As Cyclone Gabrielle bore down on our coasts, the MetService warned about what the storm god Tawhirimatea "has in store for us over the next few days" and that the sea god Tangaroa told them that the ocean would be unpredictable. Perhaps a pleasant break from being told that your carbon emissions are personally responsible for the weather, but larger and more serious forces are at play here. These Maori gods are "just doing their thing" and we need to "respect the natural law and behaviour of our [gods]." Anthropomorphising a cyclone into a daughter of the gods isn't particularly new, and it could be appreciated by lovers of the ancient classics and epics.
The MetService however was not motivated by true spiritual sentiment. Their explanation involves the phenomenon of far-left white supremacy that I have previously commented on [paywalled until Saturday]. Their return to paganism is motivated by "communicating [science] to different audiences." This is effectively an attempt to reach parts of the community who may have an inferior or retarded understanding of physical phenomena—those who cannot understand the science of the white man. Deluded by maternal condescension, MetService joins a host of other state agencies in their embrace of paganism.
The Reserve Bank worships the god of the forest, preschools hold outings where they teach children about the various pagan deities and have murals that honour these gods, and high schools require students to explain how the Maori gods created and shaped NZ in science classes—still more true than evolution, but that's beside the point. These examples barely scratch the surface, but illustrate a pattern of systematic state-sponsored paganism.
This neopagan religiosity is largely a LARP or parody, but one that is playing out throughout the West. These gods, who are actually demons, as the Apostle Paul explains in 1 Corinthians, are real to an extent. The things they represent can be mapped from the Romans to the Greeks to the Egyptians to the Maori. The pagan revival is global too, take the recent Satanic performances at "The Grammys" show in Hollywood or even businesses like Hells Pizza in New Zealand. All idols are demons, so Madonna is a demon (always has been), and the fact that she now looks like one in her old age is more parody than conscious recognition.
The idolatry, Satanism, and neopaganism these people live out are not true revivals of ancient superstitions, but grotesque mockeries of Christianity. The unseriousness of the Satanic LARP is actually the devil's triumph, for people to consider their eternal damnation no more than a joke to be acted out to mock the God they no longer fear.
There may be no unironic Satan worshippers, but the universality of neopaganism shows us the Christian heresy of secularism will be short lived. Religion is inescapable.
Will we start to see the government offering sacrifices to appease the old gods? Don't put it past them. We undoubtedly see these reborn in some shape or form. We already witness these patterns of sacrifice in abortion and other facets of the modern world.
You may wonder if the climate cultists feel they are being sidelined, but I don't think so. Harmonising these religions is easy. The gods are angry with us for damaging their world. Headlines shouting that "we are to blame" for floods and storms can be synchronised with climate change as the manifestation of your sin.
The wrath of the old gods has been unleashed on those who do not respect the land; those who do not listen to the priests—the experts—of the new order.
This view of sin as the cause of chaos is closer to the truth than the materialists would like to admit—but the solution is repentance to the Creator, not a return to the worship of creation.