I've been a bit of the opinion for a while that the secularization of Western culture is probably bad for it. Instead of the freedom to believe, there is the new orthodoxy of the rational, where there is no space for faith. Religion is nominal, a social adjective, something to do on holidays and weekends.

I don't understand this religion as a social force matter at all, and I don't understand secularization: belief is important to me. Faith is important to me. Respectability isn't particularly important to me, nor is the appeal of a greater moral authority. (I've found that, overall, greater moral authorities either agree with me or are behaving irrationally from my point of view.)

I describe myself as an eclectic pagan. This is a somewhat general, mix-and-match category, and not one that really conveys much meaning about what I actually believe. And I was thinking about it, and realizing that I really don't have words for what I do believe. So this is my attempt to find same.

I was raised what I refer to as generic-brand Christian. My mother was raised Catholic, but is somewhat estranged from the faith; she is prone to animistic tendencies at the moment, but I'm not certain if this is for their artistic value or their philosophical value. My father was raised Anglican, but non strongly practicing; I believe he may well have drifted into agnosticism. As a very small child, I attended the preschool run by the local Methodist church, which I later wound up attending.

I drifted a bit into agnosticism myself; I was probably one of the few children who listened to the sermons as well as working on the crosswords and connect-the-dots handouts that were given to the children at the beginning of the service to keep them quiet. I wanted to find the why of things, and the whys I was looking for were always the whys that I was supposed to take on faith. It was flatly obvious to me that there was something of divinity in the world, but nobody had any good information about it, and I got rather frustrated and never much involved myself with the church after we moved away from First United, which, despite my confusion about what it was all trying to get that, was a wonderful, generous congregation with a brilliant pastor.

A friend of mine lent me a book on Wiccanism when I was fourteen, which appealed to me on several levels: first, the very obvious respect for women within the faith; secondly, the emphasis that matters of faith are personal, perhaps even must be personal, and that prosteletization was not appropriate; finally, that each person must come to their own understanding of their relationship with divinity, and that some Book handed down from a Chosen Prophet might not be the one and sole primary Truth. (There are, admittedly, some branches of Wiccanism which derive from the Enlightened Teachings of Someone or Other, but I find them a bit strange.)

And a bit after that, I drifted away from there too: there were things in the Wiccan principles and writings that were worthwhile, but some of them weren't quite right. I studied Buddhism for a while, and found much worthwhile, but coming to the conclusions I wanted to come to from diameterically different axioms. That being interesting enough, I filed it away as a trivia point, and started to assemble my own particular brand of eclectic paganism.

One of the things that religion is supposed to provide to people is some sense of purpose or direction in life, it seems. Some aim towards heaven, or away from hell, or off the Wheel, or into the next incarnation. There is a sense that one needs an answer to "Why are we here?" (Because we're here: Roll the bones.) And also, "Where are we going?"

I'm not entirely certain that I like the concept of the universe having a Greater Purpose (tm). It seems to me that the universe is, and that is a wonder and a purpose in and of itself. Is there a higher calling than to be a part of that universe, to try to understand its glory and its wonder and its marvellous intricacy, and to be a part of the complex thing that may be reality?

There is an excellent passage from The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson:

This is a synthesis, an accomplishment of great significance, a pipe dream: Spider Robinson's ideal telepathic universe, where understanding of the other is, in fact, possible. To be a part of the one eye opening, to see itself, all of this vast, wonderful, magical creation: that is destiny. Not of humankind, but of any other being that happens to drop by this universe. To reach the point at which one can feel the sunlight upon one's leaves, or to walk silent in stalking, or to flee the hunter, or the slow, itching feel of erosion on a mountainslope: to know what infinity feels like from the feel of the spans between stars, and to know what the strange and alien is behind the eyes of the child who reaches in through the window to pet the cat.

To open the eyes to the workings of the universe, to the wonder and magic and reality and surreality and coincidence and law and all the wonder that is there: to learn everything and know everything. That is worship -- science is worship, as is prayer. Love, above all, is worship.

The universe is here to be understood, to be cherished, to be loved, and above all, to be: estin.

We are here to be the observers, to cherish and be cherished, to love and to be loved, and above all, to be: esmen.

Opiate of the masses, Marx called religion. I wouldn't be surprised if, to a certain extent, he were right: much in the way religion seems to be run is designed to keep the eye closed, to keep people unthinking, unchallenged, and unlikely to grow. This is not a fault of religion in general, or even specific ones: just a happenstance of humans that is common and unfortunate.

It is, in some ways, easier to take the opiate, to find the easy answer handed down from the Book or from someone else's word about what God or the gods wants. One can find that truth, without subjecting it to the rigorous testing that other things are given, and find it good enough, and go on.

No out-of-the-box religion will fit all people, nor even most, even of the ones who follow it: each person is unique, a set of experiences and perceptions that are, no matter how similar to another part of the world, irreproducable and completely precious. Each of those sets of perceptions is vital to the understanding of the universe: there is a different shading through a different set of eyes. The flaw, as I see it, in much organized religion is handing down the dogma, and not allowing for deviation or exploration, nor allowing for the growth and exploration of meaning that is the fundamental purpose of existence. To be, and to be possible, to grow into the most we can be: existence is barely possible when puppeted, let alone growth.

