I find that in my mind, after much thought, that the two forces of good and evil / light and dark / God and the Devil / Yin & Yang can meld into and connect on several levels. I personally believe in a balance of light and dark, positive and negative. Without the darkness how can we truly appreciate the light? Without a basis for comparison the light would be a dull void of complacency.

I personally believe in both a single “god” and multiple “gods” at the same time. (boy, I bet that one has you thinking now.) Yes, I realize that’s having my cake and eating it too but hear me out and realize that I’m not preaching here, this is just one opinion from a druid with entirely too much free time.

In the beginning, the universe was void and without form. (Sound familiar?) There was only one Being, a singular consciousness that spanned all of creation and none of it, at the same time. This Being exists outside of what we know of as time and space; in another realm known to the Druids as Summerland. This Being, we’ll call it God was neither male nor female, but an inseparable merging of the two. It was also both light and dark, a blending of the two that we cannot quite comprehend because in our world the light is either on or off, generally speaking.

God said, “let there be light” and then Universal Light and Power asked him for a $500 deposit because he didn’t have any credit established yet. I hate it when that happens.

This “let there be light” statement means that he filled the whole of everything with himself (rolling around in the big leaf pile of the universe like a kid on an autumn day). He has now permeated the universe totally with himself; both light & darkness… remember it’s dualistic.

God is light & dark. He created us in his image, meaning that we are both light and dark and have the same powers as he does given that we are made from the same stuff (spirit). We simply have to recognize this and believe it or as I like to say “Speak as a child of God”. When we do this we weave “magick”. Christians call it prayer and they visualize God or other forces of God doing the work. Pagans call it magic and visualize their god/dess or gods or other spiritual critters or even themselves doing the work. It’s all the same thing. It all revolves around belief. We have to believe!

Christ himself said, “have faith as a grain of mustard seed and you can move mountains.” Well, what he was talking about was if you BELIEVE (or have faith) then you can put some serious stuff into motion. Any pagan that’s been around for a while will tell you that you have to believe and be confident in yourself and your relationship with the spirit world or you’re going to flop every time. When Christ performed his healings he even said as much in his teachings. After a healing he would comment, “It is not I that has healed you but your faith.” That statement proves Christ’s awareness of our own potential that is awakened through belief. This thought is a key concept known to many pagans as The Witches Pyramid; To know, To dare, TO WILL (or believe) and To keep silent.

Now, God has created us & our world and all the critters in it Keep in mind this could have taken a LONG time. The bible says it took so many days but the bible also says that to God a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. And people wonder why the evolutionary theory doesn’t seem like it reconciles with creationism. They seem to be forgetting that just about any specific reference to God and time is absolutely relative to the fact that he is outside of time. Why can’t people consider that maybe both theories are correct? God designed and influenced evolution. And, he has modeled everything here that is living after himself, spiritually speaking. That does not mean that we all LOOK like him physically but we are all little miniature copies of him spiritually. In fact, you might go so far as to say that we are the cells that make up the body of God.

When he permeated the universe with himself he became the universe, flowing through all things and in all places and times at once. We each have a divine spark of life in us as every life on the planet does. This is his spirit and the great mystery of life and awareness. However, we, individually, are immature and lack experience so we must be taught the lessons of life’s existence in order to fully come into our own. What better way to do it than to let us live lifetime after lifetime in a world designed to test and try us?

Well, he puts us on our way and guides us where he can provide we listen to the little voice inside of each of us he has put there but he has a major problem. We’re not developed enough to truly understand and comprehend who we are, and certainly not who he really is. We can perceive parts of him but not really wrap our minds around the whole because it’s simply so far above us rather like a rabbit trying to contemplate the significance of Velcro… it’s great stuff and simple to use but to the rabbit just wants to know if he can eat it or not. The rabbit has no idea that it makes great ties for shoes and has hundreds of other uses because it has no comprehension of shoes in the least. So, what does God do? He appears or manifests to us in each of our different cultures (lots of different cultures because we multiply like rabbits, especially in the days of Eden) with a cultural twist. The same basic elements (or golden rules) are there for each culture but they’re slightly variant with each culture, a minor cultural twist to keep things interesting. These individual cultural gods, pantheons and religions are all manifestations of the same God.

