Just a short note for the folks here who aren’t on the Facebook group: I wish you the most potent and meaningful of Hallows celebrations, and may your reflections on your ancestors and Death bring you wisdom. I am about to head off to my circle’s annual Samhain/Hallows gathering, which I’ve described here. It will be … Continue reading A Deep and Meaningful Hallows to You!
Read moreVisions of the Crash
We are warned now that we may have only a dozen years before global climate change reaches the 2 degree C. tipping point that will render Earth’s climate so unstable as to create ongoing crises in health, agriculture and, fundamentally, human survival. Our population continues to climb, ocean fisheries are crashing, extinction mounts worldwide. Something … Continue reading Visions of the Crash
Read moreContrasts
Saturday night, I was dancing around a cauldron ablaze with candles, with drums thundering and voices lifted high in song, at the monthly Spark Collective gathering. Sunday morning, I attended a Unitarian Universalist service. Tellya, there are differences. Paganism is fundamentally an ecstatic practice: it’s about living in the body, embracing physicality both of ourselves and … Continue reading Contrasts
Read moreRitual Tools I Find Useful
Ritual tools are physical objects with which one performs symbolic ritual acts. In more formal “occult” systems there are prescribed sets of these tools, but in Atheopaganism, we’re strictly practical about them; we use what is useful to us. The items below are things I use in rituals, in combination with objects symbolizing the qualities … Continue reading Ritual Tools I Find Useful
Read morePaganism, Gothic Aesthetic, and the Sensibility of Darkness: An Observation
‘Tis the season, so let’s talk about it: it’s a thing, among us Pagans. Cemeteries, bones, skulls, ravens. Vampires and absinthe and Ye Olde Occulte Symboles. Dark. Spooky. Sexy. It scares some people. Particularly non-Pagan, white-light-obsessed Christians and New Age folks. At this time of year, the Pagan community leaps with particular gusto into the seasonal … Continue reading Paganism, Gothic Aesthetic, and the Sensibility of Darkness: An Observation
Read moreA Gift from the Dying
I’ll cut to the chase: we’re all dying. It’s the only guaranteed fact of our lives: we die. Atheopaganism doesn’t promise an afterlife. There really isn’t compelling evidence to support the idea of one, and so we conclude (tentatively, at least) that it is unlikely that there is one. This is the life that we … Continue reading A Gift from the Dying
Read moreA Gift from the Dying
I’ll cut to the chase: we’re all dying. It’s the only guaranteed fact of our lives: we die. Atheopaganism doesn’t promise an afterlife. There really isn’t compelling evidence to support the idea of one, and so we conclude (tentatively, at least) that it is unlikely that there is one. This is the life that we … Continue reading A Gift from the Dying
Read moreAnd So We Fight On
We believe in a better world We believe in justice We believe in a better world We believe in peace We believe in a better world We can heal our planet We won’t bow down. We won’t bow down. –An Atheopagan ritual chant It matters now to hold … Continue reading And So We Fight On
Read moreTalking to Kids about the Cycle of Seasons
A guest post by Editor B. This past equinox marks the seventh year running that I’ve come in to my daughter’s school to talk to her class about the cycle of seasons. I started in 2012, when my daughter was in Pre-K. She and most of her classmates were four years old then. I’ve come … Continue reading Talking to Kids about the Cycle of Seasons
Read moreStarting Fresh: Imagining a New Paganism
What if we were starting today? If, here, 18 years into the 21st century CE, we were to invent a new, Earth-loving, progressive, reality-based religion? Imagine a practice, a cosmology, a set of values rooted in what we now know about the Cosmos, about Nature, about ourselves. If we were starting just today. What would … Continue reading Starting Fresh: Imagining a New Paganism
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