Pantheism And Traditional Witchcraft

Pantheism is a religious or metaphysical belief that God or the Gods (the prime energy of the Universe) is everything and everything is God, within the abstract understanding that there is no other eternal being but the universe, sometimes referred to as The One, or more colourfully- The Force. Belief in Pantheism has existed since time immemorial and is presently within the scope of beliefs found in a wide number of pagan, non-monotheistic spiritualities both past and present.

It should be noted that pantheism was (or is) the belief of many well-known individuals, including Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, von Goethe, Ludwig van Beethoven, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ralph Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Stephan Hawking, Carl Sagan, David Suzuki, Albert Einstein, and Alan Watts. Of course, these pantheists were not necessarily pagans, neo-pagans, or "religious".

Pantheism is also to be found among those that consider themselves part of the Traditional Witchcraft of the British Isles, or a.k.a. the Traditional Craft. To be more specific, most Traditionalist subscribe to the naturalistic spirituality of what some call Naturalistic Pantheism. Pantheism is a primary spiritual position that focuses on the immediate proximity of nature, rather than the abstract concept of a remote superior godhead or the inaccessible abstract concept of the universal consciousness.

We believe in "higher planes," souls, spirits, and other supernatural phenomena. We believe that spirituality has everything to do with the "supernatural." Although we dislike the term "supernatural" as we view all of nature as "natural." To be "supernatural" is to imply it is beyond nature, which is impossible as everything is within the realm of nature, thus everything is natural and is the here and now. It is all a matter of perspective. So, we would rather say that we believe that spirituality has everything to do with that which is "natural."

We believe the universe, nature, and divinity are, in a basic sense, synonymous. Divinity is imminent in nature, and divinity is inherently manifest in every living and spiritual being and thing. Therefore, we feel the pervasive divinity that exists in nature and within ourselves and in others. This existence can be referred to as "the spark of life". We believe the realm of nature includes the physical world (Earth) as well as the spiritual world (heaven).

This orientation is held by many as basic to the fundamental Traditional Craft worldview. But notably, it does not preclude a simultaneous belief in some form of polytheism. In our view, a belief in polytheism and in pantheism is not mutually exclusive, but complimentary in the divergence in the complexity of the nature of spirituality.

-Adrian Eglinton
January 2018

An article of this title was originally published by me in Hub Pages in June 2007, but subsequently disappeared and was lost. My thanks to one of my readers, Troi at Tarot Study, for relocating it and bringing it to my attention.

The present article was rewritten to clarify my views.