I’ve practiced yoga since I first discovered it back in 1975. Held in carpeted living rooms—because you couldn’t even buy yoga mats—wearing baggy white pants and t-shirts, relaxing and breathing between each pose, groups of six or seven came together one evening a week to chant, breathe, and stretch.
I bought Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga, and devoured every page. On my sheepskin rug in my little artist’s attic, I also practiced Transcendental Meditation having been given my “personal mantra” in 1972. I preached yoga to everyone I knew at the time, like some kind of born-again convert, yet was met with mild amusement by most of my friends. Still, that’s when I started teaching about the chakras, and the rest is history.
Lesser-known about that history is that I’ve been a Pagan for just as long, having discovered a religion that supported my love for nature and the idea that the Divine could be a Goddess as well as a God. Paganism gave me a way to connect with the Divine in celebration with others; yoga and meditation gave me a way to find that connection within myself, alone. Both are paths to the sacred, and I can’t imagine being without either one.
I love yoga and the community that is growing around it. People are clean and friendly, physically fit and high-functioning. Yet sometimes I feel as if everyone is trying to be a carbon copy of each other….
While yoga gains prominent popularity as a spiritual path, Paganism has long been thrust into the shadows, probably the most misunderstood and misaligned religion in our culture. Since the Christian persecution that made the nature-god Pan into a dangerous devil, and burned women at the stake for practicing herbalism and midwifery, fear of Paganism runs deep in the collective psyche. What little that survived the brutal persecutions of the Inquisition had to be kept secret in order to survive. For that reason Paganism has always remained in the shadows and been misunderstood by mainstream culture.
Paganism is catch-all term, like Christianity, that includes many paths: Shamanism, Wicca, Nature worship, polytheism, Goddess religion, Ceremonial Magick, and Faery tradition—just a few of the various forms, somewhat akin to Catholicism and Protestantism, or the branches of Methodist, Congregational, Christian Science, etc. The one that seems to most lift everybody’s eyebrows is Wicca, for it is the root of the word “witchcraft,” something that has a very bad connotation in most circles.
The actual derivation of the word “Wicca” is from the old English wicce, which meant wise ones, while the word “Pagan” came from the Latin paganus, or country dweller—those who still lived on the land while others migrated to the city, or heathens, those who lived on the heath. Wicce was reserved for the elders who kept the lore—medicine men and women with knowledge of healing, and teachers of the mysteries of life.
When patriarchy overthrew the Goddess (starting 5,000 years ago) and then Christianity made masculine monotheism a tool of state in the Roman Empire, any one caught practicing these teachings was sentenced to death—and not a pleasant one either. The worship of nature, along with the cycle of the seasons, archetypal wisdom, and the equality of women, went dangerously out of fashion. Humanity lost an important piece of its soul.
Paganism could use some uplifting from yoga practices, while the yoga world could use a little grounding and permission to individuate.
After being involved in Paganism in the 80s and 90s, my public life as teacher and writer took me away from the creative circles I used to enjoy. For the last decade or more, yoga and meditation have been my main spiritual practices.
Several years ago I attended the 50th anniversary of the Church of All Worlds, a group I once served as High Priestess for over 10 years. It was a small gathering of people who had known each other for decades. We held our circle “sky-clad” as is sometimes the custom when weather permits, meaning clothed in nothing but the sky. Almost everyone in the circle was over 50, many in their 60s and 70s, with bodies big and round or thin and droopy, definitely needing a stiff yoga practice and some good Rolfing. But it didn’t matter—all pretense immediately dropped away as we sat, each on our own cushion, singing songs and regaling stories of our lives. There was no sexual energy whatsoever, just an intimate gathering of old friends honoring an ancient tradition.
I love yoga and the community that is growing around it. People are clean and friendly, physically fit and high-functioning. Yet sometimes I feel as if everyone is trying to be a carbon copy of each other—with trim little bodies dressed in identical outfits, talking about the latest teacher they’ve studied with, and thinking they can solve all their psychological problems with more handstands. My criticism is that too often knowledge of current events, history, science, mythology—and even individualism—falls rather shallow. Group-think is pretty strong, and group-scorn even stronger.
By contrast, Pagans are notoriously well-read, generally overweight and out of shape, and eccentric to the point of being weird—yet highly creative and tolerant of others. Pagan rituals are pageants of song and dance, poetry and costume—while yogis get high on repeating chants in foreign languages and creating group synergy on their mats. Both are viable paths to the sacred, yogis through unity, Pagans through honoring diversity.
These two worlds occupy my chakras in different ways, yet come together in the heart. Yoga aims toward transcendence, getting high in the upper chakras, finding the overarching supreme through energizing and liberating the body. Paganism is an Earth religion—focused on the four elements of Earth, water, fire, and air—largely lower chakras. Paganism could use some uplifting from yoga practices, while the yoga world could use a little grounding and permission to individuate.
We live in a time of religious syncretism. So many paths, ancient and modern, are coming together as a way to find our way back to the Divine and piece together our broken world into something that can thrive into the future. We can’t afford fundamentalism in any religion—each has something to offer, each has its blind spots and shortcomings.
It is time for each of us to find our core and speak its truth. To be individuals in service of something larger allows each of us to play our own song like instruments in an orchestra, playing a symphony together. To play well together requires deep listening as well as practice, practice, practice.
This article was republished with permission from Anodea Judith and originally appeared here on yogamodern.com.
—
Anodea Judith is a groundbreaking thought leader who is the founder and director of Sacred Centers, and a writer, therapist, and spiritual teacher. She is best known for the chakra classic, Wheels of Life: A User’s Guide to the Chakra System, considered the definitive work on the subject, with over 200,000 copies sold in English and additional printings in 15 languages.