The ancient term of PAGAN referred to those who found the powers –as divinities– in nature: basically worshipers of Nature. The three Old Testament derived religions were, basically, worshippers of what transcended Nature: the glories being, basically, beyond this life. GAIA, the Greek God of Earth has in our time been recast in the GAIA HYPOTHESIS, which is, basically, the conceptual interrelationship of all Earthten processes to create the living reality of this one-single-alone miracle of life in the universe. Ancient pagans and transcendentalists could not see the universe as we can today–and our planetary position and derivation in it. Nor could they see the entire Earth in its totality of living creatures and physical dynamisms as we can today. We can still “think” transcendences, but the “immanences” override them. The religions that look beyond have found and exercised great power in the human-world that keeps wanting to look beyond this one. The desire of an afterlife that survives death and provides all the answers to why all things are as they are—still prevails with personal & political power.
Thomas Jefferson thought all of this could be managed rationally — the call of Reason — such that all beliefs could have their say & do, but the State must be a neutral establishment seeking in all means of living the common good and general welfare. He, reflecting from his own sense of “Natures’s God”in religious reasoning, said in 1822 — “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” (Unitarian being a non-Trinitarian Deist-type more devoted to reason than fancied revelation theologies to promote production and promise of the common good. By 1825, with no Unitarian presences near Monticello ( and they were really growing elsewhere in New England and there about), he chose to be “a Unitarian by myself.”
This is such a brief history. So what’s the point? The point is my using the term ( my creation ) of PAGAIAN today as he used UNITARIAN in his. Only I would put it this way: “ I trust every person living on this Planet Earth–from now to whenever in the stars as we know our existence today — will live & die as a PAGAIAN. This, of course, is the universal common spirituality of living the human covenant with this earthy home for all. It is not a “religion,” but it is a “spirituality.” I’ve called it the ANSWER — A New Spirituality We Are. — Apparently, the scientific community has dropped the GAIA reference in their doings in favor of the phrase EARTH SYSTEMS SCIENCE — because there is too much of a religiously spiritualized background to the term. There’s truth to that. And my PAGAIAN may get no further than Jefferson’s UNITARIAN as a ubiquitous human understanding of that abiding truth for all.
However, I add the term-concept PAGAIAN to those already discussed of SACRAL HUMANISM and COVENEND. There is a clear sense of reading in Dante’s concept of the damnations of Hell — that the dammed continually experience desires that can no longer be satisfied. But one exits that dilemma by the formation-founding-finding of new desires to be/ can be satisfied: find the creative courage to jump fences into new pastures. The Age of the Pagaian Covenant is a follow through, let me say, of The Age of Aquarius. And, yes, in the Age of Earth’s Climate-Human Change — Earth & Water & Humanity & Breath have renewed their vows — their Sacral Covenant — to such a renewed marriage that none should admit impediment. Indeed, a true PAGAIAN seeks the obverse of that coin — to devotedly admit compliment to the new (and abused) pastures. Personally, I easily call myself a Pagaian. In ALTARPIECES, the sections “About the Abouts” and “Epilogue,” I discussed the groundwork-threshold of this — generally around the classical concepts of “consensus fidelium” and “manifest destiny.” Such timing, most humanly and scientifically, has come in our time. Whatever the labels — let the PAGAIANS clear the fences. — 8/8/18 — [Reader be thankful. A whole new book’s here condensed. I’m thankful for that.] — mdok —