To worship something
is to honor/revere/celebrate something, specifically a deity in the context of religion. :slap:
Not to pick on you. I find it quite peculiar how many Neopagans avoid the word "worship" like the plague.
I think this is true.
My take on this for what it is worth:
I think most Pagans seek and experience equal, more lateral relationships with all the spirits
around them. We all serve each other and even between entities on different levels there is no difference in importance. You can view that in Nature. The biggest can not exist without the smallest.
We may want to understand how religion degenerated to what monotheism is today: From free beings living with the other spirits in total equality, to slaves of Kings and Gods we have today. These supreme Gods were created in the image of man, more particularly the megalomaniac human rulers. The bigger the megalomaniac the bigger his God.
For the Pagans, Gods are spirits and beings of another kind, not our rulers, but like us players/influencers in the great game we call existence. They play their roles, we play ours. We respect them, even revere them if they are beneficial to us, but we do not subjugate to them. Some are our friends, even our heart friend and then we serve each other as friends as friends do by Love alone. Those are long lasting relationships. While the quick exchange is based on seeking mutual favor, more like an honest trade.
Our relations (if free from power seeking) are free from pressure or oppression. They are formed in mutual attraction and appreciation alone. Or they are formed for mutual gain. There is a balanced exchange as Pagans try preserve the balance to preserve harmony and well-being.
Worship of all-powerful Gods is total submission to the one that rules all, and judges all, and rewards and punishes all, and can not stand any rejection. It is a belief ingrained by rulers into slaves. And it goes with worship. Worshiping or glorifying a King or God as supreme is the constant praise to massage his huge ego, without which he will take revenge. For people born in this slavery it is natural and they see people not bowing to their lord as a danger to the universal order. A very suppressive order, that prevents the world turning into chaos they believe. They do not believe in a natural order. The world can only persist by a King telling it what to do, and his servants must execute his commands.
So Pagans tend to respect, revere rather than worship. Through history the one slowly changed into the other. That is the degeneration of religion. The only time Pagans felt pressure from Gods is when great disaster came over them and priest (often falsely) told them they had insulted a god and had to do things to appease the God.
That is how Jewish monotheism was born. After the King Joseph, who was a vassal to Babylon had repeatedly neglected to pay his taxes, they destroyed Israel and took many Canaanites as slaves in exile. The priesthood explained this to the people in slavery as that they had angered the highest God, the Skygod El. He was jealous and did not want them to revere other Gods. Of course, simply a clever ploy to create religious monopoly for their own cult. Because priests have manipulated religion from the beginning, creating an ever more exploitive religion.
Now Pagans do not have an ideology/theology but are rather sensitive people who feel and interact with spirits directly. Thus from experience they feel submission is nonsense and does not align with their experiences. They rather engage with more loving relationships.
Now Abramists will say their Love to their God is the highest love. But read how their books define that Love. It is the kind of Love that soldiers have for their King, blind obedience, undying allegiance, total servitude in return for "mercy". The love between master and slave, also called "bondage".
Of course not all pagans are pure people, some seek power and engage in very emotional enduring worship and pleasing, that is how monotheism could develop in the first place. And pagans worshiping Gods for power degenerate further as well and can do terrible things. So yes some pagans are definitely no good. But truly spiritual people can recognize such fallen spirits.
