“Ex-Pagan” managed to get a lot of confusions and errors
into a short snark in the ancestor thread, but by doing so raised an
interesting issue. Ancestors are not Gods in any tradition to my
knowledge.  But they are
potentially important spirit powers.

 

Most Pagan traditions, and not just NeoPagan ones envision
and often experience the universe as filled with a great many of what might be
called “spirit beings.”  A kind of
ecosystem exists at the subtle levels of reality, one perhaps every bit as complex as our own more tangible
one.  Perhaps this is one of our biggest distinctions from modern
Protestantism in particular, where there either are no such beings, or
they are bad.

 

The Greek philosopher Thales wrote “everything is full of
Gods.”  In doing so he obviously
used the ‘g-word’ differently than anyone in our society.  He seems to me to be referring to the
same insight Rabbi Zalman Schachter said in my favorite interfaith book, The
Jew in the Lotus: that every blade of grass has its angel urging it to
grow.  Most Pagan cultures have
spirit taxonomies that range from relatively minor spirit beings to quite
powerful one, the most powerful usually being called “Gods.”  Add to that thought forms, ancestors,
and perhaps powers that are in no sense individuated, and quite a complex
network presents itself.

 

Some might say this is all imaginary. Based on my own
experiences, I do not have that luxury. 
But many people do ot have experiences such as mine.  That being so, how important are what I
call the “intermediate powers” really?

 

As our society proves, we can get by up to a point with
ignoring this eco-system.  But this
society also ignored our terrestrial one for a long time, much of it continues
willfully to do so, and the jury is very much out as to what that will
mean.  Certainly there is no
shortage of examples worldwide of societies which ignored their terrestrial
ecosystem, and collapsed as a result.

 

I wonder whether the same point may apply to spiritual
ecosystems?  That is, a society
that ignores the values and relationships underlying those spiritual realities
will also ultimately undermine the conditions for its own survival. 

 

Obviously if this is true, it does not require ‘getting it
right’ as to what is going on. 
Traditional societies had very different views than ours, and often from

one another, and did fairly well for a long time.  But what they had in common, those that survived, was a
sense of respect for the world around them.  A sense that the world did not exist solely to fulfill their
wishes, as some New Agers claim. 

 

Just as respect often substitutes for lack of knowledge
about others when we meet them, so I suspect respect substitutes very sell for
lack of knowledge about these other powers.