Stephenie Wight 🌸 (@SKWpinky)

2.) So this brings me back to your original question of why paganism is hated? It comes down to control and money. The early churches needed to collect money in order to survive and if you can control people through fear and their beliefs, they will pay. In order to convert more people, the early churches adapted pagan holidays and practices into their beliefs and practices. That made it easier to convert new followers. If anyone opposed and held on to their pagan beliefs, they needed to be discredited so lies were made up in order to justify murdering them. This helped create fear among pagans because to openly practice would mean the person and their family could be murdered for not bowing down to the church. This has been going on for near 2000 years. Free thinking is something the church is opposed to and paganism supports free thinking. A pagan will develop their own relationship with what they accept and believe in from a spiritual perspective without the need to pay the church out of fear or to be absolved of some created idea of sin. Pagans do not bow down to their Gods and Goddesses because it is demanded, pray that God takes control of their life or to be forgiven so they do not spend eternity suffering in Hell. Pagans in general ask that their Gods and Goddesses watch over them and guide them but also stand on their own, taking responsibility for their life. Pagans generally follow a personal code of morals, honor and respect for life without having a need for commandments and rules that they are indoctrinated to follow or to be judged when they die for breaking church imposed interpretations of what God demands. Pagans go to the source of their beliefs themselves and if they screw up, accept the responsibility of their actions which they, by their personal code of honor and morals, try to fix with those who have been harmed or violated including nature and nature spirits. Pagans do not have a ‘get out of jail free’ card of accepting a savior to cleanse them of their ‘sins’, they have to earn their place in life and the afterlife. Some forms of paganism do believe in karma as a sort of checks and balances between positive and negative that follows a person through their life and into consecutive reincarnations and others believe in an afterlife that depends on how honorable a person was in their physical existence. Paganism is based on individual paths and each may choose their own path. This is in direct conflict with organized religions so throughout the history of Christianity there has been an opposition to paganism. Christianity has continued since it’s formation to spread lies about what pagans believe and do in order to attempt to keep people from thinking for themselves and questioning the control that has been placed upon them by the various sects of Christianity. In the 1990’s I was in a video rental store discussing the movie ‘The Craft’ which had just been released on video when a priest interjected himself into our discussion. He was reserved in his comments, but opposed to the movie as it may promote paganism and witchcraft. I questioned what specifically he objected to with the practice of paganism and witchcraft? He said that he really did not know much about it or what they do. I stated that I was raised Catholic and have participated in pagan and witchcraft rituals, basically what takes place in the church every Sunday is much the same as pagan rituals because it is an adulteration of pagan practices. His reply was, “I prefer to think of it as an adaptation.” He also stated, “People are not supposed to now that.” Looking back, I am not sure if he meant people are not supposed to know Christianity is based on paganism or if they are not supposed to know he considers it an adaptation. At the time I did not know many clergy members are under contract with their church which forbids them from saying anything that deviates from the church dogma and they can be removed from their position for making any conflicting statements including voicing their own personal position. Removal from a position may also include their employment by the church, thus costing them their job and career. I learned this later after becoming an ordained minister in 1995 although I did this as part of my studies for my own personal knowledge and not for employment purposes. Not surprisingly, some of the clergy I have met over the past couple decades are the least faithful in their proclaimed beliefs. Education and critical thinking tends to have that effect. “Christian” clergy members are also some of the most vocal at spreading the lies and hatred toward paganism that I have met, it seems to be part of the job.