Paganism and the Slow Culture Movement
Monday, August 20th, 2007
As the Slow Movement almost oxymoronically picks up steam, I wanted to throw Paganism into the mix as being a relatively unacknowledged, but important tributary in the growing river of this vitally important cultural movement.
For those who don’t know, the Slow Movement got it’s start in Italy when Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food to protest the opening of a McDonald’s near the famed Piazza di Spagna in Rome.
This simple step planted the seeds of what has become a cultural revolution against the cult of speed and the acceleration of just about everything. Recently, journalist Carl Honoré wrote In Praise of Slowness, an acclaimed book about the Slow culture movement and it’s many offshoots.
But where does Paganism fit into this you ask? Right smack dab in the middle I say. The Slow culture movement is about living with meaning. It’s not simply a refutation of speed but a mindfulness of enjoying each moment. This notion may manifest in cooking a meal using local ingredients, or reading a book, exercising with greater care or simply turning off the television.
Regardless of the activity, the idea is to live more fully or, as I have alluded to before, to become more human by taking each moment for what it is instead of simply rushing through life desperate to fit more stuff into less time.
I’d argue that this is part of why Paganism, and more specifically Wicca, has seen the explosion in popularity that it has. As people grow more and more aware that something is missing from their lives, Wicca and other esoteric spiritual paths fill a giant void as we try and unplug from the matrix of technoculture.
As more and more people refute speed and embrace slow (mindfulness), paths like Wicca, other forms of Witchcraft, Buddhism and even New Age approaches are offering a bit of a spiritual oasis in the desert of Big-Screen-Mega-Church Christianity which offers little more than a fast-food approach to spirituality: fill up quick and get a stomach ache later.
By taking the road less traveled, Paganism and Witchcraft offer something far more holistic: a religious framework that requires participation, time, effort, intention and a healthy dose of time spent engaged in their spiritual practice.
Spending the time purifying a space, casting a circle or sphere, reciting words of power or spells and then performing each subsequent ritual with care and attention is as slow as it gets. There’s no hurrying in Witchcraft. And if there is then you’re not doing it right.
So why is this important? It’s important because the tide is changing for many people. And as strange as it may sound at first listen, being a Pagan or Witch or Hermeticist or even an esoteric Christian is at the foundation of a new way of thinking and living. They all succeed where Christianity continues to fail by giving people a means to an end and a way to engage directly in their spirituality instead of simply being a passive spectator in a crowd of people looking at their watches.
And while no one is clamoring for mass conversions to Paganism, what I am arguing here is that perhaps maybe, just maybe, esoteric spirituality can influence how we all practice our faith and in turn how we can live with more meaning and purpose.
I think this is something we can all get behind.