Last week I decided to satisfy So-Crates’ curiosity about Paganism. Having supplied the link, he was quite happy to peruse the Pagan Fed website and zeroed in on some critical information.

The gleam in So-Crates eyes and his general air of expectation betrayed his anticipation of some rather more interesting revelations about modern witchcraft than my enthusiastic explanations of Paganism. This was likely the result of a distillation of his lifelong exposure to such cultural giants as Hollywood and the News of the World. Witchcraft is a hidden world of dark rituals, sinister sex general depravity and the hint of forbidden power. Isn’t it?

OK, In his defence, no one is free from the all pervasive trivialisation of modern culture so why should he be? Also, I suddenly realised I did not know how much ‘Arris had playfully fired up So-Crates imagination by feeding him scurrilous tit-bits of misinformation as part of their never-ending game.

I resolved not to talk about Aleister Crowley for a while yet.

So, what should be the order of things? Last week I decided the original Socrates was the obvious answer as a way in. I’ll have another try now.

I began: “A good start would be to look at pagan worship and philosophies from a time before Christianity. Before Paganism was distorted by contact, and eventual conflict, with Christianity. A time before the word ‘pagan’ was invented and the Greeks had a proud culture immensely influential on language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and the arts.”

‘Ariss, a little bored, muscled in to explain, by filtering our earlier conversation.
“Socrates was the bane of the movers and shakers in ancient Athens. So much so that they eventually locked him up for being such a know-all. He was that most dangerous and irritating breed of know-all. He did know it all (or a lot more than any one else bar the Gods, the Oracle said so.)”

“Well, OK, thanks Nidian, the Oracle said he was the wisest. Not that he was wise. So Soppy Socrates thought that he was the wisest because he knew he was not wise whereas the rest of the know-it-alls didn’t know they were not wise. I think I’ve lost So-Crates there somewhere…”

We continued for a while talking about the life and times of Socrates…

“So c’mon Socra-tease! What do you recon? Are you on the side of the mad Greek?”

‘Arris, So-Crates and his mates are a sub-culture all of their own and have a weird way of finding and discussing issues, usually in a pub over beer with a barrage of careless taunts and asides.

“You mean on the side of the know-it-all with all the gongs for being the wisest man in Athens or the people he annoyed, the politicos and militia who actually did things?”

So-Crates winked, “I like to read the Sun and the Mail. It gives me this nice warm feeling, when life is so simple that even I can understand it. It’s easier to make up my mind about things. Also I have all that ammo to wind you up ‘Ariss”

“If I use the MO of my favourite tabloids perhaps I can make it more personal. So here goes:
Was Socrates:
• A wussy, caring, well-meaning, intelligent bloke who wanted to save Athens from itself OR
• A whingeing interfering busy body who resented people who really had the power to change things?

Were the rulers of Athens:
• doers who actually rose to the top by doing things better than the rest OR
• corrupt control freaks who rose to the top by foul means or fair?

‘Ariss said, “you do this all the time! You decide on which tabloid parody of the truth or person you like best and root for them and hate the other.”

So-Crates said, “Yes, it’s amazing, once you get going, how many reasons you can find to hate someone. So I have decided to hate Socrates as I had in mind a snobby university type. Well, to be honest, I also went with that because it would wind up you the most.

Of course ‘Arris, as usual, pretends or half pretends to be wound up which all passes the time in the lorry between deliveries, in the pub or wherever they get together. This is their MO

By my third beer I was not sure where all this was going or whether I actually cared but a good night was had by all.

This is going to take longer than I thought.

Nidian

Nidian used a long word today, “polarisation”. Where does he get them?

So-Crates

During conversations with friends, you can’t always say what you want to say because everyone needs to have their turn and often the focus of the conversation wanders off in another direction. Of course you can say “What I really wanted to talk about is…” or you manipulate the conversation back your preferred topic if you are really keen.

The advantage of a blogg is that there are no interruptions. The disadvantage is that you are often talking to yourself. Is this because 99% of bloggs, are the bland outpouring of disembodied egos? (Present blogger company excepted.)

So in order to guarantee talking to someone and thus motivating myself to continue I am going to introduce a few of my own acquaintances into my little bloggosphere to keep me company.

Essex Boys Are People Too

I hereby bring Solomon Krate in from the cold and release him into Myddle Earth. I think he is a proto-pagan with a heart of gold. I hope he behaves himself. With his help I want to experiment with how others see us and how we see ourselves.

At the moment he is a ‘Sun’ reader. This does’t give you the measure of the man but it is relevant. His mates call him ‘So-Crates’ partly after the 20 year old film “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Ted’s_Excellent_Adventure

At the time, they all identified with the central characters. If you ever saw the film, then imagine Bill & Ted 20 years on. This is a crass caricature of So-Crates and his mates as they are now.

As a way in, I wanted to introduce the topic of the real Socrates to So-Crates and one of his best mates Harris Bottle (‘Arris). (They spend a long time in the cab together between deliveries ‘exploring issues’; that is my term. They would call it ‘winding each other up’ but in that, tongue in cheek way, born of familiarity. Neither of them is stupid, in my estimation.)

Unfortunately So-Krates sidelined me by looking on the pf website. Not knowing much about Pagans his default label was ‘Hippie Tree Huggers’ so I was interested to see what he thought. He zeroed in on the “The Three Principles (An interpretation)”

http://www.paganfed.org/about-princ.shtml

‘Arris quoted “ ‘an it harm none do what thou wilt” and So-Crates asked me what ‘humanistic’, and ‘pantheism’ meant.
This is paraphrasing what I said:
A pantheist believes that the Cosmos and God are identical. God is ‘All’ or we are all part of nature which is part of the ‘one’ we call God. The many pantheons that Pagans follow are all manifestations or interpretations of the ‘One’
Humanistic means pertaining to human beings rather than God(s). In the case of a moral code, human needs rather than those of supernatural beings are of prime importance.
Then he looked up ‘witchcraft’. ‘Arris’ joked that this was only because he told him earlier that there were a lot more women than men in covens.
There was truth in his jest but I could see So-Crates was thinking about the rest of it…and there I must leave it at the moment.

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