Can the concept of Fate as a guiding force that has our lives mapped out have a place within Pagan beliefs? Is Fate comparable to Crowleys, and be inference Gardeners concepts of “True Will”? Does Fate have a place within specific paths or as something that influences everyone whether they know it or not? Ok, so several questions regarding Fate, but hey, it’s a big subject. I guess the place to start will be my own answers to these questions, bearing in mind as with all of my random musings that this is only my opinion and should not be regarded as fact ;)
So, how do I feel about Fate as a concept? Honestly, I’m not sure. Bit of a cop out I know but there you go, not everything is cut and dried. I like the idea of completely free will, in that I am free to make my own decisions, and to take the consequences of those decisions, good and bad in the knowledge that I am determining my own future. Having made this however I also like the idea that there is a thread to my life and my interactions, and that the decisions I make have far reaching implications not just for me but for everyone I interact with, even if those interactions are only incredibly slight. The point being that I feel comfortable that I am free to make whatever decisions I want from a position whereby I am aware that ever decision has implications and that there is a concept of ”Future” which is conditional on the decisions I make but has a framework within which those decisions are made.
My slight reservation is that this strikes me as quite similar to the Christian concept that God has a purpose for each individual but that each individual is free to submit to that purpose of not and to accept the consequences of those decisions. God in this case taking the place of Fate perhaps? So is my concept of Fate a hold-over from my Christian upbringing or does it apply within my Pagan beliefs? For me it feels like it is a core part of my beliefs. My interactions with the natural World around me and with the creatures, human and non-human within it are the thread along which I am travelling past to future, and there are choices that I can make that will move me closer to or further from that thread, and I am free to choose which I do. However where Fate comes into it is in the sense that the closer I remain to that thread the more interesting my life will be. I see interesting as a good thing, just for clarity.
So, I consider Fate to be a major part of my Paganism, but where does this Fate come from? Is there a guiding force that lays my thread out at birth and severs it at death? I’m not so sure about this. I certainly don’t see it as something my Gods do. I am, by inclination Deistic, but my interaction with my Gods has suggested that they are not unduly interested in the decisions I make beyond whether I am being true to them or not. They have their own existence, and for me, their own Fate. Fate is something separate and beyond deity for me. It is more a sense of a Universal concept of Fate which lays the threads for the complete network of the Universe from start to finish of which my little thread is just a tiny part.
My understanding of how this fits into wider concepts of Paganism is that within some of the Pagan paths there is a clear concept of Fate as a directive force. Within Heathenry there is the concept of the Wyrd, a skein or fabric that maps out life paths for everything. Within Wicca there is the concept of being true to your own will, and here there is a pretty clear link to Crowleys idea of “True Will” being something which we are not instinctively aware of but that we have to discover through ritual practice and being separate from our own petty wants and desires. Both concepts suggest, for me, that this idea of true will is linked to an idea that there is a higher purpose to our lives which in turn suggests that to fulfill that purpose we must embark upon a specific journey. Within Shamanism there is a concept that there is communication with the spirits of ancestors and place and that these spirits have a clearer picture of the future and the past and act as guides. All of these feel to me to be reasonable matches for an idea of Fate as suggested earlier so I would say that it is possible to establish a link between concepts of Fate and specific ideas within Pagan paths.
Just musings…..
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