Any Pantheists here?

[toddaa]

I am a Taoist pantheist. I'm just curious if there are other pantheists here, or if maybe some of you are curious about pantheism. A lot of times I come across people who consider themselves eclectic pagans, agnostics, or even atheists only to find that they are really pantheists. Pantheism also cuts across mystical traditions of Sufism, Gnosticism, Zen Buddhism, and Taoism.

[benburch]

1. Hymn To Pan

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Shepherdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch they wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain---come over the sea
(Io Pan! Io Pan!)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man! my man!
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill!
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring!
Come with flute and come with pipe!
Am I not ripe?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp---
Come, O come!
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All-devourer, all-begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye,
And the token erect of thorny thigh,
And the word of madness and mystery,
O Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn
I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan!
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end,
Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan
Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan!

~~~Aleister Crowley

[Dark]

2. You might want to define it. I am a deist, which means I believe in God,

but not religion.

[toddaa]

5. Briefly

All in One. That's the gist of it. A Scientific Pantheist, like Spinoza, would put it as the universe and all in it is interconnected. Deism could perhaps be mistaken as pantheistic, but it defines God as the Prime Mover Creator of the Universe, whereas pantheism defines God as the Universe itself. As a Taoist, I don't really believe in a god as the Tao is nothing more than the underlying force that unifies. Lao Tzu aptly defined the Tao as the emptiness of the vessel or the hole in the center of the wheel.

[soleft]

3. A couple of years ago I was reading about this dead British Theologian

R.J. Campbell.

Actually, it started out I was using a resource book called the Gaskell Dictionary of Scripture and Myth, and RJ was quoted all over the place, and I really loved some of the things he had to say.

So later on I was doing some research on him and someone compared him to another theologeon who was a pantheist, I thought, hmmmmm. So I found a working definition of pantheist, and I said, "Holy cow, that's what I am! I'm a pantheist"

I started to do some more looking into it, but got caught up in other things and never really got to explore it further.

I'm really interested in the fact that you said you're a Taoist Pantheist, because I'm also really interested in learing more about Taoism, I read a book by Fritjof Capra call the Tao of Physics, and I know Jung was into Taoism, or at least, I read a book called the Tao of Jung.

Anyhow - I think of the Universe as one entity, and I'm interested in how that can be expressed or explained thru physics, consciousness and self exploration.

[toddaa]

6. Check this out

http://www.pantheism.net/

And if your curious about Taoism, I naturally recommend the Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, but strongly encourage further exploration of Chuang Tzu, who was a much more radical thinker, and also Lieh Tzu.

[starroute]

4. In certain moods

Remember there's a difference between pantheism (God = existence) and panentheism (God is in all of existence but also transcends existence.)

I suppose that as long as you don't try to define God as a personality or even as a will, but simply as the quality of the numinous, then I could describe myself as one or the other of those. That's what my sig line means, more or less.

[toddaa]

7. Panenthism and Mysticism

Western mystics would be better classified as panentheists, but at some point I think it's just splitting hairs. Transcending existence is nothing more than throwing the Copenhagen Interpretation into the theological mix.

[uppityperson]

8. Asthetic pantheist, finding beauty and (god) in everything

I made up the definition of asthetic pantheist once as it seemed to describe my beliefs. Told it to a fundamentalist christian teenager who replied "wow, I've never heard anyone admit that right out loud". Is there such an organized group, or is it just a Latin description that I found works?