Rylah Reblog

This is not precisely a ‘reblog.’ I have decided to republish a Second Opinion newspaper column, submitted about 15 years ago, by my daughter, who now presents her opinions on her own Ryl’s Rostrum website.

Lady Ryl of Kitchener is a single mother learning about New and Old Age spiritual practices.

New Age religions also teach love and honor!

I found it disconcerting that, in her Second Opinion, Erika Kubassek could be so biased in her opinion concerning the New Age movement.

I am an apprentice of the Old Ways, and see more good in them than she would have people believe.

I know people who follow the new Earth-based beliefs and ideals, and see nothing destructive about their way of life. I have friends who are pagan in their belief, yet have raised their children to be kind and loving.  In fact, they have been a model to change abusive parenting habits, which my maternal relatives’ Christian family passed on, as “the way children should be raised.”

By whose standard does Kubassek feel that New Age ideas are counterfeit? Could it be that my maternal relatives’ negative and abusive past should be the ways to build my family’s future, just because they were “Good Christians?”

She says that the New Age quest is to replace Christianity, and asks what spirits we are replacing it with. We are not replacing Christianity, but are endeavoring to find our own self or ‘spirit’, not some preformed and unbending mould that we must fit into.

For those who follow a different path, conceivably it is because we have failed to find fulfilment in sturdy Christian values.

I accept that some will twist this to their own advantage, but haven’t some “Good Christians” taken over lives in the name of God? Paganism is not the slaughter of life to evil gods, nor the mass suicide of some cults.  For the people of the Heaven’s Gate, and Solar Temple cults, taking their own lives was a choice made of their own beliefs, sadly, taking their children along with them.

If Kubassek wishes to lay blame on New Age, and state that we are diametrically opposed, then perhaps she would like to meet a woman who would have given up on life, if it were not for the love of life that her ‘pagan’ enlightenment gave her.

We also teach to love and honor others, ourselves, and all life. All we seek is to find self-realization and fulfilment, and allow other people their own choice, without judgement or harassment.  The Romans, Greeks, Canaanites, Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Gaels, French, German, Dutch, Swedes, Finns, Native-Americans, Africans, Mexican, Japanese, and other nations in the world that originally started out with life-oriented ‘pagan’ beliefs, also gave birth to the ‘new’ religions.

The pagan creed has only one rule, but it is important. “Do what you will, only harm no-one!”  Perhaps Kubassek might be a little more ‘Christian’, and “Do unto others as she would have them do unto her.”  Now, doesn’t that sound familiar?