You may have a single savior in one culture or faith and in another you need 100s of gods to accomplish the same goal. Each of these sub-gods is simply a manifestation of the one true force that we just can’t really fully comprehend. We, at times, are forced to interact with these “masks”, as they are much easier to access and relate to than trying to relate the vastness of God in his entirety. This works out great for both parties as our heads don’t explode trying to comprehend God and God actually gets to help us along our spiritual evolution. Every parent wants to see his or her children grow and succeed.

Therefore, I personally believe that just about all faiths and religions are right on their fundamental levels because they are all manifestations of the same force, sometimes with massively different dogmas, which are almost always created by man and said to be inspired by God. People love making up dogmas and saying it’s God’s will. It’s a great past-time for the bored or the ethically or morally insane. Almost as fun as bombing government buildings or plotting to hijack airplanes and run them into over-populated buildings in the name of God and your religion. This is not, however anywhere close to “God’s will”. This is man’s will using God as a cover for man’s own goals and needs. However, at the very core, at the very ROOT of every major religion there are the same central principles: Be positive and helpful, band together as a family, love one another, try to make peace one way or another, be fruitful and prosperous, the same basic truths that are presented in the Christian 10 commandments are in just about ever other major religion on the planet.

Why?

Because it’s all coming from the same source.

This is one of the questions of the ages. There is not an absolute answer to this and if there is it’s totally relative to the individual answering the question. The answer is always going to be subjective to our own experiences as just about every spiritual question always is. Keep in mind that the only answer I can present here is the one formed from my own soul searching, research and experience. Before you can ask if there is a God you must first define what God is to you.

To me, God is the one spirit or consciousness that permeates all things and all times. As in the Christian bible, and many other faiths and philosophies, it is what is, what was and what will be. I believe it is the unification of both male and female, being neither specifically as there is no need for the one force to have a specific sexual designation. I generally refer to it as a “he” because my personal image of God is as a male structure modeled after myself, but in truth I think it’s probably closer to being a whole, devoid of splitting the creative energy into separate sexes. What would be the need in that other than to aid in our understanding and comprehension?

When I was just old enough to really begin inquiring about a higher power or “God” I was pointed in the direction of the nearest church, which happened to be a traditional Texas Southern Baptist congregation in my small east-Texas hometown. I attended services regularly for a time and even joined in with the choir a time or two. My days listening intently to the minister’s sermons were often filled with nights contemplating the messages presented on the last Sunday. Eventually I was baptized, mainly out of peer pressure, and tried to fit in with the rest of the group as best I could. However, there was a problem creeping into the back of my consciousness.

Some aspects of the modern Christian culture, as many modern religious cultures do (lets not pick on Christians) preached ideas like their religion or denomination was the only road to “salvation” and anyone who was not part of their faith that died would go to hell. Often, I the very next breath the minister would talk about his God being a loving and forging god of compassion. As you can imagine I began wondering about everyone else in the world that was not of this particular religion and had perhaps never even heard of Christianity. How would they fair in the afterlife? Surely a God of compassion would not sentence his children to perish out of pure ignorance. And, I do believe in a God of passion as I believe that God is not much unlike us. While we can be vile and cruel we also have a great capacity for love, mercy and forgiveness. I would think that a creature of divinity would be a bit more balanced and even handed than the wrathful, vengeful creature portrayed in some religious communities.

I began to search for an answer that would satisfy all the questions. If you have several religions and generally all recognize a form of higher power with one name or another who can say which is right and which is wrong. You can find good people and bad alike among all faiths of the world. Surely there must be some method or design to this madness. Slowly the idea that all religions and faiths of the world could be right crept into my mind. I began to wonder if there was not some great power out among the stars that simply toiled away and created us through it’s own influence and guided us all.

If that is so, how can you account for radical extremists religions and organizations that conquer and kill in the name of the Almighty? The answer to that question in my mind is that it is man who creates those demons and unleashes them upon the world. There is both good and bad in the world and if the negative forces get the reigns in hand then they can wreak havoc among us. That is not to say that all negative is of man and all good is of God, but

I find that in my mind, after much thought, that the two forces of good and evil / light and dark / God and the Devil / Yin & Yang can meld into and connect on several levels. I personally believe in a balance of light and dark, positive and negative. Without the darkness how can we truly appreciate the light? Without a basis for comparison the light would be a dull void of complacency.

