Among the most amusing contradictions of modern spirituality is the insistence that one belongs to a tradition with “no dogma.”

One hears it constantly. There are no authorities. No rules. No orthodoxy. No one can tell anyone else what to believe. Every path is valid. Every truth is personal. Every practice is equally legitimate.

Then, almost without taking a breath, the same conversation turns to the folk roots of a custom, the traditional way to cast a circle, the historically authentic meaning of a symbol, the ancestral method of performing a rite, or the proper interpretation of a myth.

One is left with a simple question: if none of these things carry authority, why are they being cited?

If a practice gains legitimacy because it is traditional, then tradition possesses authority. If a symbol gains meaning because it has ancient roots, then ancestry possesses authority. If a ritual is preferred because it is historically attested, then history possesses authority. One may choose different authorities than a bishop, a pope, or a holy book, but changing the source of authority does not eliminate authority itself.

Too often, what is presented as freedom from dogma is merely dogma that dislikes being called by its own name.

The irony is that there is nothing wrong with dogma in the broad sense of the word. Every human community possesses assumptions about what is true, proper, meaningful, authentic, or desirable. Every craft has standards. Every culture has customs. Every family has traditions. The declaration that one has escaped all such things is usually less a statement of fact than a failure of self-awareness.

Indeed, “there are no rules” is frequently the first rule one encounters.

The problem is not that modern Pagans, witches, or spiritual seekers have traditions. The problem is that many wish to enjoy the authority of tradition while denying that it is authority. They wish to cite ancestors without being constrained by ancestors. They wish to invoke folklore without admitting that folklore places obligations upon them. They wish to appeal to historical precedent while insisting that no precedent can ever be binding.

One cannot have it both ways.

If the ancestors matter, then they matter. If tradition is worth preserving, then it deserves more respect than being treated as a decorative backdrop for modern preferences. If folk practices contain wisdom, then they should be approached with humility rather than selectively quoted whenever they happen to support one’s existing opinions.

Personally, I find more honesty in a grandmother’s recipe book than in much contemporary spiritual discourse. The recipe makes no grand claims about liberation from authority. It openly admits that it came from somewhere. It was taught by someone, learned from someone, tested by someone, and handed down by someone. It is rooted in inheritance, memory, and continuity.

In that respect, it behaves exactly like religion.

Whether one is reciting the Lord’s Prayer, offering a Hindu puja, tending a shrine, baking a family loaf of bread, or preparing soup according to a recipe that has survived four generations, the underlying act is remarkably similar. One receives something from the past and carries it forward into the future.

That, to my mind, is religion in its most fundamental sense: not the invention of meaning, but participation in a chain of meaning that precedes us.

There is therefore no shame in admitting that we have traditions, authorities, inherited practices, and even dogmas. The shame lies only in pretending that we do not.

For the most dogmatic claim of all may be the modern conviction that one can stand nowhere, inherit nothing, owe nothing to the past, and yet somehow remain connected to it.