind; I give them names, and call them ‘them’ or ‘they’ as the occasion demands.  Now and again, a reed is growing up through the water or the rocky outline of the shore juts into the lake and the waves are reflected, and then we encounter each other and I interact with you; that's how I learned that your name was ‘you’.  But I remain unchanged.  True, you saw me as I bounced off that rock and said I changed, but I saw you change then; I'm still me, aren't I?

   I don't want to push that analogy too far; just so far as to make it meaningful when I say that you live and die, but that I endure for always, and what you might say are changes in me, I experience as changes in you and in them (Do help yourself to the pronouns you need!)

   Many years ago, intrigued by who I was, I tried to track myself down through meditation, discarding all that was not me until I arrived at the ultimate point of myself.  I failed.  I didn't at that time learn anything from that failure, thinking that it probably needed some technique I didn't then know about.  But there was another possible reason for my failure which I didn't then consider, namely: that I am not a point.  Even if I pretend that I am a dweller within my body, and even if I can imagine that I am more in some location than in another (more in my head than in my heel for instance) the more I try to pin down a point where I am, the more I realise I am the watcher of the point, or the watcher of the watcher, or..... all the way to the last term of that infinite series, and the watcher of that last term, and the watcher of the watcher, and..... (That's not rational; I only did it to show you that, even if it were, it would still be nonsense).  I'm neither definable, observable, nor spatial.

   Take a look at a newspaper photograph of somebody smiling and cover up most of the picture until all that's left is the smile, still recognisable as a smile.  Now cover up some more of it.  Has the smile gone?  Then it must be in the bit you've covered up, mustn't it?  So uncover that bit, and cover up the other bit instead.  Has it gone again?  So it seems the smile must be in two parts.  But if this were so, covering up one part would leave the other still on show.  No, the smile is not in two parts or many parts, but rather it hasn't a precise location; it's the very concept of ‘position’ which is suspect.  Let's take this further and look at the newspaper under a magnifying glass to try to discover the very essence of ‘face' or ‘expression';  wherever we look, we see nothing except black dots of various sizes, and not one of those dots shows us anything at all of face' or of expression'.  But as we stand back from the picture and look not at one, but two, three, four... hundreds... of dots we find more and more that we gain the feeling of ‘face' or ‘expression'.  We can even draw boundaries, more or less accurately, in the photograph saying which parts of the picture contribute to ‘face' or ‘expression' and which to something else such as background.  But we can't pinpoint it, and the reason we can't pinpoint it is precisely and significantly because it isn't a pinpoint.  Neither am I (Take care with the pronoun!)

   Instead of thinking about a newspaper photograph, let's think about ourselves.  I feel that a lot of me is associated with my head, and a bit of knowledge of anatomy would ascribe this to my brain rather than to the outer shell.  I'm a collection of memories, many of which, no longer available to conscious recall, contribute to my feeling of identity.  These memories, both conscious and unconscious, are stored in my brain.  Now suppose part of my brain is damaged, say by a blow to the head or by an electrical discharge such as might be administered in electro-convulsive therapy.  Depending on which bits of brain are damaged we might expect certain memories to be obliterated and others to remain intact.  But what actually happens is that there's general confusion, some memories do vanish for a time, but then reappear.  So particular memories are not stored in particular places but are spread throughout the brain rather like a smile in a newspaper photograph is spread throughout some dots.  Getting rid of some of the dots more or less randomly over the picture doesn't either eliminate or miss the smile; it makes the whole smile less certain or clear.  So too, damaging or altering brain cells doesn't specifically destroy or miss particular memories, but rather renders the whole memory less certain or clear.  Now it's obvious that if I try to locate myself at a point I must necessarily fail because I'm not a point but a pattern.

   However, let's not overrate the brain, which in some respects resembles a calculator.  A lot of my experience is spread all over me, which is obvious when, for instance, I have a pain in the guts or feel seasick or, in the other extreme, when someone is writing runes of magic with her fingers all over my skin.  Then I'm an all-pervading feeling.