I personally believe in both a single “god” and multiple “gods” at the same time. (boy, I bet that one has you thinking now.) Yes, I realize that’s having my cake and eating it too but hear me out and realize that I’m not preaching here, this is just one opinion from a druid with entirely too much free time.

In the beginning, the universe was void and without form. (Sound familiar?) There was only one Being, a singular consciousness that spanned all of creation and none of it, at the same time. This Being exists outside of what we know of as time and space; in another realm known to the Druids as Summerland. This Being, we’ll call it God was neither male nor female, but an inseperable merging of the two. It was also both light and dark, a blending of the two that we cannot quite comprehend because in our world the light is either on or off, generally speaking.

God said, “let there be light” and then Universal Light and Power asked him for a $500 deposit because he didn’t have any credit established yet. I hate it when that happens.

This “let there be light” statement means that he filled the whole of everything with himself (rolling around in the big leaf pile of the universe like a kid on an autumn day). He has now permeated the universe totally with himself; both light & darkness… remember it’s dualistic.

God is light & dark. He created us in his image, meaning that we are both light and dark and have the same powers as he does given that we are made from the same stuff (spirit). We simply have to recognize this and believe it or as I like to say “Speak as a child of God”. When we do this we weave “magick”. Christians call it prayer and they visualize God or other forces of God doing the work. Pagans call it magic and visualize their god/dess or gods or other spiritual critters or even themselves doing the work. It’s all the same thing. It all revolves around belief. We have to believe!

Christ himself said, “have faith as a grain of mustard seed and you can move mountains.” Well, what he was talking about was if you BELIEVE (or have faith) then you can put some serious stuff into motion. Any pagan that’s been around for a while will tell you that you have to believe and be confident in yourself and your relationship with the spirit world or you’re going to flop every time. When Christ performed his healings he even said as much in his teachings. After a healing he would comment, “It is not I that has healed you but your faith.” That statement proves Christ’s awareness of our own potential that is awakened through belief. This thought is a key concept known to many pagans as The Witches Pyramid; To know, To dare, TO WILL (or believe) and To keep silent.

Now, God has created us & our world and all the critters in it Keep in mind this could have taken a LONG time. The bible says it took so many days but the bible also says that to God a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. And people wonder why the evolutionary theory doesn’t seem like it reconciles with creationism. They seem to be forgetting that just about any specific reference to God and time is absolutely relative to the fact that he is outside of time. Why can’t people consider that maybe both theories are correct? God designed and influenced evolution. And, he has modeled everything here that is living after himself, spiritually speaking. That does not mean that we all LOOK like him physically but we are all little miniature copies of him spiritually. In fact, you might go so far as to say that we are the cells that make up the body of God.

When he permeated the universe with himself he became the universe, flowing through all things and in all places and times at once. We each have a divine spark of life in us as every life on the planet does. This is his spirit and the great mystery of life and awareness. However, we, individually, are immature and lack experience so we must be taught the lessons of life’s existence in order to fully come into our own. What better way to do it than to let us live lifetime after lifetime in a world designed to test and try us?

Well, he puts us on our way and guides us where he can provide we listen to the little voice inside of each of us he has put there but he has a major problem. We’re not developed enough to truly understand and comprehend who we are, and certainly not who he really is. We can perceive parts of him but not really wrap our minds around the whole because it’s simply so far above us rather like a rabbit trying to contemplate the significance of Velcro… it’s great stuff and simple to use but to the rabbit just wants to know if he can eat it or not. The rabbit has no idea that it makes great ties for shoes and has hundreds of other uses because it has no comprehension of shoes in the least. So, what does God do? He appears or manifests to us in each of our different cultures (lots of different cultures because we multiply like rabbits, especially in the days of Eden) with a cultural twist. The same basic elements (or golden rules) are there for each culture but they’re slightly variant with each culture, a minor cultural twist to keep things interesting. These individual cultural gods, pantheons and religions are all manifestations of the same God.

You may have a single savior in one culture or faith and in another you need 100s of gods to accomplish the same goal. Each of these sub-gods is simply a manifestation of the one true force that we just can’t really fully comprehend. We, at times, are forced to interact with these “masks”, as they are much easier to access and relate to than trying to relate the vastness of God in his entirety. This works out great for both parties as our heads don’t explode trying to comprehend God and God actually gets to help us along our spiritual evolution. Every parent wants to see his or her children grow and succeed.

