The first assignment for the class was to do a photo mosaic of our
own personal life and a word cloud using the online websites Big Huge Labs and Wordle.
For the Photo
Mosaic I have chosen four pictures. The two pictures on the left show what
Paganism IS NOT, the two pictures on the right reflect what Paganism IS.
Let’s start with the top two pictures and first examine the
picture on the left and what Paganism is not. Paganism is not Satanic Black
Mass rituals that sacrifice virgins or babies, Pagans are not Devil Worshipers.
The picture on the right however depicts an image of what Paganism is to some
people. This image shows a Druidic ritual at Stonehenge in England. Though we
cannot see much of what the ritual is about by the picture, we can at least see
that there is no sacrificial virgin laid out ready for the knife.
The bottom two pictures give us an insight into what the
individual pagan is not and is. The picture on the left shows us as the
tree-hugging-hippie type that most people think of when they think of pagans, Wiccans,
or Druids, however this is not what a pagan is (granted some pagans are the
tree-hugging-hippie type), this is not the general idea of what a pagan is. The
picture on the right shows a group of everyday people walking down a busy New
York street. This is what a pagan really is. They are everyday people who happen
to hold different beliefs than someone else. It’s really not that hard to grasp
as most everyone holds different beliefs of some sort from the person next to
them.
I have also included a readymade photo mosaic that I found by
doing a simple Google Pictures search for what is a pagan? The following image
shows the many thoughts of what a pagan is; including the perspective of the
pagan.
For the Word Cloud portion of this assignment I have made a Word Cloud using various Pagan belief systems known as Traditions.
Eclectic Pagan is someone who takes
various beliefs from various traditions to form their own structure.
Asatru is someone
who follows a Norse or Germanic pantheon.
Christo-Pagan is
someone who mixes Christian doctrine with forms of Paganism.
Ethnic-Pagan is a
person who follows the belief structure of a certain ethnicity or heritage,
normally their own.
Reconstructionist
is very similar to Ethnic-Pagan but is someone who tries to historically reconstruct a past cultures belief system.
Wiccan and Druid
like Asatru are specific traditions though in both there are many variations.
