Welcome to Gaia! ::

This is a reconstruction of the "dark Paganism" topic.

In life, nature and Paganism there are elements that connect together to form a greater whole. How you view these elements and their qualities is a matter of YOUR opinion and belief structure.
Dark and Light; Yin and Yang; War and Peace; Heaven and Hell; Positive and Negative.
One cannot exist without the other, one is not more important than the other and only through understanding both can you truly appreciate each part and respect it. To understand both is to grow in knowledge. Just because someone may prefer a certain side does not mean they do not respect the other side.
Just remember that just because one side may be viewed as being "better" or "lighter" does not make the opposite side evil. It is, to put it simply, the way of nature.

Dark, peace - these things are privatives. They don't exist. They're just shortcut words that mean "absence of light" and "absence of war". They can't balance out the other, because they're not actually there. It's humans and their minds complicating as they simplify.

I don't believe in "positive" and "negative" myself because they're so subjective - just like "good" and "bad", they mean things to us when we use them but they don't objectively exist, as such. What is positive to one person might be negative to another, and so on. What takes from one adds to the other, and vice versa. I mean, if you find ten dollars, that's great for you, but it sucks for the person who just lost ten dollars. That's competition for you, after all. We get higher by climbing on those down below.

So in general I don't believe in sides, and I don't believe in any of that sort of "balance". The balance I understand to exist is that of ecological wotsits. As in, kill of an animal and you upset the balance. But the balance reasserts itself eventually. Just like predator-prey fluctuations. Prey species increase in numbers, and predator species do likewise. Predator species begin to over-consume prey species, prey species declines in number. Predators don't have enough to eat and also decline in number. Not so many predators around, so prey increases.... and so forth. It sorts itself out quite well and balance asserts itself, and is only really upset when you do something like introduce another species or kill one off, which will do impressive things to the populations of one or more other species in the ecosystem.

So I don't think "dark" and "light", "positive" and "negative" etc have anything much at all to do with nature. They're human constructs, and anything in the natural world that seems positive or negative is usually due to the point of view of the human doing the looking.

Also I'm fairly sure heaven can exist without hell, as it does in Jewish theology.

I'd almost say that the balance is just there because humans need it. Animals don't need things like balance, just survival. That's just my opinion, though. No "gospel truth" to it.

I did forget to add law/order and chaos into my original post.

@Leafpup: You are right, there are a lot of pagans that neglect darkness and there are some that neglect the light. I don't have a real answer to it other than that nature doesn't revolve around humans. So we cannot shift the balance that much. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be respected though. Some could argue that if they don't believe it is part of their life they won't be bothered by it. Kindof how some people don't believe in the law of 3 so they don't think it will affect them.

trust me on this one. pagan who neglect either the light or the dark do feel the effects. i'm not sure if anyone has ever heard of a phenomenom called shaman's sickness. that would be the neglecting of the dark. and people who dwell on the dark do find their souls to be consumed by it. there are negative effects but they are hard to discern because many of these thigns are done behind closed doors. as for the idea that talking about light and dark is pointless since they are human inventions that is false in my opinion. news flash for those who didnt notice by now.we are humans. and since we're in this guild trying to learn about life we arent going to do it from a wolf's perspective.

Ah, the shadow self. Yeah, you should really face that and handle it. Heal yourself.

I want to learn more about other parts of myself before I face mine, even though I know I will have to eventually.

to be totally honest and open with everybody i talk more than i do sometimes. i bottle alot of s**t up because i dont think people will understand me. last weekend i bought i stone used for self transformation. ever since then i've been really moody and just cant control the s**t i saay to people.after reading this i think i'm dealing with my shadow self on a daily basis now.