One of the ideals of Wiccanism is perfect love and perfect trust. It is, indeed, a good ideal: to be able to approach the universe in all its glory and all its horror, to love it and to trust that it is, in fact, what the gods intended. The one eye opens, and there is understanding. Love is the law, love under will; that is, I believe, Thelemic principle: in the state of perfect enlightenment, one can only act in keeping with the will of the universe, to the greatest good, and until one achieves that state of enlightenment, acting in love is the best option available.

Buddhism finds that the way of achieving the perfect state, the Nirvana, is to deny the self, to become one with the whole rather than the parts. I think that there is some of this necessary, but it is not the path that I can follow. I am of the universe, in among it, loving its parts too dearly to be willing to let go of them. I think the universe needs both these poles -- the one that can give up all connections even to self, and understand the whole that is now self, and the one that is self, reaching to the whole by loving, understanding, becoming one with the individual parts, the sort of soul that gets hands into the soil and turns up roots and earthworms and plants gardens.

My philosophy is shaped by my need to connect, to be: I cannot heal all the world, as I cannot reach that far. But that person, there, I can heal; this place, here, I can plant. In this place I can dance, and laugh; here I can break into a thousand shards and be born again, a glass phoenix.

I consider myself an elemental spirit; perhaps if I were of a less primordial nature I could aspire to the wholeness and nothingness of Nirvana. As that is not within my capabilities, I do not worry about it; it is clearly not part of my purpose.

My purpose, as I see it, is to form connections among things. I love easily, readily, and deeply; while that love is not entirely unconditional, it is difficult to shake. I have been told that when I am nearby, it is easier to see into the world in which I live -- one full of the magic of simple existence, in which cutting an onion to cook for dinner is an act of the sacred. (For the longest time, the only purpose I had for my original athame was to cut cheese.)

My trust, I fear, is imperfect: damaged, this incarnation at least, by a number of happenstances. But I learn again to trust, and give that love to those who have earned it, and come to know more people, the ones I love, the things they love, the expanding understanding of a network that may not be telepathy yet, but which is trying hard to get there.

I live in a world of potentialities: it is a metaphor for itself, for understanding itself, for application to anything and everything else. The interaction between the potential and the actual gives birth to new worlds, and I write them, and new people, whose lives I note out into pages. Perhaps those people's lives will mean something to those in the world in which I live, physically.

I have no particular holy days; all days are holy. While there is in me a wish for ritual and magics, the only services I regularly attend are the Samhain Sabbat at MIT -- a service that has been of value to not only those of Wiccan faith, but eclectics such as myself, and those of other traditions entirely. It is unpolished, but true, and touches on the Mystery. Sometimes I consider taking up the practice of other holidays, but I have no idea what I would wind up doing for them; I am a solitary person by nature, and a solitary practitioner by happenstance, and beyond my normal reverences for deity, there is little I can think to do barring special circumstance.

Special circumstances will happen: modal changes in a life. Births, deaths, partnerings, changes of Name, changes of nature, partings, crises. These are extraordinary things that may well call for something extraordinary.

I have mentioned deity, but I have not said that I worship. I have, to a certain extent, adopted the Heinleinian statement that "All that groks is God." There is divinity in existence, and such anything that exists is, in its own way, divine.

Even so, there is the use for personifications, for names to call upon. Naming is power, and there is in old names much well-stored belief, much strength in things remembered, things forgotten, things once known and old ways of understanding.

I call upon many gods, depending on my mood; the dark ladies of the Greeks and Romans, the mistress of the Celts' fire, the woodland gods and the wild gods and the storm gods, all names.

More often I call upon no gods at all, only on the entirety of existence. I faith -- faith as a verb -- that there is purpose, and I act according to what I know of my purpose and my Name.

Names are important -- the true name of a thing is as much the thing as it is itself; existence is the manifestation of True Names. I think of my Name as being part of a thread of music, something that, over many lifetimes, becomes more and more complex, as it incorporates and understands more and more of the universe. Each individual life is a theme in that piece of music, a flickering hint of something unique. Each life has its own spirit, a separate piece, complete in itself -- the aiua, the deepmost thread, is not and probably shall never be complete -- and each spirit has its own destination when the life ends and the aiua goes on to construct a new life.

I do believe, first and foremost, that my path is only my own. Other paths may be parallel to mine for a time, even for a long time; other paths may drift close and go away again, or even cross mine. Some may never come close. I have what is in my own mind the best route I can take, but that route may not be a part of any other Name, any other person's way. I will not try to convert anyone to my path; that's a bit silly. (I might wish, though, that others would have a similar willingness to allow others to walk their own paths.)

I believe that I must learn, explore and understand, to noodle at thoughts and ideas and explore the world that has fallen on me. There is so much there that it is almost a crime to forget how much there is.

I believe that there are magics in the world, and that faith can shift the way things are. I believe that acting within joy will bring me joy, and living my life in such a way that it brings me happiness will make me far happier than trying to try placebos for joy: wealth, sex, power, other opiates.

I believe that there will be much to love in the world, and that I should, as much as possible, love -- and love in whatever way comes naturally to that loving.

I know that all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well: it will indeed all work out in the end. I faith, and I know, and there is much in the world to be found protected by the sheltering wings of the gods.

This philosophy has been accumulated from odds and ends, including: studies of Wiccanism, Shamanism and Buddhism; futzing about with the Tarot; The Principia Discordia; The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson; Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin; the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin; Cyteen, by C. J. Cherryh; Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card; a great deal of exploring Greek; and a lot of music.

As well as probably a lot of stuff that I've forgotten.