Choosing Not To Mix Paganism and Christianity....Why?

Ancient of Days, by William Blake

"Thou shall have no other gods before me"
-Exodus 20:3 (King James Bible)



Anyone who knows me knows I'm a professed Pagan in terms of my identity as a magician. For me, what this means, is that the spirits I have both a reciprocal and devotional relationship with are gods that are considered Pagan deities (the Egyptian gods specifically). I worship in a Pagan style of prayer and offerings that sometimes involves petitioning the gods for some boon while at other times are merely done out of sense of joy and gratitude.

My gods aren't wholly of another kind than myself, they are more like older siblings or even parents who I honor because they are who they are. But, more than that, not only are they persons, in the sense of having individual identity, but they are also principles that allow me to exist not only in terms of having breath, but in terms of all the experiences of being alive.

For example, a very simplistic snapshot...

Ra is sovereignty and the life giving power of the Sun while also being a distinct divine person. Hathor is sexuality, joy, and aesthetic beauty, while also being a distinct divine person. Osiris is the power of resurrection and renewal while still being a distinct divine person. Sekhmet is the power of war, aggression, disease, and healing while also being a distinct divine person. Each of the gods is a principle, or set of principles, as well as a person.

Goddess Isis

There is a complex panentheistic, polytheistic, and animistic metaphysics underlying my system of sacro-magickal belief and practice that is the result of education and practice over many years.

For me, religion and magick are fundamentally inseparable insofar as I work with my spirits in nearly all acts of magickal practice. For example, the act of consulting the tarot for guidance is proceeded by an invocation to Thoth who, while being a divine person in his own right is, quite literally, the personified qualities of the insight as wisdom I seek when doing divination.

Such a way of interacting with the gods and spirits one has a relationship with has a very particular way of reorientating one to the world. This is an immediate and tangible means by which to accomplish the re-enchantment of the world.

I've always suspected that the ahistorical separation that exists in the modern mind between religion and magick is largely artificial, an artifact of an age wherein magick was seen as inherently transgressive and outside the will of God. The only acceptable supernatural aid (in the Western world) came from petitioning saints for intercession or praying for a miracle directly from Jesus or God Himself. The magician/sorcerer was one who interacted with spirits that granted power and boons outside of the direct auspices of God (and the church), and whose work was not religious in the way those of this time understood religion.

 Edward Kelly and John Dee
summoning the dead for divination.

It does seem true that nearly all cultures have a demarcation regarding acceptable and unacceptable, permitted and transgressive, magick but only in the modern world is the magician seen as fundamentally and archetypally other than priest or priestess. The archetypal magicians of the Western world, whether real or fictional, such as Merlin (seen as a druid, but very much the mage), Agrippa, Dee, Gandalf, even very modern incarnations like Raistlin Majere, are all outside the purview of priestcraft.

Even those mainstream religionists who allow for the existence of miracles (fewer and fewer with the growing influence of materialism and scienceism) will still claim that the intercession of a saint isn't magick because magick is power granted by forces other than their God. According to the party line, priests don't do magick, priests pray and hope for the best. According to this paradigm, the magician/sorcerer is transgressive, the very opposite of the priest, by nature.

Though obviously I don't share the ahistorical outlook that there is, by nature, a necessary separation between priest(ess) and magician, I have an admission to make. I too share a certain ahistorical outlook influenced by the very same paradigm that created the polarized line between priestcraft and sorcery.

My ahistorical hangup has to do with mixing Pagan and Abrahamic concepts. I don't.

I've always kept my Paganism and Abrahamism separate. Even when I sojourned into Golden Dawn based ceremonial magick for a period of about three years, I set aside my devotional Paganism completely, said farewell to the gods I had been worshiping (there was no jealousy, no anger on their part, only a peaceful allowing) and embraced my new paradigm as fully as I could. I wanted to see what it was all about, the qabalah, the angels, the Hebrew Letters, YHWH, and I both devoured knowledge and practiced with gusto.

