Pagan Bloggers with Naturalistic Worldviews
I’m still looking at the stone when I hear the voices of the main ritualists begin to raise in a song. I cannot really hear the words. I catch snippets—something about the land. Something about belonging to the land and to each other. I let the singing, the voices wash over me—through me—around me. I cannot take my eyes from the stone as the current raises and turns raw.
And, like that, I am opened. I surrender to it.
The enormous “Flame Stone,” a 4-ton and 22-foot slab of red, brown, and gray sand stone, is the 53rd stone to be raised at Four Quarters. Set in the North, the Flame Stone is the first stone of a larger interior circle that will take another ten years to build. 
My sacred places are burning. Sonoma County, heart of my heart, is on fire, and its magnificent wildlands, its rolling oak woodland hills and grasslands are steadily being destroyed. Annadel and Sugarloaf Ridge State Parks, where I have lost myself in a steady wash of serotonin joy at the sheer beauty, the wildness, the richness … Continue reading The Elemental Enemy
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We assume that asking a question presupposes a sentient listener on the other end. But is the true? Is it really necessary to believe the earth or the universe are sentient in order to address a question to them? Or to receive an “answer”?
Hallows is unique among Atheopagan Sabbaths. For one thing, it’s a week long: it extends from Halloween through the actual midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, which falls around the 7th of November. A whole week of observances, of rituals, of spooky-eerie awareness of Death, of Ancestry, of the Dark. As it … Continue reading Dark Hallows
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A guest post by Kaigi-Ron. It was the knives that first pointed me to the truth. Seven of them stood at attention by my sink (fastened in magnetic rigor by the new strip I’d just installed), adjacent to the Hello Kitty curtains. And I was struck: OMG, I have a living Housewives Tarot card … Continue reading Turns Out, I’ve Been Living in an Atheopagan Focus
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This book is an important philosophical and spiritual resource for all those currently working towards racial justice, especially for those who do so outside the frameworks of specific religious traditions.
In the coastal Mediterranean climate where I live, September and October are times of hot days and clear, cold nights. The sun is no longer strong enough—nor are the days long enough—to drive the cycle that draws ocean air inland during the height of summer, blanketing us with cooling fog. It is a somewhat eerie … Continue reading Autumn
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Yet another example of a Pagan in a leadership position using that position for sexual misconduct, citing woo-woo “spiritual” reasons involving disembodied entities and “magical bonds” as “explanations” for his abuse. How far would such hokum fly in a naturalistic Pagan community? Not. At all. Willingness to take someone’s word about supposed supernatural processes and … Continue reading Why Naturalism? Because This.
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If we lived in a truly Earth-honoring society, I wouldn’t have to do this. If our society cherished our planet as source and sustainer of life, the Equinox would be surely be more widely known and celebrated as a sort of secular holy day. But we don’t live in such a society, to our impoverishment and peril. And that’s why we need to nourish a revolutionary spirit. And that’s why I make a point to celebrate the Equinox. And that’s why I took the day off.