BBC - at it again! The rise of paganism...

The BBC’s 10 O’clock News broadcast an item this evening about the rise of Paganism in the British Isles. It was a bizarre report, to say the least. I guess that the fact it was the Winter Solstice today gave grounds to have this item. It was not objective, though. On the contrary, it seemed to openly celebrate the fact that “a record number of pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice” today.

The journalist who compiled this report was Robert Pigott, who is meant to be one of the BBC’s leading lights. In fact, to be fair to the journalist, the reporting wasn’t as bad as the madness that was being highlighted – even if he did try and make these characters seem not only sane, but good!

The item started with a few bedraggled “pagans” (this term wasn’t explained) processing through some field or playground, blowing horns and wearing fake antlers and what seemed to be bin liners. It looked as if this “religious ceremony” had been dreamed up after the last “spliff” during a night of watching The Wicker Man and / or those films based on JRR Tolkien novels. The reporter announced that these people were “celebrating the darkest time of the year” and that pagans like these had been doing the same for five millennia! Five minutes, more like! The impression was definitely given that modern “paganism” (which has no connection to ancient cults and religious superstitious practices of the past) was more authentically British than Christianity – having been here longer.

Of course, anyone with an ounce of a brain would know that this is nonsense. Modern paganism is a load of cobblers dreamed up in the 1970s which tried to hijack another load of cobblers dreamed up in the late 18th Century, by the likes of Iolo Morganwg and others. The ceremonies of the modern bardic druids, i.e. those created by the romantic eccentrics of the 1700s, were mainly based on fantasy, myth, and Masonic rituals. We know hardly anything at all about the religious practices of the ancient druids of Britain, bar that they were obsessed with the human head, were concerned with oral traditions and laws, worshipped in sacred groves, were extremely patriarchal, and based the priesthood within a warrior class system. The other things we know about these characters are that they indulged in warmongering and human sacrifices! Compared to the religions of Rome and Greece, which were more advanced and focused on the State, early pagans tended to be theologically and philosophically backward and very localised. In fact, the term “pagan” comes from the Roman word for those ignorant peoples who dwelt in the countryside, as opposed to the “civilised” of the cities.

The BBC report then went on to highlight the Edwards’ family. They had, apparently, rejected Christianity for being too “hierarchical” and for holding “inflexible doctrines”. In other words, they didn’t like the Truth – which is always inflexible, it does not change because it clashes with our feelings! The item moved on to show Mr Edwards describe how he could “feel” energies around him, and felt more connected to the earth, etc! Feelings – the first step on the road to nonsense and the irrational, and the food of the relativist and those who worship the ego above God - the “I AM”. So the message seemed clear – if you don’t like the truth, but want to feel that you belong to a religious community, just become a “pagan”!

The truth is that most druids, being the good Celtic war-lords that they were, would have slaughtered these fake Saxons before they’d had time to play the first few bars on their Pentangle CD! Good old-fashioned Saxon pagans would have had no time for hippy nonsense, lesbian rights, and being zoned-out – they’d have been busy being men and women, in a very traditional and conservative, hierarchical and class-ridden, and violent society. Christianity’s emphasis on love was seen as weakness by these old pagans. The strange thing is that Robert Piggot went on to say that pagans feel a desire to make sense of “the natural order” and to defend this order of nature from changes! How very conservative – will they be backing a reinstating of hunting foxes (just in time for the Boxing Day meet)? The natural order is, of course, extremely hierarchical – so what, I wonder, do the Edwards’ make of that? This order is also grounded in the unchanging and necessary laws that bind it together. These laws of nature are the very ones that hippies and “modern pagans” seek to destroy through their permissive support of homosexuality. As St Paul said, in his letter to the Romans, pagans seem to pretend to care for nature by making a false idol of it. They replace God with their narcissistic concept of what the “Natural Order” is. By doing this they give themselves permission to “do whatever feels right”, which is how they exchanged the truth for a lie – nature becomes an anthropomorphic fallacy. This is why God let them get on with it, to the point that the natural order became so corrupted and inverted that the old pagans of St Paul’s day became obsessed with unnatural sexual relations, to the point of addiction (an enslavement to falsehood).

Of course, for these modern pagans, who are I believe well meaning (but the path to falshood is paved with good intentions!), the natural order they seek to protect is all in line with the “Climate Change myth”. It’s much easier to concentrate on an over-hyped and hysterical apocalyptic disaster, created by “evil men” (the other), than on other threats to the laws and proper ordering of nature. In fact, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, spoke about this in his Christmas address last year. He warned that, as good as it is to be concerned about environmental issues (and there's nothing wrong in wanting a clean and healthy environment), there is another threat to nature – the promotion and acceptance of that which is unnatural and contrary to Divine and Natural laws, i.e. gender-bending! If pagans are so concerned about the former they should therefore be just as concerned about the latter. This isn’t the case, though. Why? Well, the whole “climate change” campaign (and neo-paganism) is just a smoke-screen for a much deeper and more threatening, unnatural and devious, liberal agenda – one which stands against all that is good and holy, all that is true. Love cannot be love without truth – it does not need “feelings”, just a simple act of the will: to do what is right, even if we feel it might upset people who want to bend the laws of nature. It amazes me that the most vociferous climate change / environmental campaigners are actually the ones who leave the largest “carbon footprint” – 40,000 people went to Copenhagen to save the planet from “carbon”, leaving one enormous carbon footprint behind! The funniest thing, though, was that the green protestors outside the conference last week decided to burn things in protest! That really helped global pollution!

The news item finished by showing the inter-faith gathering of Wiccans, Pagans, and Druids celebrating Yuletide! It also claimed that there are pagan groups in every town in Britain, and that this new religious movement (or cult) is one of the fastest growing sects in Britain! I wonder if these poor, misguided neo-pagans will be joining Odin this year on his Wild Hunt, or joining in a drunken orgy to prove the “fertility” of their Yule log!?

UPDATE - Please see: Pagans to the left of us... (but beware of the strange comments!)