Pagan Cults and Spiritual Practice
CULTS, LEISURE, AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Leisure
- As aforesaid in the rules: Use your leisure to learn, contribute to the world, worship, enjoy higher Beauty, or recover, but practice moderation: Nothing to excess. Know the Measure. Your leisure should be natural, healthy, and suitable.
- The true meaning of leisure is the study of life, which is not just passive but active, and not just learning but teaching, which is itself the highest learning. True freedom means pursuing only what is good; remember this and heed your needs as you pursue your leisure.
- One of the most important groups within a fellowship will be the lay study groups to cultivate and perpetuate wisdom, as well as for laity to determine their needs and interests in coordination with the Chief Priest.
Cults and Orders
- Another essential group will be the active side of learning, the Cults, prayer groups, or Chapters/Observances within the fellowship, which the lay member will participate in to apply their learning, living a spiritual life.
- As aforesaid in I.H.3-4:
I.H.3. Finally, the laity may participate religiously by joining a Cult devoted to a certain deity or set of deities or a certain divine perspective or approach to life. The exoteric, or lay, cults may teach the mythology and scripture of a deity or tradition but do not teach any Mysteries. Laity may also join lay Orders, which require its members to take an oath to observe a certain Rule, or ascetic regimen. Orders devote themselves to virtue and the spiritual paths of divinities. They may adopt specific daily prayers and focus on the cultivation of specific virtues and kinds of service. Lay Cults and Orders tend to have local chapters limited to the prefecture, whereas Initiates participate in Cults and Orders in a Temple-wide capacity.
I.H.4. In addition to religious participation, the lay member participates in the human development of the fellowship community and its economy and economic cooperation. Laity cooperate to realize the economic self-sufficiency of the fellowship and its political, economic, and cultural separation from secular society. Laity also serve the needs of the community and the development of its members, including the holistic education and formation of children (scouts, teaching, sports, etc.), health groups, martial arts and military groups, and homesteading groups. Indeed, each fellowship should work towards having a Martial Order for the male members of the community and a Matronly Order for the female members, each Order led by Exemplars of the respective sex…
The Four Yogas and Recommended Practices
- As aforesaid in the rules: Observe the four yogas, the four virtues: raja, or temperance, which involves self-control and mastery over the mind and its sense, including practices such as meditation, maintaining meditativeness and contentment and presence, silent contemplation, asceticism, contemplating nature, and health practices; jnana, or prudence, which involves the cultivation of understanding and wisdom, including practices like study and reading scripture, dialectic, and reflection and cultivation of virtues; karma, or fortitude, which involves action and service, including practices like leading a proper lifestyle with virtue, love and self-giving, and association with good people and causes; and bhakti, or justice, which is the art of devotion and includes practices like prayer, worship, cultivating reverence and sagely comport, participation in religion and community, sacred music and mantras and sounds, and observing a spiritual aesthetic in art, self-presentation, and adornment of surroundings; as was said elsewhere in the rules: Bedeck yourself and adorn your surroundings in a way that honors the Gods, celebrates tradition, and edifies the spirit to virtue, purity, and greatness.
- Other important groups will represent the other yogas, raja and karma. The raja groups will focus on spiritual practice and the study of the spiritual sciences (meditation, music, ayurveda, qigong, martial arts, etc.), and the karma groups will focus on Temple or fellowship service, outreach, community-building, life counseling, etc.