Sacred Journeys - an Insight

I've just finished reading Sally Griffyn's 2000 book Sacred Journeys, which I bought years ago (probably not long after it came out) as it had a chapter on holy wells and seemed to promise a certain insight into the habits and thinking of modern paganism. And it does not disappoint in this respect. Paganism (or at least Ms Griffyn's version or vision of it) emerges as a sort of means of self-exploration and occasionally therapy, mediated through rituals, which are often self-defined, in which landscape plays a central part. Very often these ceremonies are built around a symbolic system which bears some relationship with what medieval people would have called the correspondences - essential resemblances linking elements of the natural world; north-black-cold-earth, for instance. This imagery is then built into the ritual life of the pagan practitioner to provide ways of pondering and dealing with important occasions in life. 

What makes it more than just a means of externalising an internal psychological process is the conviction that the earth, the elements, and human beings are bound together by an 'energy' which can be concentrated on, channelled and occasionally even sensed physically, as when Ms Griffyn reports feeling standing stones throb or hum. This earth energy means that the impressions and feelings the pagan practitioner experiences interacting with the natural landscape are connected to something real and objective: the earth is something that can actually be communicated with, not just used as a means of interpreting oneself. 

Of course I don't go along with this, but I'm pleased to have it laid out in such generous detail. It does lead me to reflect how religious practice, including the practices of Christians, presumably always looks fairly loopy to someone who isn't 'within the system', but to the people who are inside, it 'works', and this 'working' itself becomes a form of validation. Religious and non-religious people alike could do with remembering this.