Write your own sacred text

I’m serious.  It is my firm belief that every sacred book in existence was written down by humans. I’m perfectly happy to accept the possibility of divine inspiration. However, if we could, as a species, acknowledge that there have been many flawed, human involvements in the creation and selection of all holy books, that might enable us to loosen up a bit and stop killing each other over them. I’m nothing if not an optimist. The assumption of the ‘word of God’ in holy books is the source of a frightening amount of pain, violence and death. If we could only let go of that, and view them as inspired, and written by humans, so much else would change.

Every religious rite in the world is the consequence of human invention. Again, perhaps divinely inspired, perhaps not. Every prayer, ever hymn, every pilgrimage and act of faith, is intrinsically human in origin. We tend to give validity to the practices that have been around the longest, and there are sound pragmatic reasons for taking such a line. Namely that tried and tested things may have the advantage over new stuff. But once, every last word and hand gesture of it was also new stuff, and it only got to be tried and tested, by being tried and tested. Rejecting any spiritual practice on the basis of newness, is therefore not entirely sensible. Again, if we accept the importance of human creativity and human innovation in the mix, we do not have to rely on ancient, out of date and irrelevant spiritual practices. We can make our own.

I’ve been playing with this myself for a while. Just collecting observations, fragments of ideas, ponderings. I’m a long way from being ready to share them, but the process is a really good one. It gives me time to reflect. I’m trying to condense my Druidry down into small, intense thought forms. It helps me strengthen my own practice and develop my ideas. I recommend trying it.

There is no book of the Druid faith, and I sincerely hope there never will be. There are a growing number of books about Druidry out there, but not many books of Druidry. Now, if one person wrote and published a Book of Druidry that could be a disaster, especially if anyone took them seriously. But if a dozen, or a hundred people did it, that would be a lot of fun, and we could pass the results round, borrow each other’s ideas, try and get more people writing. It could be wild, productive, really interesting. And then, why stop at Druids? What if other Pagans could be persuaded to have a go? Christians. Atheists. Why not write a book of beliefs that are non-theistic? Books about values, in the beginning was the bang, if you will. Collect things you like, if you don’t feel able to innovate, but where they come from known people, keep the names on. That human source matters. It keeps Gods out of the editing process.

Finally, put your own name on the title. The first testament of Bob. The ideas of Alice. Whatever you want to call it, but pin your unique identity, your human-ness right on the front. Then put it somewhere, and share. Let me know if you get this far, I will set up a page here and post links. I’m really, really hoping I can inspire other people to have a go at this. Let me know if you do.