   Am I only my body (and all its thoughts and feelings) though?  Consider learning to ride a bike.  At first, it's an awkward machine; its control demands all my attention, and even then with all my attention on it, progress is a series of mishaps.  But after a time the bike is so much a part of my body that I can ride without giving it any conscious attention at all.  Learning to use legs was the same.  How about becoming familiar with an artificial limb?  Or with an implanted organ?  Or an electronic pace-setter?  Or mind-changing drugs?  How much of this is me, and how much not me?

   Let's suppose we built a robot capable of many of the things we do.  Let's suppose we included in its programs the ability to construct more robots out of raw materials (such as copper, gold, silicon and other such delicacies) and let's suppose we set one or two of these robots loose somewhere.  They would, of course, use their facilities to discover sources of their raw materials and means of maintaining and renewing their power supplies.  Let's suppose these robots were not quite perfect so that, sometimes, when they put a new robot together, there was an error in the new robot.  Most of these errors would mean that the new robot would be a write-off, but every now and again the result would be an accidental improvement on the original pattern.  Now let's suppose that these robots made so many replicas and near-replicas of themselves that they ran low on raw materials.  They would now compete with each other for what was available, and many would be destroyed in the competition.  A few would have the advantage when an error in their making had been an improvement on the original, and these would tend to win the battles for resources, so that the originals would soon be eliminated, and then the next in their turn as ever-better robots got the upper hand in the battle for materials or energy.  Every trick, every new strength, every new power of artificial intelligence which cropped up by accident in the errors and was thereafter perpetuated would gradually become characteristic of the evolving robot society.  Even group strategies and alliances would evolve.  These metal and silicon things would be behaviourally indistinguishable from people and would even fight us if we threatened their survival (actively or passively).  Would they be conscious' (whatever that means)?  Would they be aware?  When they sent their first space ship off to explore the planets or even the stars, would we still say "They're only bits of metal and silicon"?  We might even have to negotiate peace treaties with them (since it would be, perhaps, to our mutual advantage).  Would they be sentient?

   Now, suppose I did this experiment with carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and phosphorus and suchlike instead?  Would the results be sentient?  Am I?  I am, but I don't know about you (Take care with the pronouns!)

   Let's think about familiar organic things again.  Consider the tiny one-celled animal called an amoeba.  When an amoeba divides into two (as they are wont to do) who is who after the division?  And if I were an amoeba how would I experience the change, and which of the two daughter cells would I be, and who would be the other one?  Now it's a deep mystery (which I haven't unravelled) that after the experience I am still only one amoeba, and I know the other one as you, or as her.

   Now we're not very different from these creatures except in size and complexity.  Whatever processes and events have led to my being alive and aware now in this, my present style, and however this style will come to an end, the result, for me, will be and can only be me.  And it has always been me for ten thousand million years and more.  And however the atoms are mixed and re-organised, whatever the patterns that were made, the mixing was always... absolutely always... in the past.

Nature Writing

Tony Kelly: July 1974

I wonder if all moths have red eyes? Irrespective of species, it seems, as they cluster on our windows in the night, their eyes shine out like two tiny deep red lamps glowing in the darkness and flashing like jewels in the light of a torch, which most of them appear to ignore, unless their motionlessness is a sign of appreciation of the added brilliance! Some of the smaller moths, the Carpets, are usually very lively and restless and start away when they're approached, even from quite a distance, but the bigger ones, used to relying on their camouflage, are more stolid and easy to capture and bring indoors to identify, where they soon settle down. And most of them, having settled down, show little concern about flight, and so little in fact, that when we return them to the wild on a small piece of card, they're quite content just to remain there, and even when pushed from behind, they will merely walk along, off the card, and onto a wall for flight some hours later or, in some cases, even days later. It's been an unusual and prolific year for moths and there are still a few White Ermines about as well as the giant Poplar Hawk moths; and the brilliant Garden Tiger in black, red and yellow is now quite common among the little Straw Dots and the clumsy Drinkers which crash into our windows. Last night there was a Magpie and a few Antlers, and before that the Large Emerald (not really emerald, but a silky jade green). In the high fields we found a Burnett moth, somewhat removed from its more usual haunts among the sedges and rushes of the waun, and there are Ringlet butterflies and everywhere the Meadow Brown.

