The substrateSome aspects of our emotional makeup instinctively resonate within us. These include our natural reactions to rhythm, dance, song, drama, and all the factors which tend to produce altered states of consciousness. These appear to be more than learned cultural traditions. Rather these appear to be evolutionarily structured basic behaviors, similar to an infant’s proclivity for learning language. All these factors – language, play, family, closeness, kinship, rhythm, dance, probably played important adaptive roles in the early evolution of humans.

Recognizing these aspects of our human nature and our human heritage and valorizing them as the essence of what it means to be human is an important step in coming to terms with our contemporary religious experience. Religion satisfies an inner craving for meaning, a feeling of wholeness or union with forces greater then oneself, an inner craving for ecstatic or profound experiences. This is a fundamental adaptation of our biological heritage. Albert Einstein said “…the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant…”

The pastThe scarce, fluctuating, and vulnerable resources of simple hunter-gathers favored the emergence of ritual based alliances. Members of a given band all shared the same ability to contact the energy of their totemic ancestors. The society was basically spiritually egalitarian. Nature was viewed as something of great power and worthy of great respect. That is, the natural world was seen as sacred. Religion tended to be experiential and inclusive. Women tended to be viewed as important since they bring forth (create) life. Women were seen as being much closer to nature than men so Important deities tended to be female. Sacred ecstatic experiences became part of the human makeup.

However, our religious emotions could be targeted by ambitious individuals. When new technology and favorable environmental conditions made it possible to produce and store and control surpluses, society became very much trans-egalitarian. Ambitious aggrandizers privatized not only the most productive resources but also ritual life. Elites began to establish hierarchies or classes of individuals. Important rituals were primarily for the most important people in the society. The first discernible division between the elite and popular religions probably occurred in the upper Paleolithic

Strategies developed by the complex hunter-gatherer elites continued to be used by the farming societies of the Neolithic. Rituals that involved altered states of consciousness became arenas for manipulating public emotions, values, and political sympathies. Increased food production and domestication made it possible to increase surpluses with additional labor – hence slavery became attractive. We now had the concept that some people could completely dictate to others how to live, work, feel, and think.

It became possible for aggrandizers to concentrate greater and greater amounts of political and economic power. Aggrandizers began to promote their own ancestors as the spiritual ancestors for everyone in their society. The elite deities became everyone’s deities. The elites portrayed themselves as the most closely connected individuals to these ancestors. The elites became channels (priests) to the deities. Another example of how resources affect religious beliefs is provided by the pastoral nomads and the vicissitudes of their resource base, resulting in endemic raiding, a warrior class, and warrior deities.

With a priestly class and a warrior class, the elites imposed their will and their religion on the common people and expanded their influence through conquests. Important deities tended to be angry bloody warlords like the elites themselves. Creators suddenly became male. The scared was removed from the natural world because only the elites can be allowed to interact with the sacred. . The sacred nature of the world was portrayed as an obstacle to personal freedom as well as to business interests of the elites.

Elites composed the holy stories and wrote the holy books. Religion changed from being experiential to following doctrine. Common people, if they counted at all, became merely spectators. Women were devalued. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition this ultimately forged a powerful religious force based on exclusive monotheism and intolerance of other views. “Thou shall have no other gods before me”. Who determines the right god – the elites of course. We have all the answers just do what we say – we speak for God because God only talks directly to us. Conformity and submission became the norms. Heretics must be suppressed.

At the same time some of the original traditions were maintained, sometimes in secret, by the common people. Women in particular (the wise old women of the village) played a large role in keeping the old traditions. In the twelfth century Church officials complained that one third of the European population was still following the old ways. In the nineteenth century even the brothers Grimm saw the Church’s claims of witchcraft as arising from popular pagan beliefs. Commoners acknowledged the religion of the elites but their main concern was just getting enough to eat each day. For them spirituality was connected with the agricultural cycle. Their lives literally depend on it.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, agrarian-based lords began to obtain sufficient surplus production from their estates to support a significant number of craftspeople. These more numerous merchants and artisans began to congregate in towns that governed themselves independently of feudal estates. The mercantile interests of the new urban centers were often in conflict with the more traditional land-based interests of the lords who were generally supported by religious organizations tailored to elite interests. The free spirited new mercantile class promoted rational thought over dogma partially in order to undermine the authority of the clergy and lords. This skeptical rationalism created the Age of Reason and is still a vibrant part of our intellectual heritage. It also formed the conceptual basis for the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution has had profound implications for literally every aspect of life and cultural we experience. Industrial society has enabled far greater amounts of resources to be obtained, processed, and transported than ever before with far less subsistence and other labor costs. This has created a consumer society in which a large portion (at least in theory) of the population plays an active role, not just the elites. The older themes of book religions such as to emphasize suffering in this world in order to reap rewards after death seem out of synch in a modern world that emphasizes enjoying life and providing for one’s family now. The concept of rewards after death was very conveniently used by the elites to justify the poor conditions of the commoners.

