Dealing with our Families, Boundaries, Beltane, the Four Sacred Pillars, and more! Recent Episodes of THE WONDER podcast, by Mark Green

The concept behind THE WONDER—named, of course, for the awe and reverence we feel as we contemplate the magnificent Universe—is that it will be an ongoing resource for non-theist Pagans to inform and inspire our practices and stimulate our thinking.

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Animism for the Religious Naturalist

Animists see a world that is full of other-than-human persons, including salmon persons, tree persons, and even rock persons. It is difficult for many Westerners to understand the concept of other-than-human persons, especially when talking about (seemingly) “inanimate objects” like rocks. But for the animist, there is no such thing as inanimate matter, because it is all a part of the complex self-regulating living system called Gaia. Animism is not about the projection of consciousness or agency onto non-human things, but about respect and reciprocity within a more-than-human community that transcends the subject-object dichotomy.

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Time + Tenacity = Hope, by Mark Green

I will look up at that red Moon this Saturday, and I expect I will cry: cry at its beauty, cry at the passage of the years, cry in relief that I have had these 38 years since my night under the blood Moon of July 4, 1982.

Friends, I don’t know whether it is possible to communicate this except by living it, but if it is, please know: it can get better.

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Pagan with a small “p”

For every gem of genuine ecological wisdom I have found in the Pagan community, there is a deluge of crystals and correspondences, divinities and divination apps, wizards and wishful thinking. Maybe it’s time to face up to the fact that, while I am spiritually and religiously “pagan” with a small-p, culturally I am not a capital-P “Pagan”.

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