The trees begin to look thinner and barer as they do about the time of Mabh's feast and I used to regard this with some apprehension as a sign of an early Autumn and the premature touch of the Haggard One, but it's no such thing, nor ever has been, and there'll be leaves on the trees for a season yet and the breast of the Earth Mother is warm and full. But it's a curious thing and I think it comes about in this way. At Bealtaine the once-bare trees are clothed in the small bright green leaves of Spring and they grow dense and bushy, and as the Sun climbs higher the leaves take on the dark green hues of Summer and the shadows grow denser. At Midsummer the leaves seem to reach their maturity with the maturity of the Summer Sun, and then the stems begin to lengthen, possibly to carry the now densely-clustered leaves upward and outward into the light, and it's probably this lengthening of the stems which opens the leaves out and gives them a lighter, barer aspect. But the new stems bear new leaves which quickly open and expose the brown and red glows of their newness, and this is especially noticeable in the garden where a surplus 500 oak trees await Autumn planting. A few moons ago, their green leaves were covered in the massed blue of the wild forget-me-not flowers which invaded the newly cultivated earth, and more recently overlapped by the taller stems and yellow flowers of the Corn Sowthistle and Nipplewort and the violet spikes of the Woundwort. But now the oaks are growing and the great drift of bright forget-me-not blue is interspersed with the deep red glow of the emerging clusters of newly unfolding oak leaves.

Deep in the grasses the wild flowers grow, the deep blue Self-heal and brighter blue Tufted Vetch, yellow flowered Bird's-foot Trefoil and Meadow Vetchling, foxgloves tall in the hedges and under the trees, and Broad-leaved Willow Herb in the waste places. There's white clover and red, blackberries in flower, pink Dog Roses flowering in the hedgerows and the sweetly scented white Trailing Roses in the shady places by the streams and under the trees. There are blossoms too on the Elder Trees though many of the flowers are spent and the ovaries, green and tiny, are beginning to swell on the way to becoming the shiny black berries that will later hang on the trees in their clustered thousands.

THE STORY OF THE OLD ONES

 This is the myth written by Tony Kelly for the Pagan Movement. It was the basis of the rites and records the names of the gods as they were used in the rites. The basic myth recorded here was developed over the years as a result of doing the rites, but this is the basis of the Movement's mythos.

***

   Mabh, who we love, was walking in the ferns and she came to a grove of willows, and in their midst was a pool whose waters flowed from eternal springs.  But the light in the Virgin's eyes was low for in all her land she was alone.  And she came to the water's edge and looked in the face of the pool and there in the pool she saw a maid whose beauty was like her own.  Her eyes shone bright and the maid's eyes sparkled bright to Mabh and the pool was lit in a silver radiance.  The water danced to the heart of Mabh and the maiden danced to the water.  "Who lives in the water with the sparkling eyes?" asked Mabh to the winds but the winds sighed and sang "Ask us not that our Mabh; all things we bring to you from afar and afar we sing of your love, but there is one place where we are still and in that place the maiden lives."  Then spoke Mabh to the willows: "Who lives in the pool and dances with the water?"  And the willows said "Mabh of the shining eyes is she; Mabh lives in the water; Mabh is the maid of the pool."  And Mabh loved the willows for it was not untruth they spoke.  But again she put her question and she spoke to the silver pool.  "Tell me, All of Love, who is the maid in your watery arms?"  And the pool said to Mabh "She is the maid of song and of poetry, of beauty and of magic and her name is Mab."  And Mabh's heart went out to Mab and she bent over the pool and stretched out her right hand to her and Mab stretched out her arm to Mabh, and where the water kissed the winds, there held Mabh the hand of Mab.  And Mab rose from the pool and the winds embraced her and combed her hair and carried the name of Mab to the four regions.

   But a sadness came in the pool and she was ugly as Mab was beautiful and as dark as Mab was shining and the water darkened and moved without motion on the place where Mab rose and the sadness wailed with a broken heart and the willows wept in the pool and the eyes of Mabh grew dark with grief.  And the sadness screeched "No one will love Maghu for love has gone away; Maghu is a hag and an emptiness; Maghu is a shadow on the lonely road; poor, miserable Maghu!"  And you would pity Maghu but that she was ugly as the barren seed and ruthless as the blight and she had neither love nor pity for any save for her beloved Mab.  And a dark fog fell on the pool and Maghu devoured the water and it filled her sad eyes with sorrows deep as wells, and she gathered the fog as a cloak about her.  And Mabh's heart went out to Maghu and she entered the slime and stretched out her left arm to her and Maghu stretched out her arm to Mabh and where before the water kissed the earth, they parted one from the other and Maghu went into the lonely mountains.