Today the goodSlave labor is no longer necessary. Slavery is an abomination but was condoned and sometimes encouraged by the book religions for thousands of years. It is only after the industrial revolution that it becomes unviable. We still have a long way to go but ending slavery was an extremely important step towards the concept of maybe one class of people should not be imposing their will on others. In this context, religion becomes once again almost entirely a matter of personal choice and a force to be used by individuals for their own personal growth and fulfillment. Increasing numbers of people are exploring alternative spiritual paths that seem more relevant to modern conditions and problems.

Industrialization also dramatically changed the role of women in society. The ability to control their own fertility, to use weapons to defend themselves, to command powerful machines, and to manipulate finances and communications technology has removed many of the previous constraints on the social roles of women. Industrialization has made women more independent in all aspects of life and made it possible for many to establish their own spiritual and lifestyles. Women were very instrumental in the early formation of religious concepts and also in the preservation of traditional concepts. Perhaps that time has come again.

Today the badIndustrialization has created large urban agglomerations that produce large numbers of disenfranchised poor or highly stressed individuals. Industrialization has resulted in toxic pollution on an unprecedented scale. We are eliminating species of plants and animals at a rate previously unknown in the billions of years of life’s history. We are changing the climate of the earth. The threat of nuclear war is another major concern. They are ecological factors that directly impact the lives of large numbers of people, animals, and plants, not only in Industrial states, but everywhere in the world.

Many modern citizens no longer know what ecstatic experiences are or are only exposed to them in popular concerts or through drugs. We have transformed almost every aspect of our interactions with the natural world from sacred ecstasies into gray mundane and profane expressions of existence. We are no longer aware of the meaning of the remnant rituals that we enact or the reasons why we indulge in them. The significance of the symbols that connect us with the sacred has lapsed into our cultural subconscious.

These are all extremely serious issues that conventional absolutist book religions have not managed to successfully deal with.

Today the futureMany individuals have begun to search introspectively inside themselves and listen to what their deepest emotions urge them to do. It is probably these people who have rediscovered the ancient roots of traditional religion and who have set about reconstituting a contemporary version of the long suppressed Western traditions. These developments seem to point in a more healthy direction towards balance with the environment and towards a more satisfying existence for those keen to experience life in a multihued sacred fashion rather than endure a gray profane existence.

Given the fundamental premise of traditions religions about the sacredness of the natural world, if there is to be an ecologically oriented religion in the future, it will almost certainly emerge from a traditional religious background rather than from one of the book religions. Individual experiences with Nature are at the core of the mystical experience and ideally an ecstatic union with Nature provides the feeling and context of salvation or deliverance.

The basic neo-pagan philosophy is very similar to other traditional religions such as those of the Native Americans.

The world is sacred and it is possible to directly contact sacred forces through the proper rituals at the proper places with the proper actions and intentions.Sacred Ecstatic Experience is the archetypical means of contacting the scared forces and it is a highly desired experience open to all.Life is the central mystery of existence.The cosmos is a living organism.The cosmos communicates with individuals, and individuals are never alone.The main avenue of touching the sacred forces is by stimulating the creative capacities within ourselves through activities such as ritual, music, poetry, dance, art, meditation, and so on,Entering into contact with sacred forces takes place in sacred time, not historical time.The world is viewed in terms of scared poetry and magicEvil and misfortune are dealt with by assimilating them into universal themes and values, not by blaming evil forces conspiring against people or god.