Therefore, I personally believe that just about all faiths and religions are right on their fundamental levels because they are all manifestations of the same force, sometimes with massively different dogmas, which are almost always created by man and said to be inspired by God. People love making up dogmas and saying it’s God’s will. It’s a great past-time for the bored or the ethically or morally insane. Almost as fun as bombing government buildings or plotting to hijack airplanes and run them into over-populated buildings in the name of God and your religion. This is not, however anywhere close to “God’s will”. This is man’s will using God as a cover for man’s own goals and needs. However, at the very core, at the very ROOT of every major religion there are the same central principles: Be positive and helpful, band together as a family, love one another, try to make peace one way or another, be fruitful and prosperous, **subliminal message… send Merddy money***; the same basic truths that are presented in the Christian 10 commandments are in just about ever other major religion on the planet.

Why?

Because it’s all coming from the same source.

(This is a transcript of a conversation I had with one of my fellow pagans. The irrelevant comments have been deleted. Only the parts with significance remain.)

There are two things in this world
The known and the unknown
The Doors lay between them

Druidism teaches that music and sound are sacred. They consist of vibrations. Both are simply frequencies.. The universe is based on vibrations and frequencies. By manipulating said frequencies you could theoretically alter reality. Celts also believed that the ultimate in the creation of sound was the human voice. Part of it is proven through physics. Objects of like construction resonate at the same frequency. For instance, if you strike a tuning fork then bring another tuning fork set to the same pitch into the vicinity it will start vibrating in harmony w/o being struck.

In the physical world, opposites attract. Thus the male and female relationship. In the spiritual world, like objects attract. Thus the natural human compulsion to seek out a mate of a like mind.

Sound and vibration can pierce the veil of the material and enter the spiritual. Aikido touches on this a great deal. In techniques like the spirit shout. (kia) you can either cause fear or sap the energy from an attacker with a mere shout. You must put enough spiritual energy behind it though… and have the ability to do so. I’ve seen it done many times.

The answers to life’s puzzles are out there, you just have to know how to listen to your heart and where to look.

The bible contains much wisdom but I believe it was written to teach the masses, as one large parable not to be taken as the letter of the law or quite so literally at times. The bible teaches that God is among us, he is within us. Is that not the same spirit the pagans connect with? The spirit of creation.

God and the Devil are nothing more than masks laid atop the one true being who is beyond human comprehension Just as the triple goddess and the green man are masks laid upon that same being. Think of it as two pairs of slightly different colored glasses looking at the same light.

The Celts also held a concept of one god of a thousand faces traveling with his people throughout time. God would manifest himself/herself in forms they could easily understand on a cultural level.

Religion is for controlling the masses, spirituality is for following the heart. Religion is like a multicolored lantern. Everybody is looking through a different colored lenses but it’s the same bright candle burning inside.

I think we’ll be judged on the contents of our hearts… a lot of “Christians” and “pagans” alike will be surprised who makes it to paradise.

Catholicism has more in common than they think with paganism as well. The Catholics changed the doctrine of their church to more closely resemble the pagan calendar when they were trying to convert the Celtic people to the Christian faith. They actually moved Christ’s birthday to Yule in an attempt to phase out the pagan holidays. The same was done with Easter as well. They adopted symbols like the Celtic wheel of elements that’s what’s known now as the Irish cross. (The cross with the circle) That’s actually a druidic symbol. The Easter bunny and Santa clause are both Celtic/pagan folk tales that have been woven into the fabric of Christianity in an attempt to stomp out the heritage of the pagan faiths.

The Catholic Church is a huge political machine built on gathering followers and resources to serve it’s own needs. They needed the Celtic people at the time so they adopted their symbols and what symbols they couldn’t adopt they declared as satanic. It’s funny that the image of the devil as a goat didn’t come about until the Christians invaded Celtic land and started the conversion.. Don’t you think?

You know the saying, “St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland”. The actual meaning behind that is that he drove all the pagans out of Ireland. He didn’t actually manage do to that but he was instrumental in converting the local pagan religion into Catholicism.

Speaking in reference to the absoluteness of the laws of magick.