   Now the womb of Mabh bore fruit and she called her child Brirn and he was beautiful and brown as the hazel nut.  He grew in beauty and skilled in the ways of magic.  He was big as Yr Wyddfa, and small as the the heart of a fire-fly, wide as the ocean, as slender as the cotton-grass down, as tall as the fir and small as the moss, hard as the granite rocks and soft as the mist, younger than seed and older than fruit, child of all children and old to the wise.  Mabh loved him with all her heart and Brirn gave Mabh all of love.

   Now a second time the womb of Mabh bore fruit and the child was white as the rain bearers and dazzling bright and Mabh called her child Pahh for he was mighty.  He was smaller than Yr Wyddfa and the fire-fly smaller than him, narrower than the ocean and the cotton-grass down more slender than him, smaller than the fir and the moss smaller than him, softer than the granite rocks and the mist softer than him, older than seed and younger than fruit, father of all children and he sat on Brirn's knee.  Mabh loved him with all her heart and Pahh gave Mabh all of love.

THE SIGNPOST

  

THE SIGNPOST

Tony Kelly

In the south, proud sire of birth,

Bright-faced, strong-armed, gold crested.

In the north the damp brown Earth,

Warm-lapped, soft-armed, full breasted.

In the east the silver Moon,

Rainbow-passioned, uncaring.

In the west the wild-wind tune,

Seed sown, wind-blown, and daring.

Tall I stand to reach the skies,

Straight o'er top the hole dismal.

Weather-wearing, dread she cries,

Deep, dark, empty, abysmal.

We're of the old religion, sired of Time ...

The following piece was written by Tony Kelly in the 1970s and given the title ‘Introduction’ and later ‘Sentiment’. It has appeared since both in print and on the Internet with the title ‘Book of Shadows’. It is no such thing. It was written to attract people who responded to its ‘sentiment’ in the hope that such people would help build The PAGAN MOVEMENT, but later Tony Kelly felt that it had attracted too many ‘consumers’ of such sentiment rather than active pagans, and therefore doubted its usefulness. It is republished here more for the record than anything else as it is the most well-known piece of writing from the Pagan Movement. Later pieces will explore the theology developed in the more demanding way that the Movement’s Ethos Group felt to be necessary.

***

SENTIMENT

   We're of the old religion, sired of Time, and born of our beloved Earth Mother.  For too long the people have trodden a stony path that goes only onward beneath a sky that goes only upward.  The Horned God plays in a lonely glade for the people are scattered in this barren age and the winds carry his plaintive notes over deserted heaths and reedy moors and into the lonely grasses.  Who knows now the ancient tongue of the Moon?  And who speaks still with the Goddess?  The magic of the land of Faerie and the old pagan gods have withered in the dragon's breath; the old ways of magic have slipped into the well of the past, and only the rocks now remember what the moon told us long ago, and what we learned from the trees and the voices of grasses and the scents of flowers.

   We're pagans and we worship the pagan gods, and among the people there are witches yet who speak with the moon and dance with the Horned One.  But a witch is a rare pagan in these days, deep and inscrutable, recognisable only by her own kind, by the light in her eyes and the lilt of her tongue, by the love in her breast and the magic in her hands, by the pads of her feet and by the things she knows.  But there are pagans the world over who worship the Earth Mother and the Sun, the Rain God and the Rainbow Goddess, the Horned God of the forest and the Moon Goddess, people who have come to that dreaded pool on the lonely mountain road where the Hag labours for the coming dead, and people who have been with the Green Lady of the ferns and into the mists with the Tylwyth Teg.  A pagan is one who worships the goddesses and gods of nature, whether by observation or by study, whether by love or by admiration, or whether in their sacred rites with the Moon or the great festivals of the Sun.

