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Wilderness Drum, Inc.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Steve Beyer

What is the wilderness? What’s so special about the wilderness? What is wilderness survival? How does all this relate to survivalism? What are primitive skills? Are wilderness survival and primitive skills the same? Why bother? What is wilderness spirituality? What is animism? What is pantheism? Is wilderness spirituality pagan? What does this have to do with shamanism? What is a vision fast?

Is wilderness spirituality pagan?

Well, yes, I suppose so. The term pagan comes from the Latin paganus, meaning ”country dweller.” It was used originally by early Christians to indicate everyone in the Roman Empire who wasn't either Christian or Jewish, which covered a lot of ground. There are thus many different forms of spirituality that fit under this one broad term. The term includes the indigenous religions of hunter-gatherer societies, like that of Ötzi 15,000 years ago or some relatively isolated indigenous societies today. It includes the urban and priestly religions of the great ancient empires, such as the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians and Assyrians, and the Incas and Aztecs. It includes the spirituality of indigenous peoples colonized by Europe, who have been influenced by Christianity, and who have either maintained significant religious independence or have incorporated European practices and symbols into their own spirituality, such as many contemporary Native North American and African diaspora traditions. And it includes the disparate and often feuding beliefs and practices called Neopaganism – Wicca, Druidism, Asatru, Discordianism, some of ecofeminism, women's spirituality, and various sorts of Neo-Jungian soul practice. Thus most generalizations about paganism are wrong, especially because the term is usually defined by what pagans are not – that is, not one of the Big Religions – rather than by what they are. However, to the extent that pagans

• are radically immanentist and this-worldly, and have little interest in a transcendent Creator;
   
• generally see all life as interconnected;
   
• believe that the sacred resides in this Earth, both generally and in special sacred places and times;
   
• hold a reverence for the Earth and all its creatures, with an awareness of both the beautiful and terrifying in nature;
   
• are accepting of the body, play, sexuality, humor, fantasy, pleasure, and various states of intoxication;
   
• make central the metaphor of cyclicity, circularity, and recurrence, as opposed to notions of linearity and progress, with a corresponding philosophical and ritual concern for yearly cycles, life cycles, lunar cycles, and family cycles;
   
• are accepting of female powers, images, and metaphors, with central concerns including generativity, creativity, pleasure, death, and regeneration,

– well, then I guess I am a pagan.

For More Information

Wilderness Drum programs Schools of wilderness counseling and spirituality Wilderness ceremonies Sources of wilderness spirituality Magazines on wilderness spirit and preservation Wilderness videos Getting closer to the natural world The imaginal world Myths and symbols of the vision fast

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