Letters Please address letters to New Moon Rising or otherwise make it clear that your letter is available for publication. Please let us know how you would like it signed. Opinions of authors in New Moon Rising and especially in the Letters section certainly do not necessarily reflect those of New Moon Rising. If You Want to be Pro-Pagan,
Be Pagan Regarding the review of the tract The Other People in NMR 8:5 while I feel the motive for such a tract commendable, I find the way in which it is presented objectionable. The format needn't be (as the proponents claim it is not) anti-Christian; it merely needs to be pro-pagan. I don't find The Other People to be pro-pagan or pro-freethinking even. Do the authors of The Other People believe the biblical Eve, Cain, and Abel actually, physically existed? Do they believe in the Christian bible in any way, shape, or form? They must, for in order to approach their arguments in the manner they do certainly implies some level of belief. Perhaps a pro-pagan way of telling the true story of Woman and the Serpent, and what that story really means, would be something like: Remember that myth you were told about a woman, a garden, and a serpent? Put away your pre-conceived notions and allow me to introduce you to the Goddess Hera, who resided in a beautiful westerly garden with a sacred serpent, a symbol of wisdom in many diverse cultures What The Other People unwittingly do is delve into Judeo-Christian mythological ideas and winds up rooting for their bad guys. Christians simply are not going to see the Garden of Eden serpent in a good light. He was a deliberate, calculated distortion of the real Garden serpent. It is the true meaning that must be presented. And the Cain and Abel thing? You're sympathizing with a man who, so the myth goes, murdered his own brother out of jealousy? We all have people we are jealous and envious of, for whatever reason, but it doesn't justify murderous impulses or the actual act, does it? Please seriously rethink this campaign. Sending out a pro-pagan message is what should be done. Again, my opinion of The Other People is that it is taking a very erroneous approach, and I fear it will result in a very nasty back-lash. Sincerely,
C.J. Medina
Las Cruces, NM I think restricting ourselves to what we literally believe cripples communication with those limited to incompatible metaphors. What communicators may seem to believe based on the metaphors they use to clothe their ideas should be based on the audience they are trying to reach. So it is reasonable to characterize ourselves in the terms of other people's mythology; and reasonable to use inconsistencies in that mythology to destabilize negative dogma founded on it. But I like to think that a positive message is always the wiser course. One hopes that as the set of tracts grows the Aquarian Tabernacle Church will move more in that direction. In any case, this is poorly charted territory. Will there be a backlash? Will any pamphlets do any good or any harm? No matter what course the ATC takes, it would be wise to keep careful track of results. Dynamic reaction to empirical data and following Spirit should bring the best results. But the first rule is if it's not positive, don't do it. SR | 
