Peter said to Mary, Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them. Mary answered and said, What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you. (The Gospel of Mary Magdalene 5.5-7)I am writing this post in dedication to American Pagans who still have innate fear of christianity and its memes. I will never recommend Christianity to anyone, unless they are so inclined already, and they are desperately in need of shelter. I would give them fair warning that they will have to move along and not stay too long, but the system has its failsafes and memes to keep their flock toeing the line, perhaps as long as they live. It is a trap. But no one in it knows it, like fish that swim in the sea don't know they're in the sea, like pre-Newtonian folk who didn't know they're in a gravitational field.
I feel, that those who have been raised in a Christian environment, no matter how hard they might try, cannot get its memes and poisons out of their system. The fear, the confusion, the guilt. The fear that perhaps some day, the patriarchal Titan will make his advent to claim their soul. Shut it out as much as they might, the memes mutate, undergo mitoses, and branch off indefinitely into unconscious nooks and crannies. But if you are a Pagan who is still struggling with his or her christian past and its pull, I might have a solution. First of all, historically speaking (gleanings from years and years of Historical Jesus studies from my younger days), the christian movement began with the Hellenized pagani. It was most likely, at first, a mystery cult that was not associated with Judaism, but was its own gnostic-sapiential tradition, and an eventual syncretism of hellenistic and Oriental mythological, thaumaturgical motifs. Do have a look at the Nag Hammadi collection to get the whole picture of christian history; ancient christianity was strictly gnostic-sapiential and thaumaturgical, although, unfortunately, overwhelmingly patriarchal. Its association with prevailing messianism, eschatology, and apocalypticism was only another offshoot, another trajectory. And there is a whole body of so-called apocryphal gospels which are gnostic-sapiential in motif, and containing thaumaturgical (magickal) material. The earliest trajectories of the christian mystery cult were raw syncretisms of prevailing pagan myths of gods and heroes.As an example, Mary Magdalene has her own gospel. There are three Marys in the gospel narratives. There is Mary the Mother, there is Mary the Sister (Jesus had a younger sister), and Mary the most-likely lover. If Hecate is your main divinity, perhaps you could appreciate the correlations of triadic, triune fields of divine-feminine presence. There are esoteric mysteries hidden even in christianity, and it is in esoterica only that you will find the true heart of any matter. The Hermetic thaumaturgical tradition is an option for the Pagan struggling with christian memes. Or your own style of integration would, whatever comes most naturally with ease and comfort of mind. Whatever you choose, it's always good to know that there is an esoteric, hidden, secret, heart-of-the-matter dimension to everything.Don't let the politically filtered cultural mass-religion garbage, no, poison, tear at you. If all those traps are completely behind you, more power to you. But if your evangelical, fundamentalist past haunts you still with its memes, you will find your cure and medicines in the gnostic gospels. Perhaps after you experience the comfort and healing, you can assimilate it all into a Bigger Picture of the divine cosmic mandala, without having to worry about repercussions from jealous, zealous, Titan-world tradition of war gods; there just might be a copernican revolution, a paradigm shift in cosmic comportment, in which they will be your protectors, instead of your persecutors.
