Pagan Truthiness

“This is the true religion. All others are thrown-away bandages beside it.” –Rumi

In college, while still a Mormon, I saw some article in the local newspaper disparaging Mormonism for claiming to be the “one true religion.” I thought it was funny at the time. Who would want to belong to a church that claimed anything but that? Who would want to belong to the halfway true religion? Who would want to belong to the religion-that’s-just-as-true-as-everyone-else’s religion? Even Rumi, it appears, expansive as he was, claimed knowledge and allegiance to the One True.

But here’s the thing:

There’s no way of telling whose religion is the truest of true. Beyond inner knowing, that is, and we all have that, and all our inner knowings are different. We all have vanity too, which is why we humans seem to like claiming that our unprovable inner knowing is somehow more true than anyone else’s unprovable inner knowing. The actual truth is, there is no way of proving what the truth is in spiritual matters, so any claim of “One True” is simply untrue. (Nice little rhyme too. Ooh ooh.)

What you have found here at Temple Mercury is a pan-Pagan spirituality that makes no claim of being the One True. Devotees of Temple Mercury practice many different Pagan paths. No one is lifted up above any other. What the individual devotees of the Temple believe and practice may feel very true to them, but they don’t have a monopoly on that feeling and no one here claims that what they feel is true IS perfectly true and therefore excludes what another person may feel is true.

Now the word “true” sounds weird.

Devotees of Temple Mercury are the our-religion-is-just-as-probably-true-ish-as-any-other-religion people. That is, truly, the best place to be. Or at least the most accurate, because the one truth we can all be absolutely sure of is that no human being knows ALL the truth. We are all the blind men feeling the elephant. We each feel a part and make assumptions as to what the creature is. But none of us can see the creature at all, let alone comprehend it in its entirety. Let’s be the type of blind man who can be both in love with his part of the elephant and, at the same time, acknowledge that he is most certainly blind and his blessed elephant part is truly just one blessed little part.

In 2021, I did ECT treatments for depression. In ye olden dayes, they called it electroshock. They send a pulse of electricity through your brain and induce a small seizure. Somehow, this is supposed to drive the chronic blues away. Luckily, they knock you out for it, (and man does that anesthesia burn. Side note: One time the anesthesiologist laughed and told me it was like liquid sunshine going up my arm. She was a good doctor. I’m grateful to Apollon for her).

Coming out of the short liquid sunshine coma one day, in the recovery room I heard someone on TV talking about discovering “my truth.” I heard the nurse say, “I hate it when people say that.” While still about three quarters comatose, I leaned forward and mumbled, “There is no such thing as ‘my truth.’ There is only one Truth!” Then I flopped back on the bed and said, “Is it over yet?”

That’s your Head Devotee all over. Spiritually philosophizing even while half knocked out. That’s just how dedicated I am to this work. Aren’t we all so glad?

So the question becomes: having said what I just said about none of our beliefs being any truer than others, now, fully awake and lucid, do I still believe there is only one Truth?

I do. If Truth is true at all, there is only one. Falsehood cannot also be truth. Truth is all that IS and there is only one.

But here’s the thing:

I’ve had a sit down with Hermes Mercury on this issue and what he told me was that THE Truth and “my truth” can exist simultaneously and do not have to be mutually exclusive. He told me that, instead of thinking of “my truth” as meaning a truth different than other truths, to think of “my truth” as meaning “my piece of Truth,” or in elephantine terms, “my trunk,” “my tail,” “my wrinkly ankle.”

With just that small mental addition of “piece of” to “my truth,” he took all the bile out of my feelings toward people who use that phrase and humbled me quite a lot. I had to acknowledge that even the idea that there is one and only one Truth is still just a part of the elephant. What do I know? Truth and falsehood may actually be able to wear the same dresses. The elephant may also be a platypus. When I say blue you may actually be seeing orange. Who is to say?

The truth is, none of us SEE much of anything. We feel. We at Temple Mercury acknowledge this. We feel the truthiness. We do not KNOW what is true. We do not disparage other people’s feelings about what is true. We honor their experience and hold it as equally valuable to our own. We believe it to be equally valid.

Because, let’s face it: we Pagans believe some wacky shit. Let us never be hypocrites and say someone else’s true-for-them wackiness is any more whacked out than our own.

A “One True” mindset only leads to contention and prevents us from being of maximum service to our gods and fellow humans. The gods call upon us to lovingly serve each other in their spirit. We can’t effectively do that if we carry acrimony in our hearts about what another person believes to be true. Even if their felt truth leads them to disparage Paganism, we must seek to understand their viewpoint and act lovingly toward them anyway.

When I was Mormon, I knew an evangelical man who would literally not set foot in my mother’s house because she was Mormon. I don’t know what he thought was going to happen to him. The demon of Joseph Smith was going to jump his bones? It boggles the mind. Because of his narrow minded adherence to his idea of a “One True” that included Mormons carrying some contagious evil, he cut himself off from making the kind of loving human connection his Lord Jesus might have had him make, and potentially doing the kind of service for his fellow human that his Lord Jesus would have definitely had him do.

Let’s not do that. Most Pagan pantheons do not demand that you love everybody or always turn the other cheek, but they do ask that you not indulge hubris. Hubris is, in many pantheons, the root of all sins most offensive to the gods. Hubris has many forms. One of them is us lifting ourselves up above our fellow humans, which we certainly do when we insist that our mere piece of the truth is the whole of the Truth and everyone else’s truth is invalid. We also commit a dire sin of hubris if we allow this belief to prevent us from being helpful to each other and working good in the world—acting as our gods’ benevolent hands to effect positive change for all.

Let’s not do that either, even in the face of people who vehemently do.

Let us always be the we’re-doing-the-best-we-can faith. The just-as-true-as-you religion. The we-all-have-a-piece-so-let-us-all-have-a-peace spiritual people.

Let us be ever openminded devoted devotees of super sacred helpfulness.

And let us stay humble in these principles and in our service to the gods and our fellows. Our gods will love us for it. Truly.

-M. Ashley
Head Devotee, Temple Mercury