However, despite myself, I was always fighting a sort of inner resistance and after about three years, and even after a profoundly moving experience of Christ while meditating on Tiphareth, (a story for another time perhaps) I put away my ceremonial magick books and came back to Paganism. Despite the deep intellectual satisfaction that ceremonial magick gave me, as well as the obvious spiritual power of the rites, it simply wasn't my spiritual home.

Like a Prodigal Son, I had to leave so that I could return more appreciative of my home, my relationships with the spirits, and grateful for the relationships that had somehow deepened even with my leaving. I, more than ever, felt closer to my gods in a truly Pagan animistic sense. No longer was Isis, Osiris, Anubis, Horus, Ra, Thoth, Nephthys, and the other gods  fundamentally transcendent, if approachable, they were here now, immanent and present in the world. Their reality had become tangible in a way it had never been before. Certainly they had transcendent aspects, but they were here now, with me, ever-present.

Leaving and returning had been so important to my relationship with my gods that I sense it is entirely possible that they pushed me out of the nest so that I could experience what I needed to experience so as to enter into deeper relationship with them upon my return.

The gods, they work in mysterious ways.

Even since my reunion with my gods, I'll be the first to admit a deeper than ever aversion to mixing my Paganism and its spirits with Christianity and its spirits. Even the idea of continuing my devotion to my gods while keeping Abrahamic based practices (such as traditional grimoiric evocations) entirely separate feels off. I know that there are some Pagans, Christians, and even Buddhists who are dual practitioners but, for me, that seems awkward, clumsy, and internally contradictory.

Because my Pagan magickal practice is a manifestation not of a Will to Power, but instead a manifestation of a religious impulse directing me to an ever deepening relationship with the Numinous as manifest in my relationship with the gods, dual practice seems, for lack of a better word, wrong. It seems like a bastardization of both my Pagan spiritual path and the Abrahamic path embedded in much of the Western Esoteric tradition.

And because I am self-aware, I recognize that my aversion to all things Abrahamic is ahistorical, especially in terms of late Pagan magick as clearly demonstrated in The Greek Magickal Papyri, but the aversion is there and it's visceral. My aversion to all things Abrahamic isn't animus toward Christianity, Judaism, or Islam per se (especially in their mystical manifestations) or practitioners of these faiths. It's a paradigmatic aversion that rejects the cosmology and metaphysical assumptions of these faiths.

Christian Mystic Thomas Merton

I share a lot of common values with, and have a great deal of respect for, Christians who are good and compassionate people, Christian mystics, and Christian magicians. Christian devotional mystics like Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, and Richard Rohr have made me a better Pagan by clarifying the nature of kenotic meditation practices I still use (it's good tech). Understanding the means by which a piece of magickal/spiritual tech works then stripping it down to its core components (ie. the parts that do the work) is smart, historically sound, sorcery. 

Unlike many who profess modern Paganism, I was never Christianized. My mother is a non-Wiccan Witch and my father was nominally Christian, but no longer. I was raised with complete freedom to seek for myself without any pressure to accept the spiritual beliefs of either my father or my mother. My mother did manage to keep me away from her Witchcraft books until I was twelve years old, for safety reasons. And, to be fair to her, though I didn't appreciate it at the time, I believe her decision, in retrospect, was the right one. No telling what sort of trouble a magickally inclined nine year old could have gotten into.

However, despite never formally being part of Christianity and never having been baptized, I did go to Catholic school for eight years (which started me on the path to being a Christian theology geek) and, like anyone born into Western culture Christianity is part of the background noise of life. The culture-wide holidays such as Christmas and Easter, the turns of phrase we use to express ourselves (often from the KJV), those who usually surround us as family and friends, even the way we swear when we're angry or stub our toes reflect Christianity as deep, unavoidable cultural substrate, to a greater or lesser extent.

It isn't lost on me that my aversion, may be, quite ironically, an artifact of being part of a Christian culture wherein the idea of mixing pantheons is not merely verboten, it is unthinkable. The other team is the enemy and one just doesn't pick and choose aspects of each team based on one's preference. You are on Yahweh's team or you aren't.

