I`m a member of a Wicca teaching site called Witchschool. Through them, I`ve been trying to earn my Corellian First Degree. Corellianism is a branch of Wicca.
Also known as the Corellian Nativist Tradition, Corellian Wicca is sort of a mix of Scottish and Native American. According to google, “While not known internally as a “Wiccan” tradition until the 1990s, it adopted the trend toward eclecticism and universalism which would later typify most of the early Wiccan traditions.”
I know probably less than I should about Corellianism as a whole. What I`ve learned through Witchschool and the associated books (For the first degree, this book is available:
I did learn a lot from that book, but more of what I learned seemed a little more general. Stuff about chakras, for example.
Anyway, I had finished the lesson associated with that book to learn that to actually get the Corellian Degree, that was not the only class I needed to take. And there was something about essays needing to be written as well.
So I went back to Witchschool, where I had, during a sale, taken advantage of a $60 price and bought a lifetime membership, since there were plenty of other classes I wanted to check out. Also, a yearly price ends up adding up to more expensive in the long run. And as I`ve had the account at Witchschool for three or four years now, and a yearly price is $30, I`ve already come out ahead.
So today I was working on another of the lessons, and came across the confusing phrase:
“What is it in this entire world which does not die?
Even the mountains rise up and fall down. The seas dry up as other seas begin.
Surely, you will die.
And yet the knowledge of eternal life cannot but invalidate the fear so many feel for death –if like our first sister they can truly accept the idea.
God did not mess up the world. And death is not a pathological condition.”
Imagine the Cinemasins guy from youtube going “Hahaha what?” and that captures my reaction.
So, to break it down, everything dies, but death is not a pathological condition. I have several problems with this. First, is death a condition? I always thought that a condition was a temporary state, and death, no matter whether you believe in reincarnation or not, is not temporary. However, Merriam-Webster defines condition as “a state of being <the human condition>”. Oh. Well in that case, death does actually qualify as a condition.
All right, so the second part, that death is not a pathological condition. Again, I turn to Merriam-Webster. Pathological is defined as “altered or caused by disease”. I therefore claim that saying that death is not pathological is an alternative fact. You could rightly claim that not all death is pathological, but I don`t think there`s any way that you could be speaking the 100% truth by saying that death is not pathological at all.
Another phrase I took exception to was this one:
We live, we die, we live again, for centuries. Millenia. Now that is an excuse to create a Universe.
Whoever created the Universe needed an excuse to do so? Sometimes, reading comments like these, which actually aren`t all that uncommon in Wicca, I find myself wondering. Why couldn`t the creator just have gone “I`m bored, let`s create something”? That is part of my belief, that while everything happens for a reason, everything does not need a reason to happen.
…And there`s another one. This `lesson` that I`m taking now is a good example of why not to trust everything you read, no matter the source. I just came across the sentence:
God doesn’t’ want you to be intelligent and creative. She wants you to be worthy and useful.
Besides the awful punctuation, there`s no way that`s true in any way, shape, or form. When I mentioned this to others who have studied Corellianism, they pointed out that this particular lesson is copy+pasted from a pamphlet written in the `80s by the then High Priestess of the Corellian tradition, Lady Elizabeth Greenwood, who was an older lady.
It`s food for thought, at any rate.