The Paganism Elevator Speech

credit: Calvin and Hobbes

So for several years now I've had what I call "the Paganism elevator speech." This stemmed from finding it difficult to summarize my beliefs to people who are so wholly unfamiliar with anything outside The Monotheist Three and maybe Buddhism, because it was trying to condense years of study into a simple explanation to someone who was either starting from scratch or had wild misunderstandings about it. I've been asked if I worshiped Satan (no, you don't worship a being you don't believe exists - do you worship the Easter bunny?), and if I sacrifice people (no - do you, even though Yhwh tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Issac and Abraham was going to do it until Yhwh stopped him?), and if I sacrifice animals (no, do you because animal sacrifice is all over the old testament?). When I've answered that I was a Druid, I've been told, "Yeah, and I'm a Klingon! Ach mach blaccch!!" ...and it took twenty minutes of me saying "no, really" before they realized they were being a giant asshole and I wasn't kidding.

So you can see why either I spent an hour giving strangers Paganism 101 or I threw up my hands and said, "I think nature is sacred" (which is true, but an oversimplification). I needed a better explanation of polytheism, for one. Tell people you believe in Gods and Faeries and they imagine you worshiping Tinkerbell, because that's what people think of as fairies (note the different spelling).

Not Tinkerbell.
image from Pinterest, I really wish I knew who the artist is. This is The Morrigan, the Goddess of War - a faerie

So, after reading a good chunk of the book Quantum Physics, Near Death Experiences, Eternal Consciousness, Religion, and the Human Soul (link to Goodreads), I finally figured out how to summarize how I feel about polytheism in a nutshell (and not nearly as long as Stephen Hawking's Nutshell). The Pagan Elevator Speech was born.

Disclaimer: I do not speak for all Pagans, or all Druids. Ask twenty Pagans what they believe and you'll likely get twenty answers. We don't do dogma. This is my, Phoenix's, summary. Another Pagan might tell you they're not polytheist at all (some aren't).

The Pagan Elevator Speech:

Quantum physics teaches us that there exist an infinite number of potential realities, and one of these realities falls into place in the presence of a conscious observer. this is called Wave Function Collapse.

We're all conscious observers, which means we literally observe our reality into being.

That's pretty much what a creator God does, right? And there are lots of us, so: polytheism! We're the Gods.

That's it, that's my speech.

I would maybe add the caveat, "but some of us don't realize we ourselves are Gods," and that it's rather a Pagan's job to take their power back. But that's kinda what I started a whole book about, soooooo ...maybe I'll publish that soon. That book will probably get a bunch of people's knickers in a twist, because I do not tone it down, even a little. The title of it right now is, "Stop Desecrating the Divine: a modern Pagan's thoughts on ritual, religion, society, and things that piss off the Morrigan," soooooooooooooo:

Not super concerned about their feefees.
(also from Pinterest, another one that I do not know the artist of; I originally encountered both of these on FB)

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