Oil and Water

"And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth."
-Exodus 20:3 (King James Bible)

Christianity is, at least historically, a path of orthodoxy even more than it is a path of orthopraxy. In other words, Christianity is about belief (a profession of faith) primarily and secondarily about practice (works). Though there is extreme, even historically murderous, divisions between Catholicism and Protestantism regarding the exact means by which divine grace and and one's works converge so as to produce the state of being saved, there is no division regarding the fact that faith is of preeminent importance in a way not seen in orthopraxic faiths like nearly all of modern Paganism or other practice heavy faiths like Theraveda Buddhism.

Personally, I grapple with the idea of using Christian spirits, or indeed any spirit, in a purely utilitarian fashion utterly divorced from the theology  and context (ie. underpinning beliefs and metaphysical assumptions) that makes them in any way coherent. That kind of "use them because they work" approach reminds me too closely of the lists of gods one would find in old Wicca 101 books (for your love spell, just choose "Ishtar, Isis, Hathor, or Aphrodite"). No cosmology, no metaphysics, no relationship, just tools in a toolbox to use and set aside when finished. This is fine if the gods and spirits are merely personifications of one's personal unconscious, but strikes me as wildly disrespectful if they are, as I believe, extant beings with agency and personality. 

Curiously enough, this manner of practice was the very kind of wild magickal/spiritual eclecticism that was decried and mocked by countless Pagans and magicians throughout the 80s and 90s for it's mix and match, gods and spirits as tools, with no concern for incompatible theologies or metaphysical assumptions. I'm not surprised to see that what was old is new again, because everything in occulture is cyclic, but I'd suggest that a lot of baby Pagans who were mocked for their eclectic practices during the 1990s by those "in the know" are owed an apology.

The wild west of the occult scene of the 80s and 90s, and its anything goes eclecticism, does bear a greater similarity to the manner in which magick was practiced in late antiquity than it does to more recent efforts at striving towards internal consistency and coherence within broader modern cultic or personal practice. Despite that, I do prefer coherence, as well as internal and aesthetic consistency tending as I do to prefer systematic syncretism to wild eclecticism.

So, like all of us, I've been impacted by Christianity but not in the manner in which I've suspected for a long time. I suspected, for a long time that my aversion was rooted in the adverse effects Christianity has had on culture (for example):

• The religious imperialism that annihilated Paganism from Europe including the various mystery schools...absorbing and co-opting ideas isn't merely preservation when it extinguishes the original source.

• The religious imperialism that destroyed indigenous cultures, often enslaved adults, and forced indigenous children to live away from their families and forget their spirits, traditions, and cultures.

• Forcing my ancestors on my father's side to be Christian via the lash.

• The misogyny as demonstrated by the pro-life movement and "traditional values" cults like the Quiverfull movement.

• Christian Dominionism wherein Protestant lawmakers want to religiously dominate the 7 Mountains of culture (Dominionism - The Seven Mountains ).

• Attempting to force anti-science creationism into school science classes.

• Legislating demonstrably useless abstinence only sex education in schools.

• The Christian religious litmus test that does exist in terms of anyone seeking the office of president. No non-Christian has any hope of being elected president in the United States.

• The soulless and useless Christianity defanged of its fierce compassion that allows millions and millions of professing Christians to unashamedly support legislators that would vote to remove vital health services from millions of their countrymen and women.

• The soulless and useless Christianity that attacks homosexuals while ignoring the grievous sins of those whose asses warm the pews...the liars, cheats, adulterers, thieves, the covetous, etc. 

• The twisted transcendentalism of millions of American Protestants who feel that protecting the environment is unnecessary because Christ is coming back to fix it...all while we are in the midst of a man-made great extinction. 

• The Christianity that wraps itself up in the American Flag while ignoring the plight of refugees from war-torn nations, edifies the rich and demonizes the poor. 

• And so on and so on...

