Sublime

The great task of a life-sustaining culture, then, is to keep the invisibles attached, the gods smiling and pleased: to invite them to remain by propitiations and rituals; by singing and dancing, smudging and chanting; by anniversaries and remembrances; by great doctrines such as the Incarnation and by little intuitive gestures—such as touching

man sees himself as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when man’s historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to a boy on an acid trip.

Most people in the world before the modern era used sacred calendars to mark time and help them feel oriented in relation to a true center. They used this means to contain themselves and help themselves stay sane, to provide something predictable, a dependable structure for living.

The Witches and the Druids certainly share a number of beliefs: a belief in a future life and in reincarnation; in the efficacy of the magic circle; in forms of prophecy (or, as we would call it, clairvoyance); in the sacredness of Stonehenge and other stone circles, which in later times became the traditional meeting-places of Witches; and in an

This truth was expressed by the alchemists (and there is a strong tradition of alchemy within Druidry) and later by Carl Jung (whose work first began to influence modern Druidry through Ross Nichols).

the events of human existence were perceived as intimately related to and informed by the eternal realm of gods and goddesses.

Hopi have no word for time, and that their verbs have no tenses. Like the participants in the rituals that evoke Eliade’s ‘sacred time’, the Hopi live in an ‘eternal present’, ‘indifferent to western science, technology and philosophy.’

The gods of our ancestors were, on the whole, gods of the wild places;

In times of great cultural change, trickster and anti-structural manifestations are particularly apparent, and the supernatural is an important part of them. In 1956 University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace published his classic paper “Revitalization Movements.” It is one of the most illuminating works on cultural