by Julian Greene

Created on: May 25, 2008

Pagan traditions are many and varied depending on which tradition one is following. But there are some common threads in pagan tradition especially as one looks back to ancient festivities: they are celebratory, honoring of the earth, its denizens, and of our ancestors as well as the deities. They teach me a different code of living based on hospitality and reciprocity.

Celebratory
First and foremost, I find a joy and abandon in Pagan celebrations that I have not found anywhere else. At the end of my years in Christianity, I was begging my priest to reinstate some celebrations such as are held in ethnic communities around the world, and he thought I'd lost my mind. Then I began to realize - those ethnic community celebrations, although Christian in nature now, are definitely Pagan in origin.

Many Pagan celebrations involve fire, and for some reason, those are the ones I love most. We light the fires to cleanse the worlds, to burn our offerings, sending the sweet smell of them up to the gods. When fire came in to the world, there was light and heat, and things seemed less frightening. The darkness was illuminated.

When we re-establish the sacred center of the worlds around the public hearth in my grove, we say over the fire, "Sacred Fire, light of heaven, Power of our transformation. Create order out of chaos; Sacred Fire burn within us!" The fire burns away the dross, creates order in our hearts as well as in the cosmos. "Let our voices arise on the fire," we sing after our offerings are made, "Let our voices resound in the deep. Let the Kindreds accept what we offer, as we honor the old ways we keep."(verse copyrighted)

And the dancing around the fire! Such joy and abandon I have never known elsewhere. I remember one of my first Beltane celebrations. We had danced the Maypole, and had lit the cleansing fires. The musicians and drummers were at full tilt, and adults and children alike swayed and danced in the firelight.

This year, at a festival I attended, around the fire, the drums resounded far into the night, and the women danced bare-breasted to chanting. There is a reason the ancients used drums and chants and dancing - they are cleansing, and deeply healing. The Puritanical traditions of our own society endeavor to make us feel guilty about public nudity while Pagan traditions celebrate it. It is a connection with the primitive, a return to a simpler life, a way to let go of the stress of our modern lives.

Honoring of the Earth
Another reason I follow Pagan traditions

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