To be pagan is nothing more and nothing less than to be fully human, fully human in a more-than-human world. The alienating forces of civilization—including Christianity, yes, but also capitalism, industrialism, the Enlightenment, and patriarchy—have divided us from ourselves, from each other, and from the more-than-human world. The work of being pagan today, then, is to reclaim our humanity.

The original heresy is the belief that the earth is not our home, that our real life is somewhere else—whether in heaven or a future technotopia. We embrace this heresy to make sense of that nagging feeling that something is wrong with the world itself. But the real reason we feel this way is because civilization alienates us from everything that makes us human.

The real danger to Paganism is not so much that our religion will be outlawed, but that there will be no reason to outlaw it.