Happy Solstice!
Season of the Dark Mothers
It’s been a rough year for many in my personal circles, and it’s been a rough year for our larger communities. Some of my friends have struggled with illness, some with loss, some with financial strain. White nationalists have marched openly in our nation’s streets, and an ill, ignorant, unrepentant bully sits supreme in the… Continue reading Season of the Dark Mothers →
Yule Offering #3: Love
My final wish for you all this Yule season is that you be surrounded with love. We are social apes, we humans, and loneliness is a terrible burden to us. Here at the dark and cold time of year, we can feel even more isolated, even more as though we must face life’s trials on … Continue reading Yule Offering #3: Love
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Yule Offering #2: Courage
My second hope for you at Yule is that you engage the season with bravery. This is the time when we stand up to darkness and cold and the prospect of much more of it, and we do so with a combination of brazen silliness and real strength: the kind of strength it takes to … Continue reading Yule Offering #2: Courage
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Yule Offering #1: Stillness
Here’s my first hope for you at (what I consider) the New Year: the Winter Solstice, or Yule. That after the holiday frenzy of Silly Season, after the parties and dinners and rituals, there comes a moment when you can just stop. And be still. And feel within you the glow of all your life’s wealth: … Continue reading Yule Offering #1: Stillness
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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”.
The Fairies Have Left the Building: Enchantment is an Experience, Not a Belief
What is needed is not belief, not fantasies and wishful thinking, but but practices which get us out of our heads and away from fantasies and wishful thinking. What is needed is not belief in an otherworld populated by fairies and dragons, but practices reveal to us where we actually are and the holiness of this place we call earth.
What a Fossil can Teach us, by Kansas Stanton
If we continue with our harmful habits and routines that maintain the current path toward global warming, then we will become another fossilized tree stump. But if we can learn from the history of what this can do, and stop our mistakes from continuing, then we will someday look back at this and be grateful to have the chance to camp in old-growth forests again.
What Shall We Give for Yule?
For those of us who care about our Earth, this season presents a conundrum: How do we navigate this most commercial and consumeristic of seasons and remain true to our values? Well, here are some thoughts. I hope they help. First of all, the tree. Buy a real one. Artificial trees create three times the … Continue reading What Shall We Give for Yule?
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The Yule Log—A Winter Solstice Ritual
This year, the longest night of the year—Winter Solstice, or Yule—takes place on Thursday, December 21st. On the night of the Winter Solstice, an old tradition that we have adapted for Atheopagan purposes is the burning of the Yule log. Yule marks the moment in the year when the sun’s steady decline, with days growing shorter … Continue reading The Yule Log—A Winter Solstice Ritual
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