The Old Religion

Belief	Implication
All paths and theologies have validity; there is no One True Way to the truth.	No individual or group (including this one) has the right to impose its beliefs on others.
The original religious traditions of all lands have many ideas and practices defended in common. They are all part of the Old Religion.	The religious liberties of traditional and native peoples should be defended as our own, for they are our own.
The Divine Principle is eternal, all-powerful, and beyond all personification.	Human attempts to define Divinity are inherently limiting.
In order to relate to the Divine Power, humans use symbols and images, especially personifications based on human characteristics. Each deity represents part of the Divine Power.	No single deity or other symbol is vast enough to become the sole focus of worship.
All genders are equally human and equally divine.	Goddesses are as powerful as Gods. Any person can be spiritually powerful.
The manifest creation is holy, a continuum of consciousness from inanimate objects to the pantheons of deities and spiritual beings.	Revere all life and treat all things with mindfulness.
Earth is the mother of us all, and all created beings are kindred.	We have a family responsibility to respect the environment.
The human body is as holy as the rest of creation; it enables us to perceive life in its fullness.	Train the body, but do not torment it; celebration of our physical and sexual nature can be an act of worship.
Individuals are responsible for their own spiritual development.	We must choose, and keep choosing, to follow the Path. No one can do it for us.
Our life may be shaped by events from our past, or a past lifetime, but we have the free will to make a new positive choice at any time.	Never despair. What’s done is done; we can’t change the past, but what we do now can shape the future.
What we do to others will affect our own lives, for good or for ill.	It behooves us to give serious thought to any action/working we propose.
Birth and death, creation and destruction, are part of the natural cycle of existence, but the spirit is eternal; only the form of its manifestation is changed.	Death is only a passage. It is nothing to be feared.
Evil is the result of the perversion or unbalancing of natural functions, phenomena, or energies.	To maintain balance and avoid “evil”, we try to work with the pattern of nature.
The physical and spiritual worlds are equally real and accessible.	By altering our consciousness, it is both possible and natural to make contact between one and the other.
As above, so below.	What is done on the spiritual level can affect what happens on the physical level, and vice versa.
By using words and symbols, one mind or many working together can change the world.	Magic Works.