Silence is Golden: The Challenge of Subjectivity in

Pagan Thought
Paganism today is predicated on subjectivity. We believe in individual rather than
communal truths - what is true for me may not be true for you, and vice versa. This
subjectivity precludes Pagan evangelism, as the God that I worship may not be the God
who is right for you. There are as many paths to the Divine as there are people - religion
itself is subjective, it belongs to the person.

There are both good and bad issues associated with such subjectivity. We are freer than
our objective brethren, for objectivity is the "tendency to accept rules governing both
behaviour and thought." [1] No one tells a Pagan how to believe or act, it is something
each individual must find or decide for him/herself. It is this very freedom that is
problematic for some. It is easier to think of oneself as contributing to mankind's store of
knowledge and truth, of creating something that will be true long after we are gone.
Human nature makes us long for the safety of the group, to identify with others and not to
see ourselves as lone thinkers, thinking things only applicable to ourselves. Subjective
knowledge cannot be handed down, cannot be added to by different people, and is
essentially paradoxical. Such knowledge is mine alone, and yours alone, and even if our
knowledge should conflict still our understanding is true for us.

Pagans can believe 'ten impossible things before breakfast', and ten contradictory things
too, for ours is a both/and mentality. Like the ancient Egyptians, we can believe that Ptah
is the creator of all the Gods, but that Atum is as well. We can believe in the claims made
by the Gods of all ages and races, even if they conflict. We are not bound by the rules that
constrain other religious believers, the desire for order and objective truth. We hold to
subjectivity, to the thinker and the thought rather than the abstract thought itself. Our
truths are intimately related to our existence - without our existence as living beings those
truths would not exist. We know that our truths are related to our selves, and have no
need to prove what we believe. Claims by apologists for other religions of contradictions
in Pagan thought, or requests for proofs, are simply irrelevant for us. They are working
on the premise that objectivity is necessary, but we work on no such premise, to use
Ludwig Wittgenstein's term, we are in different 'language games'.

Perhaps we are simply more honest than those apologists. We cannot be subject to the
attacks of atheists or those of other religions because they may not ask us to prove the
objective truth of our beliefs. Other religions - notably Christianity - choose to take up the
challenge and claim objective truth for their beliefs. Though they valiantly and often ably
try to combat questioners on those grounds their attempt must fail. We cannot objectively
prove the existence of Gods. That fact should not bother Pagans in the slightest, but must
cause difficulties for Christians. They have claimed objective truth for their beliefs, but in
so doing have opened up the possibility that all of them may be wrong, and, worse, have
forced themselves to engage in an endless procession of battles for their faith. We, who
claim no objective truth, can admit with the Christian philosopher Kierkegaard that "the
truth is objectively a paradox...[it has] objective uncertainty." [2]
Our embrace of the subjective forces us to take a good look at ourselves and the world.
Man has attempted to see the world in an objective, logical way, and has confined nature
with the instrument of objectivity, language. Language is inherently an objective tool, it
cannot express the differences between like things, and it shows the attempt of man to
control and confine the world about him. Perhaps we, like Sartre's young hero in Nausea,
should try to escape language:

"I couldn't remember it was a root any more. Words had vanished, and with them the
meanings of things, the way things are to be used, the feeble points of reference which
men have traced on their surface." [3]

Language forces us to see the world through a barrier, to believe that the essence of
something can be captured in its definition. Language wraps us away from contact with
the Divine, with the world, even with our selves. Everything comes to us filtered through
words, and definitions. Can you imagine a word without a definition? A word which
simply relates what you see, do or feel without providing explanations or forcing
limitations or generalisations on what you do? I can think of only one such word,
"canny". In the area I come from (Newcastle, England) this word can mean anything
from 'quite nice' to being the highest compliment anyone can bestow. It is one of those
words where people 'know what you mean', even if you cannot explain it, because it is a
name for a concept, not a description of that concept. It, too, is a highly subjective term,
because of its range of meanings both in general usage, but also in the individual. This is
the only word I can recall which escapes the normal point of language - to define, to
dissect what we see, to put a barrier between us and the world.

If we are subjective thinkers, our use of language becomes suspect. Language makes
existence itself superfluous, for a thing to exist adds nothing to the definition of that
thing. Language emphasises thought and abstraction - the very opposite to our subjective,
person-related beliefs. It is an unsuitable vehicle for our understanding of the Divine, or
anything else, because it does not recognise nor take into account the individuality of
everything, nor its existence. "No one could deduce from its description that there is a
world, or what the world must contain, or that the description is true." [4] Language
itself, the definitions it imposes, is inadequate to the description of the world and of the
sacred.

When we speak or write we must be aware of the limitations of language. There is a

fundamental difference between something in itself and our definition of it - though we
burn a book, the essence of the book is not destroyed. Likewise we can identify
something as a tree, but that does not describe the tree we see. If we believe that our
words can truly describe reality, then we fall into the objectivist trap once more. Most
importantly, in our faith, our words to describe the sacred are inadequate, because faith is
a subjective connection to the Divine and cannot be described by generalist language.

Pagans today face problems in that our faith follows the ancient subjectivist, both/and
model, but all of us have been brought up in the Judaeo-Christian objectivist either/or
model. Whereas in ancient times language was used in a symbolic manner, we now see
language as defining and expressing a logical and ordered world. To see language so is to
fall into objectivity, which is both alien to the world, and raises immense problems for
our faith. If we are to believe in a personal Divine, if we are to believe in many paths to
God, if we are to accept the beliefs of many religions both ancient and modern, then we
cannot accept such objectivity. We must avoid this pitfall, and view language as at best a
flawed method of understanding the world, and at worst as an actual hindrance.

Now, evidently we cannot do without language altogether - this would be a short essay
indeed if that were so! Language has its use. The point at which language becomes so
severe a hindrance as to be rejected, is in communion with the sacred. We must resist the
urge to catalogue and dissect our beliefs, to form them into a consistent theory without
paradoxes or contradictions - we must not objectify that which is inherently subjective.
Our use of language, being as it is general and logical, is a barrier to subjective
understanding of the sacred. To use language in a state of communion is to attempt to
rationalise the experience, to take it out of the realm of the personal and into the public
domain. This effort is both needless and dangerous. Let us keep the sacred personal, leave
it related to us and us alone, rather than spreading it heedlessly to the world at large. After
all, if that which is subjective is forced to become objective, then most of its meaning will
be lost. You cannot take that which belongs to and is a part of your self, and give it to
someone else, without its sacred character becoming flawed. So it is with the use of
language in divine encounters.

"Silence is golden, but my eyes still see..." [5]

Footnotes

1 Warnock, Mary Existentialism (Oxford University Press, 1970) p8

2 Kierkegaard, Soren Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Oxford University Press, 1941)
p183
3 Sartre, Jean-Paul Nausea (New Directions, 1975) tr. Lloyd Alexander pp170-1
4 Danto, Arthur C Sartre (Fontana Modern Masters 2nd Ed, 1985) p92
5 Excerpt from the song "Silence is Golden" by B. Gaudio and B. Crewe