These are all well and good and certainly things to keep in mind in most situations but they’re not “laws” as in “it always works this way.” They are general guidelines. You don’t always get back what you put out and it’s certainly not always 3 fold. You don’t always have to do something to cause something and knowing something’s true name does not necessarily lend power or influence over something.

Magick revolves around belief. If you have more knowledge about something you’re bound to be more confident about what you’re doing is going to work and that in turn fuels your belief. If you weave something and you question you work or doubt it then it’s not going to work. Knowing something’s “true name” or being intimately familiar with how it works or having done it before lends to your degree of belief and thus your “authority” over that particular situation. The more “authority” or belief and confidence you have in your abilities the better.

Now, that being said, any nitwit with belief in himself and enough confidence in what he’s doing can potentially be a problem. They don’t have to know what house Venus or Pluto is in or some archaic chat thought up by the ancient celts.

They can dance around in their living rooms and chant jibberish with a colander on their head and they could be a problem if they believe in what they’re doing. Conversely, if you think they’re totally silly and you don’t believe in what they’re doing then it’s going to bounce off of you. A LOT of magick has to do with the power of suggestion. I’d say 90% of most lower magical forms are more the power of suggestion or therapy than anything.

Basically, if it’s emotional stuff, if you believe it will work then it will work. If you doubt even the smallest bit it’s not going anywhere.

Setting something like this list of laws down and adopting it can be dangerous. Laws promote dogma and dogma is prone to get stagnant.

And people wonder why the druids never wrote anything down… Once you write it down it’s no longer living. No longer dynamic. It’s stuck in the same state you were when you wrote it. It can no longer grow and change and evolve. It’s dead.

What of fidelity and loyalty? Complete trust? Faith is not granted by tangible proof. It comes from the heart and soul. If a person needs proof of God’s Existence, then the very notion of spirituality is diminished into sensuality and we have reduced what is holy into what is logical.”
-R.A. Salvatore

That’s the best explinatin of faith I’ve seen thus far in my short stay on this wet little planet.

What is faith exactly? Some say it’s the “evidence of things not seen.” The essence of faith is simply believing in something without probable cause. Faith means accepting unproven ideas as facts of reality.

A patron of a particular faith simply accepting the reality of their deity without tangible proof. That’s faith.

A parent defending thier child against an acusation even though she doens’t really know the truth. That’s faith.

What is magic? That’s a simpler question to tackle actually. Magic is simply undiscovered or unrecognized science. Let us define exactly what science is. It’s the methodic and systematic process of finding the answers to questions. That being said, as long as one can find the answers to why something happens then it leaves the realm of magic and becomes science.

A scenario:
A radioactive meteorite falling from the heavens 200 years ago that mysteriously killed all it came in contact with might be considered “evil” or “devil magic.” The native people of that time didn’t understand forces such as radiation or cosmic rays. They might interpret this as evil or magical forces at work. However, once science understands the forces (radiation poisoning and the like) this mystical rock wields it’s no longer evil or magical.. It’s written up in a textbook somewhere and stored away as accepted scientific fact. But, before it was classified and cataloged it was a thing of great mysticism. Magical demons might have been said to possess the stone and attack all those who came near it. Once the forces (radioactivity in this case) acting upon reality are understood and logically classified in neat little rows it’s no longer magical. It’s simply mundane.

The forces and effects that some people might label as magic may simply be a undiscovered element of our universe that science does not yet understand. The modern “witch” that enforces his/her will upon the world around them is discounted as superstitious or it may even be whispered that they’re a bit insane. But, what can others say when her will becomes reality (her spell works)? It’s no longer superstition. How then do you explain away the events that have come to pass? Is it simply that science does not yet understand the forces that the human sprit can wield upon our world? What is so strange about the idea that we can effect other beings around us using the forces of our own body/spirit?

Science does not currently have a way to measure all the forces around us and within our world. Two hundred years ago the radiation discussed earlier didn’t exist to the scientific eye simply because it wasn’t labeled and there were no instruments to measure it. It hadn’t been categorized yet. Are we to conclude that the radiation didn’t exist just because we couldn’t fully explain it? We should look back upon this and learn from our own discoveries. There ARE forces in the world that we don’t quite understand at the moment. Why then are the forces of the mind and body equally dismissed? Could it not be that we don’t yet have all the answers?