Though many of my European friends will not be able to relate to the kind of Christianity I'm describing, it assuredly does exist and it is, in the United States, no mere outlier. In fact, it is the twisted heart and soul of the Conservative Evangelical Christian movement that in played a large part in getting Trump and his cronies elected.

I know there are many who will be thinking, "but that's not real Christianity!"

G.K. Chesterson's,"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting it has been found difficult and not tried," notwithstanding, the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" is piss poor apologetics. This sort of apologetics is nearly utopian in its clinging to an ahistorical version of Christianity that has only, if ever, existed in the heart of Christian mystical adepts.

Christianity, like all faiths, is, for good and ill, as it is practiced, not as it is on paper or in the hearts of those that are sometimes better than the tradition they profess. There is good and there is bad in Christianity and BOTH of those things are Christianity as magickal egregore, spiritual tradition, and mystical path. Any argument to the contrary ignores both history and current reality. 

Getting back to my point, the inner aversion that causes me to reject the idea that Christianity and Paganism are like chocolate and peanut butter (ie. great together) is rooted in the fact I take theology, metaphysics and cosmology rather seriously (I want my personal theology/cosmology to be coherent) and believe these things represent the heart and soul of a given spiritual path much more so that do the smells, bells, outer regalia, spells, icons, and accouterments that many occultists find appealing. Those things are the icing on the cake perhaps, but the beating heart goes deeper than that. The beating heart is the narrative metaphors that introduce us to, and define the roles of, the spirits and gods of a given path whether ancient or modern.

Myth is spiritual metaphor, and some metaphors can, in my opinion, make poor bedfellows even if they share a common ancient roots due in no small part to thousands of years of cultural accretions that influence how we understand a given spiritual tradition, in this case Christianity. Thousands of years of history and impact do not magically disappear because, according to speculative history, 50,000 years ago all extant religions came from the same Lurasian root source myths. Using the Lurasian theory as argument to justify simply choosing mythic motifs in a utilitarian fashion is an interesting perspective but one that points in a direction I suspect that very few people would appreciate if taken to its logical conclusion.

That's a conversation for another time.

So, is my choice to avoid mixing Paganism or my reluctance to engage in dual Pagan and Christian practice ahistorical?

For the Paganism of late antiquity, at least in some cases, yes.

However, I've never made claim that my practice was meant to be a mirror match for either early Paganism or the Pagan magickal or spiritual practices of Late Antiquity. My practice is that of a 21st Century Pagan Magician, based as much as possible on lore, but rooted primarily in my relationships with the gods as both devotee and sorcerer. My path is a results orientated magickal and spiritual path/practice (theory must support results, not the other way around), and is inspired by many, yet beholden to no other, spiritual or magickal traditions.

There are sound reasons for the choices experienced magicians make even if those choices run counter to the zeitgeist of the moment. 

An Intention to Guide Meditation Practice

Today, as I stand at the axis of the 2Three Worlds, and center of the Seven Sacred Directions3,
     I am grateful for the opportunities granted me by the gift of incarnation4,
     supported by the blessings of the gods and spirits whose unseen hands
     guide my steps. May I continue to be be shepherded by the adepts, mystics,
     and masters of old, those upon whose shoulders I stand5 so that I, in turn, may
     one day be found fit to shepherd others on the path of the Mysteries6.

Let me not squander this precious opportunity to free myself of delusion, fear,
    suffering, ignorance and all things that occlude the vigorous and vital flow of
    energy through my channels. May my energy body be healed, healthy, and whole
    that it may serve the highest purposes of fate, will, and Ma'at7.

May I practice this day and every day with discipline, determination, effortlessness,
    and equanimity. May I encounter all mind-states without attachment or aversion8.
    May I be steadfast in the face of all obstacles and difficulty, allowing
    all discomfort to be a means of insight, self-knowledge, and illumination.

May I enter without effort and clarity of mind into the Sacred Flame9 at my center,
    the inner gateway of Emptiness, the silent doorway to all worlds.
    Let me be ever-guided by its illumination and warmth and the blessings of

    my Akh10 who beckons me ever-forward so I may one day be worthy to be called
    Justified11 among the Ancient and Shining Ones12.

