This year, for the first time in the ~14 billion year history of our Universe, all of us can do so with a synchronized web page!
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Yule (the Winter Solstice) is coming up fast, + a bunch of Online Rituals!
The longer nights around Winter Solstice give more dark skies for the Northern lights – Solar Cycle 25 has already proven to be very strong (see previous posts), with more to come! For many of us, this is a big Sabbat, which takes a more preparation (and if you are buying gifts, the Naturalistic Pagan Gift List here might help).
Read moreThe Dinner Parties: On the Power of Repetition
A great thing about Tashlich is that we come back to it every year. If I do teshuvah “wrong” this year, I can learn from that mistake and try again next year, and the year after that. I love this circular approach to time in Judaism.
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No Longer Believing Is A Trip
This image, meme, came across my Facebook feed and unexpectedly became a prompt, having coaxed memories I nearly forgotten.
Read moreWhy Hexes Don’t Scare Me
As Pagans, we live in a vivid world full of wonders. For we naturalistic Pagans, those wonders have names like photosynthesis and aurora borealis and cumulonimbus and flamingo. We pay attention to the world around us, and learn about its extraordinary …
Read moreNATURALISTIC PAGANISM: A Challenge to the Paradigms of the Overculture
A Presentation to the 2023 Conference on Current Pagan Studies: January 15, 2023 THANKS for inviting me to present to the 19th annual Conference on Current Pagan Studies! I’d like to extend my appreciation to the organizers and co-creators of this even…
Read moreWhat Do We Mean by “Revering Nature”? A Reality Check
Life is one of the Sacred four pillars of Atheopaganism. And it is often said of Pagans generally that we revere or even “worship” Nature. So…what do we mean by that? To explore that, we have to go back about 250 years to a major well…
Read moreAs If it Were the Last
Yom Kippur was this week, and I found it trickier to integrate into my Pagan practice. While Rosh Hashanah has several lovely rituals that felt easy to respectfully adapt, Yom Kippur is literally 25 hours of fasting and asking God to put away the smitey stick for another year, which jars with my beliefs about sin and the sacred. So I took a while to find my bearings with this holiest of Jewish holy days.
Read moreA Naturalistic Pagan Casts Their Harms on the Waters
Now that I’m no longer Christian or a daughter, I feel pulled to reconnect with that erased part of my ancestry. I have -0% interest in converting, but I’m slowly and cautiously integrating small bits of practice and culture when I feel I can do so in ways that respect both Judaism and my own beliefs and values.
Read moreMníšošethąka Headwaters Pilgrimage
Some small, quiet part of me called it a pilgrimage from the beginning. But only in the last month or so of planning did that part step forward so I could start calling it a pilgrimage for real,2 rather than “a trip” or “I guess it’s sort of like a pilgrimage, maybe?”
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