I’ve written a lot about this time of year, this holiday, which I call Hallows.
I’ve been celebrating it for decades. And every year at this time, I think about mortality, the cycle of death/decomposition/recomposition, ancestors, memory. The past, the inevitable future. The Big Picture.
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I am the first to cop to it: I am a rather disputatious person.
I was a debater in high school and college. Fanatical about it, actually: the theory, the logic (and fallacies), the strategy and tactics, endless hours researching evidence and writing briefs in the days long before the Internet...
You know that feeling when your heart soars at a sunset or a moonrise, or a mountain panorama or the ocean? That I-am-so-blessed/so-grateful/so-privileged-to-be living-this-life feeling, where for one brilliant moment it all makes sense and there is a logic and a system to the world and though w...
I know you’re struggling.
I know that even if your basic needs are met, the state of the world is crying inside you.
And if they’re not, I know you’re afraid and exhausted, numbed, perhaps unable even to contemplate the future because the now is taking up every last bit of energy and atten...
Fire circle rituals. Punk rock mosh pits. Raves. Ordeal rites. BDSM practices.
And drugs, of course.
State of consciousness is a function of brain operation, mostly through the varying levels of several key neurotransmitters (examples being the mood-regulating and executive-functioning neu...
A mendicant is a beggar: a poor person who importunes others for money or other material support. In Pagandom, we remember many holiday traditions rooted in mendicant practices. This post is about the special wonders of traditions involving house-to-house beggary, and the deeper meanings associa...