*Notes: Included to demonstrate that each turn of phrase has a purpose. Where certain concepts are open to interpretation, the interpretations are my own, guided my by own knowledge and experience.

1. This Meditation Intention is based both upon the intention I've been using to guide my meditation practice for a few years, but has been adapted to more clearly align itself to the Quareia curriculum.
2. Land, Sea, and Sky...Celestial World, Mortal World, Underworld...or any other tripartite conception of the Universe.
3. North, East, South, West, Above, Below, and Center
4. Acknowledgement that incarnation is truly a gift for which we should be grateful.
5. Acknowledgement and showing gratitude for the unseen assistance we receive from those beings that are, essentially, our spiritual ancestors who may or may not be our blood ancestors.
6. A pledge of willingness to be of service to those who come after us on the path.

7. Recognizing that Self-Realization/Enlightenment isn't merely a change of heart and mind, but instead rests on the cleaning, aligning, and strengthening of our energy body so that it is reflective of its own natural perfection...without blockages and pollution and dedicating our enlightenment to the principles of Ma'at.

8. One of the keys to fruitful meditation practice....being ok with what is and rejecting nothing that arises within consciousness.
9. Your inner, sacred Flame, doorway to the Void.
10. The highest aspect of the multiple soul, the Higher or Divine Self

11. He or she who, upon being judged worthy, is able to "go to their Ka." (ie. reunite with their Divine Self.

12. The gods and great powers

The Weighing of the Heart....or...How Not to Get Eaten by Ammit

The Weighing of the Heart

"Forgiveness and love, cannot be earned, deserved, bought, sold, won, or forced. They are a gift and should never be taken for granted or expected. Only accepted."

-Hussein Nishah


The "Weighing of the Heart" ritual seen in the Book of Coming forth by Day is, for me, like most spiritual teachings, reflective of something deeper than a plain reading would otherwise indicate. On it's face, the Weighing of the Heart appears to be simple "be good or get punished" morality teaching not unlike the Annihilationist view of Hell espoused by some members of the Christian faith. Sure, it's more merciful than the eternal torment motif presented by traditional Christian theology, but it's still a simplistic "be good, get rewarded" "be bad, get punished" morality the likes of which I, admittedly have little time for. Like most sacred concepts, I think that the key to the reality beyond the metaphor is to be found, not in a simplistic "be good and don't do bad things" morality (which is inarguably a wise manner in which to comport one's self), but in a deeper reading of what the *Weighing of the Heart actually implies.

How does one, even metaphorically, place one's heart and it's burdens against a feather and expect it to weight less? It seems impossible because, on its face, it is. But, like most moral dictates reflective of spiritual mastery, the imagery, the metaphor, is extreme so as to make a stark point. Not unlike Christ's command that those who would choose to follow him  must (according to Luke 14:26) hate their families and even their lives in order to be his disciple, the imagery of the weighing of the heart poses a difficult or even impossible dilemma for the soul about to face judgment.

 The heart's weight is, mythically, judged against the 42 Negative Confessions, which are a set of precepts in alignment with Ma'at who is both the goddess of Divine Law and the personification of that Law. Upon reading the Negative Confessions, the reader, if honest, will certainly come to the inescapable conclusion that Ammit awaits and his or her soul is doomed to be devoured by the great beast. The challenge of the Negative Confessions is that it is effectively, in my opinion (and experience of Divinity), impossible to have failed to violate any number of Divine Principles over the course of one's lifetime (many times). The 42 Negative Confessions are a blind, or in other words, a smokescreen through which the uninitiated cannot see. A literal approach to the Weighing of the Soul leads to a decidedly fatalistic conclusion because all humans stumble, fall and fail from time to time. It's part and parcel of the human condition. Fortunately, the 42 Negative Confessions are a symbol that point the way to the truth. When the wise present an impossibility (a hyperbolic spiritual teaching in this case) it is in order to cause the initiate to look at the problem from different perspective. No spiritual challenge is insurmountable because such challenges are corrective, educational or initiatory in nature and not sadistic or punitive.

