Lessons learned from Alan Watts: Find Joy in Your Path or Follow the Path of Joy
I’ve shared with you that Joseph Campbell has been an important teacher on my journey. Alan Watts is another.
Neither one seemed to find much in their own Western culture, but in fairness, in that era (like the present era) the impetus to realize that neither Christianity nor Atheism was the right fit for ethnic-Europeans and to seek wisdom elsewhere was really a first step in order to awaken the drive for us to eventually come full circle to our own native faith. And, in many ways, certain Eastern faiths are much more related to indigenous #europeanspirituality than Christianity or atheistic secularism could ever be.
Over several years of studying indigenous European belief (paganism, mythology), and then studying the folk tradition (folklore, folk customs, holiday traditions, witch trial records), I began to realize that the idea that paganism died out after conversion to Christianity was simply preposterous. Native European spirituality remained an incredibly powerful force in the consciousness of the European people well into the modern era.
Popular Religion: A Hybrid Belief System: The topic of what scholars call “popular religion” comes up a great deal in my work.
Popular religion is a phenomenon that occurs when a religio-cultural change has occurred from the top down in a society. Most commonly in the case of “popular religion,” this change is due to a forced religious conversion.
What happens is that the authorities dictate that a new religion has been proclaimed, and typically the political rulers at the top as well as the religious leaders are responsible for enforcing the new code of spirituality.
Because these are also the same people who are usually responsible for writing, or at least sponsoring the writing, of the histories that become preserved for posterity, the view of historians has often been colored most strongly by a very elitist presentation.
And that presentation tends to neatly present the story in the way that the political and religious leaders would like. - Carolyn Emerick