I've been lurking for a while now, and I've been seriously looking at the CR Sig in particular. But I've got some questions/thoughts about Reconstructionism in general.
Most religions have large and robust content covering history/creation of their people, rules/procedures for ceremonies, key guidelines for living, ethical/moral codes, taboos, blessings, curses, rites of passage, and many many more things. From what I've seen it seems that most Recon groups are lucky if they have evidence for 20%-40% of what the ORIGINAL religion believed about those things. Which means 60%-80% of the Recon religion has to be "made up" (thus the reconstruction Smiley )
So if you have to make up/reconstruct/guess about a majority of your religion how is that any different from other "modern" pagan religions such as Wicca which was cobbled together from a variety of sources and then had the gaps filled in by Gardner(sp)? How do you know you've "got it right" (reconstructed it correctly)? How do you know that the "filler" material is true to real world history? And if staying true to real world history isn't a priority, why bother with the reconstruction?
- Message Board: Join in our discussion
