In the Northern Hemisphere, January is often cited as the most challenging month of the year. Gone are the festivities of December; now it’s just cold, dark winter, with the sole charge of the month seeming to be to get through it. It’s easy to find January a bit demoralizing.
Recently, I attended the Bay Area Solstice, a ritual celebration of the winter solstice which springs from the rational/skeptic community. Raymond Arnold, who first organized such a solstice event in New York, from which they have spread, has crafted a passage through time in which the darkness is…
It begins where the smoke hits your eyes: smouldering peat, Mutton stew on a broad iron hook, Deep snow. How can it ever have been summer? Apples wrinkling and mice in the barley— With so much to fear, thank the gods for company! We’ll tell our…
Originally published at Humanistic Paganism. November and December certainly don’t lack for observances and holiday celebrations. In the temperate zone of the planet, pretty much every culture has had some way of celebrating the winter solstice, and the accumulation of many of those traditions lives with us today…
It’s a pretty complicated topic. Let’s face it: for someone just becoming exposed to the idea of “rational religion”, there is a lot of territory to cover: the idea that religion doesn’t have to involve gods or the supernatural; the idea of Paganism itself, which is not exactly mainstream, even…
So, I read this. Go ahead, you should, too. And though this piece contains much terminology that evokes Neopagan superstition (“the Old Ways”, gods, etc.), it raises the question for me of whether there is something inherent in humanity that can be characterized as a stain we carry from birth:…