In the case of the Weighing of the Heart and the 42 Negative Confessions, one cannot get around the law, one must transcend it, finding the law behind the written law.

The fact is that we will all do things, even unintentionally, that are ethically/morally questionable at best or cruel and destructive at worst. Such unintentional "sins" against ourselves, others and the gods are unavoidable, though such missteps should sharply diminish in frequency as one gains wisdom. To have a heavy heart, a heart heavier than a feather,  is to bear, unto one's death, the guilt of unforgiven regret. This is the weight of one's sins. Not that we won't feel regret, we will from time to time, but we needn't be crushed under it's weight and we certainly do not need to carry until our last breath.

How then  do we transcend the guilt fed by regret and cause our heart to be weightless?

One lifts the burdens from one's heart through forgiveness, authentic self-forgiveness. Many methods of forgiveness of self and others have been proposed and, depending on the individual, they can work, however, the type of forgiveness I am going to propose dovetails with the bigger picture of the soul's evolution.

To forgive in such a way as to have a heart lighter than a feather is to do more than try to let go of the pain and emotional charge of one's regrets, but to instead see the necessary letting go as a side effect of a fundamental shift in consciousness. I am referring to a shift in consciousness that allows one to see the thread of one's life from a broader perspective, a perspective more akin to that of one's HGA, Higher Self, or the gods themselves. This is the perspective of clarity and wisdom undimmed by the ignorance of the ego-self, through its selfishness and thoughtlessness, that sinned against the gods and one's fellow man in the first place. The key is getting off the game board entirely.

Albert Einstein once said, "“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them," and he is correct. One's paradigm must shift so as to become more expansive, to see more broadly than we have before. The most elegant way, the way most attuned to our evolution as magicians, mystics and the wise is to actively and dedicatedly commit to our spiritual growth. The change in perspective I'm referring to is the natural outgrowth, the reward if you will, of fundamentally transforming the way in in which you view both yourself and life in general.

Seeking the face of the Divine whether one calls this the quest for god-realization, self-realization, enlightenment, nirvikalpa samadhi, apotheosis, becoming one of the ancestors, etc. is the method by which one develops the necessary lightness of heart the gods require. Consciously attending to one's spiritual evolution through practices in tune with your personal path, practices such as meditation, qigong, yoga, theurgic ritual, devotional rites, or those means that most suit you is the key to the door that grants access to the understanding of  the law at work behind the 42 Negative Confessions. With this attainment, you may see yourself as the gods see you, the being that wears the face you wore before incarnation, the being whose essence never left their side and who is essentially of one substance with them.

For those that fail to achieve the necessary lightness of heart, being found wanting by the gods, the slavering jaws of Ammit await. Ammit's jaws are not the end, they do however represent the catabolic spiritual process by which the personality is scrubbed from the soul in question, leaving in it's place only forgetfulness, basic patterns of consciousness and, usually, mere echoes (at most) of one's prior existence before being "eaten." Thus is the soul again set to reincarnate into the physical world with all of its learnings and lessons. This is the death offered by Ammit, the annihilation of the personality you know, in this incarnation, as you. For most, this is a terrifying proposition.

The continuation of the personality intact, enlightened, and knowingly part of a far greater whole is true immortality beyond the Wheel of Return This is the gift of the heart which is lighter than a feather. Each of us, metaphorically speaking, has been devoured by Ammit over and over again lifetime after lifetime and most of us will be devoured again. However, those of us who choose to cultivate the awareness that will allow us to stand tall amongst the Shining Ones in the Hall of Osiris will see and know ourselves as they know us.....

As Divine.



(* Note that what is contained herein is a modern Pagan theological perspective on the Weighing of the Heart, the Laws of Ma'at, the 42 Negative Confessions and what they represent. This is not an attempt to recreate ancient Egyptian models of thought and no claim is made to that effect by the author. This article is the result of the author's personal gnosis, study and understanding and is not for those of a reconstructionist mindset.)