I had occasion over the extended May Day weekend to put some thought in to the basis of my belief system. That is, what I believe and feel to be the truth of it all. What it all mean and our place as individuals within, well everything…

When I say I had occasion to put some thought into this, I had a long drive back from the sunny green lushness of a country park in Gloucestershire through the darkening hours of the creeping twilight until the witching hour found me amidst the burning towers of Teesside once more… On such occasions its is perhaps only natural to start to wonder what its all about.

I was once baptised into the Church of England, and I attended Sunday school in my youth somewhat religiously. Which is to say I was sent there every Sunday morning along with my sister and brother, and was taught about religion in the way children are…

“This is what we believe, you must believe it too… Least the devil come and take you to his fiery abode… Now who wants cake and fruit juice?”

I attended Sunday school because it never occurred to me to object over much to cake and fruit juice. I went to confirmation classes because, well there was cake and grape juice by then and it was just sort of expected of me. The priest who took those confirmation classes was in fairness a typical CoE vicar, pleasant enough and almost entire unassuming. CoE vicar being the career of choice for the nice but slightly dim child middle class parents know isn’t going to make it in the real world…

“Our Jason isn’t overly bright is he, likes the bible stuff though m, lets send him to a seminary, what harm can he do there…”

This particular Jason was somewhat taken aback when, after a year of confirmation classes, in answer to him saying “Your confirmation will take place at Sunday service next week.” was “Nar, you’re alright, I don’t think I believe in any of it to be honest, and I don’t want to be a hypocrite. But I’ll get back to you if I change my mind.” And with those words I ended what must have been about a 14 year relationship with the Church of England, and Christianity.

I have no resentment towards the CoE or Christianity in general. Studying the bible taught me a lot about morality, how to order your life, respect for others and respect for yourself. The ten commandments are not a bad guide to living your life as it goes… Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t covert your neighbours ass (I use to have trouble with this due to the particularly attractive backside of the woman who lived next door to me in the early 90’s… And yes I know that’s not what it means…) But while I could appreciate the none Leviticus bits of the old book and the general ethos of don’t be a twat to others and maybe they’ll not be a twat to you, I just didn’t believe in the more religious aspects of the faith. Which is to say I didn’t believe in the CoE’s god, or for that matter any god conceived by human minds.

To miss-quote myself :

We are a microbe on the back of an ant we mistake for the rain forest, unable to comprehend the forest we deify the ant. We can not even grasp the true essence of the forest, let alone that there may be more than one forest…

So back to my long drive after celebrating Beltane in that strange county by the banks of the river Severn. A pagan May Day festival, at which no one presumed to ask me about my beliefs, because why would they… I drove back and found myself recessing them all the same. I do this a lot, it is one of the reason I like long drives through the night when there are few other cars about. As you push on through the darkness there is a kind of zen about the road.

I have at times described my personal belief system as that of a techno-pagan. A term I came across in the 90’s and never really bothered to examine very closely. I just liked the way it sounded…

TECHNO-PAGAN…

Also I liked the cyber-goth girls who were hanging out in similar clubs to me at the time. Calling myself a techno-pagan, with viking jewellery and arm rings,and spiked re-breathers, seemed kind of cool. I found pagan beliefs fascinating, and the pagan girls hanging out in those same clubs at the time, equally fascinating… Yes… I was shallow, fascinated with the idea of the pagan… but very very shallow about it… As we tend to be in our early twenties.

The techno-pagan thing kind of stuck with me all the same. I like the digital world, I find the science behind the digital world fascinating, the physics that underlays all those ones and zeros… I also find old gods, pagan spirituality, magic, the occult and everything that all encompasses fascinating… It can be a heady mix, technology and paganism… I love the strange ideas people have, old gods trapped in the machines of the digital age… Whats a thunder god if not a god of electricity… Where is the wisdom of the all-father found if not in Wikipedia, and where would Loki be hiding if not at the edges of things re-editing Wikipedia… Techno-pagan stuck with me because it covers all my bases, but its not really want I believe , it isn’t my faith, any more than the Church of England…

Because we are still no more than that microbe on the back of the ant.

For me paganism is about accepting you are part of the bigger picture, part of a picture so vast, so complex, it is beyond anyone’s real compression. The great vastness of the cosmos, the intrinsic dance of nature, the heavens , the seasons of this world and all worlds… You accept this and in accepting it realise you must go with the flow. Influence what you can, accept what you can’t and value compassion, love and spreading joy over all else… Because the world is vast, and tiny. Everything to us, yet insignificant on the grandest of scales…

But if you want faith, have faith in this, modern physics teaches of strange particles upon the quantum scale that can influence each other over any distance. Things so small they make up the basis of the things that make up the basis of atoms. Yet when something happens to one of these strange particle’s it will due to the wonders of quantum entanglements influence another no matter where that other may be. Next to it or at the other end of the universe and that interaction is instant over any distance. Ignoring all other rules of physics, even good old E=MC2… Instant interactions across all of space. Or for that matter across time. An impossible thought… The thought of a microbe on the back of an ant…

If there is a god, god is not the ant. God is not forest, or even the multitude of forests. God doesn’t exist on the scale of the infinite. Traditional religion is looking in the wrong place. God isn’t in the infinite, god is in the quantum.

We all are made up of atoms, and those atoms of particles and among those are strange particles. All of us, and all of everything. We are all interconnected and we all influence everything. If your looking for a god look inward. The divine exists within us all and within every grain of sand, every speck of dust. Strange particles that interact and react in quantum entanglements. Everything is all part of one great whole. When you pray, pray to everything, but first pray to yourself, pray for a glimpse of the divine within, for its there, in you, in all of us. Celebrate it and celebrate it in others, celebrate it in all things.

It was a good weekend, a great weekend in fact. And on the drive home I may have decided I am in fact a Quantum-Pagan…

Of course this may just because quantum goth girls are cute, if i ever meet one I will let you know.