When I first read Professor Dale Cannon’s seminal book Six Ways of Being Religious (available from the author as a free pdf online), I had a luminous “Aha!” moment. Up until that time, I’d been painfully aware that the Pagan demographic was divided in many ways – around theology, around values, around definitions, just to name a few. Six Ways of Being Religious gave me a vocabulary and context for understanding one of the major divisions between us, one that we don’t often even recognize. Theology and beliefs aside, there are many ways to do religion, and each of these ways is valid within any given faith and cannot be compared with the validity of any other way of doing religion. Because people tend to gravitate toward one or two such paths, they also tend to judge their favorites as being the right way to do religion, and other ways as lesser.
However, we need all of these ways to fully round out a faith. In any given tradition (for the non-Pagans reading this, “tradition” is our term for “sect” or “denomination”) one or two of these six ways may be held higher than the others, and some may be devalued or even absent. This is not so different from “mainstream” religions, and which path is valued may have a great deal to do with the preferences and proclivities of the founder of that tradition. Members self-select for that tradition, especially now when there are many more small groups to choose from, and an atmosphere arises in that group that this is the “right” way to do Pagan religion. Solitaries – of which we have more than it’s possible to estimate – often end up solitary largely because their favorite path is not valued in the local groups with which they’ve had contact.
The part of Dale Cannon’s book which impressed me the most, though, was not merely his defining of six ways to structure religious worship. It was his thoughtful discernment regarding the ways each path could be walked skillfully, and how it could also be done exceptionally poorly. I have received permission from Professor Cannon to quote limited parts of the book here on this web page, including the crucial information about what doing each path right or wrong actually looks like, but I also urge readers to acquire the original text if at all possible. Six Ways of Being Religious doesn’t touch on Neo-Paganism at all – it draws mostly from Christian and Buddhist references – but it can certainly be read with a sharp eye toward Neo-Paganism and its many differing traditions. When I’ve given classes on this concept to Pagan audiences, I see many eyes light up as people mentally connect with Pagans of their acquaintance as representatives of these six paths.
We hear a lot in Neo-Paganism about how this person or this group is “doing it wrong”. I can only hope that this information can help us to understand that there is no value comparison between paths – that this person whose methods are so different from your own is not “doing it wrong” but “doing a different path”. At the same time, understanding how these paths can be done skillfully and unskillfully can show us ways to realistically hold ourselves and possibly each other accountable, especially those of us who are in positions of leadership and influence. With this model, one person whose preferred path is sacred scholarship would understand that telling someone in the same tradition who preferred a devotional path that they are “doing our religion wrong” would not be appropriate, but that someone on the same path, even if they are in an entirely different tradition and worship different Gods, might have something useful to say about their own practices. I can also hope that by delineating these paths we may be able to create “affinity groups” within any given tradition – worshipers who prefer a particular structure-path and band together in order to share enthusiasm and information while still appreciating the contributions of members of other structure-paths.
For this essay, I am indebted not only to Professor Cannon but also to a number of Pagan friends and acquaintances who sent me their experiences with these six paths. Their words give depth to my general overview, and make this a chorus of voices rather than simply a lone one. As you read these entries, I hope that you recognize yourself and your Pagan friends and acquaintances – and, more importantly, that you can recognize and perhaps see in a new light those co-religionists with whom you’ve disagreed over time. I challenge each of you to strive to understand, or at least appreciate, paths that seem alien to you. At the same time I also challenge you to refrain from mentally valuing your path over others just because it feels good to you, or to mentally value other paths over yours because you’ve been told that other paths are more valuable and you feel inadequate. I believe deeply that all of these paths are valued by the Gods, who see us better than we see ourselves, and know better than we do what each of us are best suited to practice. The Gods want sincere people who express their spirituality in the way that brings them closest to the Divine Spirit, whatever that may be.
I also challenge each of you to carefully consider the suggestions of how your preferred path can be done skillfully and unskillfully, and allow yourself to notice if you could use some improvement in your skill. Let the warning signposts on the path inspire you to a keener and better enactment of your chosen spiritual practice. Hold yourself to these high standards, even more than you might hold anyone else to the standards of their path.
(Note: All direct quotes from Six Ways of Being Religious are in bold type. Also, should there be any question, Dale Cannon has approved – and edited – this essay, and expressed that it is true to the original intentions of his book.)