   Many years ago, as the pale dawn of reason crept across the pagan sky, man grew out of believing in the gods.  He has yet to grow out of disbelieving in them.  He who puts riddles to the gods and asks them whether they are, or whether they are not, will earn himself only paradoxes, for the gods are not so divided, nor the magic lands that beckon through the mist.  Does a mind exist?  Ask her and she will tell you yes, but seek her out and she'll elude you.  She is in every place and in no place and you'll see her works in all places but herself in none.  Existence was the second-born from the Mother's womb and contains neither the first-born nor the unborn. Show us your mind and we'll show you the gods!  No matter that you can't for we can't show you the gods.  But come with us where we go and the Goddess herself will be our love and the God will call the tune.  But a brass penny for your reason!  For logic is a closed ring, and the child doesn't bring forth the Mother, nor the dream the dreamer.  And what matter the wars of opposites to she who has fallen in love with the whirlwind or to the lover of the arching rainbow.

   Tell us of the Goddess as you love her, and the gods who guide your works, and we'll listen with wonder, for to do less would be arrogant.  But we'll do more, for the heart of man is aching for memories only half forgotten and the Old Ones only half unseen.  We'll write the old myths as they were always written and we'll read them on the rocks and in the caves and in the deep of the greenwood's shade, and we'll read them in the rippling mountain streams and in the rustling of the leaves, and we'll see them in the storm clouds, and glimpse them in the evening mists.  Our religion was born when the hills were born and comes to us ever new, from the buds as they open, from the flowers as they unfold, from the call of the owl in the darkness, and the rush of the river onward.  The moods of the gods are as the wild scents, and there's no scent of the wild so lovely as their mingling.  We would no more bring the differences of worship together than we would crowd each valley with the wild things of all valleys, for there is no mood of the Goddess more lovely than her mood where we find her, in her own land, among her own things that of old were dear to her there.

   What need is there for a pagan movement since our religion has no teachings and we hear it in the wind and feel it in the stones and the Moon will dance with us as she will?  There is a need.  For long the Divider has been among our people and our tribes are now no more.  The sons of the Sky Father have all but conquered nature, but they have poisoned her breast and the Mother is sad for the butterflies are dying and the night draws on.  A curse shall lie on the conquerors, for they curse themselves, for they are nature too.  They have stolen our magic and sold it to the mindbenders and the mindbenders tramp a maze that has no outlet for they fear to go down into the dark waters, and they fear the real for the One who stands on the path.

   Where are the pagan shrines?  And where do the people gather?  Where is the magic made?  And where are the Goddess and the Old Ones?  Our shrines are in the fields and on the mountains, in the stars and in the wind, deep in the greenwood and on the algal rocks where two streams meet.  But the shrines are deserted, and if we gathered in the arms of the Moon as we did of old, we would be stopped by the dead who now rule in the Goddess' land and claim rights of ownership on the Mother's breast, and make laws of division and frustration for us.  We can no longer gather with our gods in a public place and the old rites of communion have been driven from the towns and cities ever deeper into the heath where barely a handful of heathens have remained to guard the old ways and enact the old rites.  There is magic in the heath far from the cold grey society, and there are islands of magic hidden in the entrails of the metropolis behind closed doors, but the people are few and the barriers between us are formidable.  For many, the old religion has become a dark way, obscure, and hidden in the protective bosom of the night.  Thin fingers turn the pages of a book of shadows while the Sun seeks in vain his worshippers in the leafy glades.

   Here then is a reason for a Pagan Movement.  We must create a society wherein everyone shall be free to worship the goddesses and gods of nature, and the relationship between a worshipper and her gods shall be sacred and inviolable.

   It's not yet our business to press the law-makers with undivided endeavour to unmake the laws of repression and, with the Mother's love, it may never become our business for the stifling tides of dogmatism are at last already in ebb.  Our first work and our greatest wish is to come together in our tribes and feel again the tribal currents flow.  We're of the Earth, and sibs to all the children of wild nature, born long ago in the pregnant mud of the Sun-warmed pools; we were together then, and we were together in the rain forests long before that dark day when, forgetful of a Mother's love, we killed her earlier-born children and impoverished the genetic pool.  The Red Child remembers yet the Ones who went before; the old Australians live still with the nature gods; in the wild paths of India the Old Ones still walk the land, and the White Child still has a foot on the old wiccan way.  But Neanderthaler is no more and her magic faded as the Lli and the Archan burst their banks and the ocean flowed in to divide the Isle of Erin from the Land of the Blessed Goddess.

