There seems to be a new archetype at play these days. A new God that has been taking form throughout modern time. This entity is known to us today as Chicken Little. Chicken Little has his own mantra that when repeated over and over gives him more strength and power. Some know this mantra all too well and are teaching it to our children and our children’s children. It can be spoken in many different ways and in all languages around the globe. “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

I am sure you know this mantra well. If you repeat it enough times, believe it or not, the sky will fall. Chicken Little has become the most powerful Deity of our time. He has the largest following ever recorded in our modern history and one of the largest if not the largest priesthoods ever. You should take a look at the monasteries. They are full of children. Your children are likely attending one of Chicken Little’s monasteries right now. They are all over the world and he leads his teachings with an advertisement of no child left behind.

Chicken Little’s religion of fear is preached every day, throughout the day, via one of the greatest evangelical networks ever created. The mass population is addicted to his message as they wake up to it every morning as they prepare for their day embodying his words as truths and something to live by. Talk about the ultimate in “wake and bake”. Devoted followers repeatedly kneel at the altar of Chicken Little throughout the day as his priests and priestesses are active tending to the temples and serving the flocks.

Beloved Friends, Chicken Little is a false God. His message of fear is a lie. This fear is not real but an illusion designed to encourage you to give your power over to the Church. The sky falling is the greatest hoax ever played on mankind. As a population we have been taught by those who would make you believe that they have our best interests in mind. They want you to believe that if you sacrifice your love and give up your freedoms that they will keep you safe. Don’t believe them.

Fear is a lie! The sky is not falling and will not fall. It is not possible. Your fears are a learned response and have been taught to you. You have been manipulated by false prophets and false teachings specifically designed to distract you from the one true Divine force in our world, Love.

Love is the natural order to all things. The only true religion. You do not need to be taught Love for it is the way of all things. Fear has been designed by mankind for personal gain. Their greatest fear is that you will remember and unleash the Love within you bringing an end to their greed accounts and their power of status.

These false prophets need our Love now more then ever. They are the ones who are afraid for they truly believe in their message of doom and gloom. They need us to unlearn the fear and unleash our Love, to embrace them and to help guide them to the inner truth that is Love.

I want to be clear about the definition of the word Pagan. I am sure that this will get me into trouble with many of my Neo-Pagan friends, but here we go. According to Wikipedia ~

“The term pagan is from the Latin paganus, an adjective originally meaning “rural”, “rustic” or “of the country.” As a noun, paganus was used to mean “country dweller, villager.”

“From its earliest beginnings, Christianity spread much more quickly in major urban areas (like Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, Rome) than in the countryside (in fact, the early church was almost entirely urban), and soon the word for “country dweller” became synonymous with someone who was “not a Christian,” giving rise to the modern meaning of “Pagan.” This may, in part, have had to do with the closeness to nature of rural people, who may have been more resistant to the new ideas of Christianity than those who lived in major urban centers and were cut off from the cycles of nature and the forms of spirituality associated with them.”

Pagan, country dweller, one who lives close to nature. As opposed to city dweller where one is cut off from the cycles of nature. It is that being cut off from nature that I believe our current social problems stem from. Cities by their very nature need to consume the surrounding natural environment in order to survive. Throughout our civilized history cities have sometimes by force and other times by forfeit consumed the country dwellers themselves.

No one can deny that we are now living in a world of mass civilization. By far more people dwell within the city walls then live rurally or out in the countryside. Most city dwellers have no idea of any other way to live. They have been raised in the city environment for generations. The growing of their own food is too far a reach from going to the grocery store.

However, it is my belief that tucked within the city walls is our world’s salvation.

This is where I get to vindicate myself with all my friends. There is a population of people who have been studying the “old ways”. The understandings of the cycles of nature are not lost to us. I am referring here to those we now call Neo-Pagans. I define Neo-Pagans as city dwellers who understand nature and have made a point in their lives to remain in contact with or re-connect themselves with the natural cycles of the Earth. Those who are not separated from Earth and yet live within the city walls.

I too lived in the city for quite some time and as I studied the cycles of nature my heart desired to break free of those city walls more and more. The way of life I was learning to live was in conflict with where and how I was living. The courage to leave the city and become a country dweller did not come easily. Thankfully I had been studying a Neo-Pagan tradition called Wicca. What Wicca did for me was to re-connect my soul with the cycles of nature. All the years of learning and practicing this Neo-Pagan tradition safely within the city taught me what I needed to know to be a country dweller, a true Pagan.

This brings us to the crux of my point. Our current social situation is in peril. Our ability to maintain civilized city environments is coming to a quick end. The city experiment is failing at a rampant rate. Understand that my rant here is not about doom and gloom because I do not believe in doom and gloom. I do see clearly that what we need is a balance between the old ways, and the new ways found within the new old ways.

Who, one might ask, is going to teach us these new old ways? It is you my friends, the Neo-Pagan population of city dwellers. As thousands of years ago, when the Pagan population left their country dwellings for the comforts of the city, the time has come for us to return to the country that we abandoned so long ago. They say that nobody knows how to live in or with nature anymore, they are wrong. The Neo-Pagans do! You do!

It is time for a great movement, a movement from Neo-Pagan to simply Pagan. It is actually a very short step all in all. Most Neo-Pagans celebrate different Holy Days than Christians. These Holy Days we celebrate are a reminder to us of the cycles of nature. Notice that I used the word celebrate here for the shift from Neo-Pagan to Pagan is simply from celebrating these Holy Days to practically applying them. A Pagan does not spend time observing the cycles of nature, but lives in direct relationship with them.

Beltane is a time when seeds are planted or when some rest from planting the seeds, real actual seeds in the real ground. Samhain is the time when we need to have completed the harvest or the freeze will come and kill the crops. What greater observances could we possibly do to honor nature than to live our lives according to the established cycles going on all around us?

I am afraid that if we do not get out the city and participate with nature, that soon nature will abandon us like we have abandoned her. The ancient egregors are still available to us, but for how much longer?

How much longer do we all have to wait until society has the courage to decide to live in a state of balance with nature? The time is ripe for you beautiful city dwelling Neo-Pagans to put your spirituality into actual practice. The world we live in needs examples of how to live at one with nature now more then ever. And, you are it, we are it. We Pagans are all the world has left to guide its population back into harmony with the source of our existence, the Earth Herself.