   Man looked with one eye on a two-faced god when he reached for the heavens and scorned the Earth which alone is our life and our provider and the bosom to which we have ever returned since the dawn of time.  He who looks only to reason to plumb the unfathomable is a fool, for logic is an echo already implicit in the question and it has no voice of its own; but he is no greater fool than he who scorns logic or derides its impotence from afar but fears to engage in fair combat when he stands on his opponent's threshold.  Don't turn your back on Reason, for his thrust is deadly; but confound him and he'll yield for his code of conduct is honourable.  So here is more of the work of the Pagan Movement.  Our lore has become encrusted over the ages with occult trivia and the empty vapourings of the lost.  The occult arts are in a state of decadence; astrology is in a state of disrepute and fears to confront the statistician's sword; alien creeds oust our native arts and, being as little understood as our own forgotten arts, are just as futile for their lack of understanding, and more so for their unfamiliarity.  Misunderstanding is rife.  Disbelief is black on every horizon, and vampires abound on the blood of the credulous.  Our work is to reject the trivial, the irrelevant and the erroneous, and to bring the lost children of the Earth Mother again into the court of the Sky Father where reason alone will avail.  Belief is the deceit of the credulous; it has no place in the heart of a pagan.

   But while we are sad for those who are bemused by Reason, we are deadened by those who see no further than his syllogisms as he turns the eternal wheel of the Great Tautology.  We were not fashioned in the mathematician's computations, and we were old when the first alchymist was a child.  We have walked in the magic forest, bewitched in the old Green Thinks; we have seen the cauldron and the one become many and the many in the one; we know the Silver Maid of the moonlight and the sounds of the cloven feet.  We have heard the pipes on the twilight ferns, and we've seen the spells of the Enchantress, and time be stilled.  We've been into eternal darkness where the Night Mare rides and ridden her to the edge of the abyss, and beyond, and we know the dark face of the Rising Sun.....  Spin a spell of words and make a magic knot; spin it on a magic loom and spin it with the gods.  Say it in the old chant and say it to the Goddess, and in her name.  Say it to a dark well and breathe it on a stone.....  There are no signposts on the untrod way, but we'll make our rituals together and bring them as our gifts to the Goddess and to the God in the great rites.

   Here then is our work in the Pagan Movement; to make magic in the name of our gods, to share our magic where the gods would wish it, and to come together in the old ways in the festivals of birth, and life, of death and of taking back into the womb.  We'll write the rituals that can be shared in the written word and tell of those that can't be written; and of those that can't be told, we'll take you with us where you'll learn them.  We'll do all in our power to bring the people together, to teach those who would learn, and to learn from those who can teach.  We will initiate groups, bring people into groups and groups to other groups in our devotion to the Goddess and the God of nature.

   We'll collect the myths of the ages, of our people and of the people of other lands, and we'll study the books of the wise and we'll talk to the very young.  And whatever a pagan needs in her study or her worship, it is our concern and the Movement's business to provide it.  If you wish to go the whole way and form a coven, we'll help with that too though few there are who know what this means.  But we can't make witches, or wizards.  They're born.  Nor can we make you a pagan soul; but we can help you to find your pagan soul if you've lost it, and that's almost everybody.

   We are committed with the lone pagan on the sea shore, with he who worships in the fastness of the mountain range.  We are committed with the wanderer, and equally with the prisoner, disinherited from the Mother's milk in the darkness of the industrial towns.  We are committed too with the coven, with the dance in the ring in the arms of the moon, and with the great festivals of the sun and the gatherings of the people.  We are committed to build our temples in the towns and in the wilderness, and to buy lands and streams to be shrines for the Goddess, and we'll replant the greenwood as it was of old, for love of the woodland stillness, and for love of our children's children.

   When the streams flow clear and the winds blow pure and fragrant, when the sun never more rises unrenowned nor the moon ride in the skies unloved; when the stones tell of the Horned God and the greenwood grows deep to call back her own, then will our work be ended and the Pagan Movement will return to the beloved womb of the old religion, to the nature gods of paganism.

                           All love to the Green Lady

                           All power to the mighty Sun