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The Dimming Sabbath, 2022
After much struggle to find a worthy name for this cross-quarter holiday, I have borrowed a suggestion from a member of the Atheopagan Facebook group and gone with Dimming, with its corresponding Brightening in February. “Dimming” says what this holiday is: yes, it’s summer, but the days aren’t so long now. Where I live, a long, wan late summer will persist well past Harvest (the autumnal equinox), though if we’re lucky we will get a rain storm in September or so. Dimming is filled with meanings, both traditional and in my personal Atheopagan observances. It is the time of the first harvest festival, typically associated with harvests of grain and…
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You Can Receive the Monthly Atheopagan Voice!
Formerly only emailed to registered Atheopagan clerics, the Atheopagan Voice newsletter contains resources, seasonal craft projects, recipes and other useful stuff for Atheopagan practitioners. Now you can receive it too! Just go to the website, and sign up with your email address in the field in the sidebar. Your email will not be shared with anyone, and you will only receive the Voice and (rarely) event announcements.
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Please Support My Work
Hey, folks, this is an appeal for you to join my Patreon. Patreon support is critically important to me right now and is helping to keep Nemea and me afloat while I write the next Atheopaganism book. I treasure my Patrons and recognize all of them (except the ones who wish to be anonymous) here on the website. If you can, please consider a $5, $10, $25 or more pledge per month at the link below. I deeply appreciate the community’s support. Much love to all of you! Mark Patreon.com/atheopaganism
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An Exciting Announcement!
I am pleased to report that Llewellyn Worldwide has contracted to publish my next book, ROUND WE DANCE: Joyous Living Around the Year and Throughout Life. This is an Atheopagan book about incorporating rituals into your life, and will go into specific seasonal themes, rites of passage and personal rituals, with ritual outlines and techniques and associated craft projects and recipes. I’m excited! I am busily working on this volume while looking for my next full-time job. I “go to work” at my desk every morning, take a break for lunch and return to writing until 5:00 in the afternoon. I haven’t ever been this disciplined about writing before, but…
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Atheopaganism, Cultural Appropriation and Creating New Culture
Atheopaganism as I initially described it in my essay and book was intended to create new culture: a modern Earth-revering Paganism. Rather than drawing on existing cultures or ancient ones, the oldest element directly incorporated into Atheopaganism is the “Wheel of the Year”, which has global and ancient roots for some of the holidays (like the winter solstice), but was set forth as a package in the mid-20th century by an Englishman. No cultural appropriation there. This was deliberate. I wanted to avoid the wholesale cultural appropriation of indigenous cultures from Africa, Southern Asia and the Americas that I have seen in Pagan and New Age spaces and practices. Rather,…
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A Reminder
These are hard times. We have a global climate crisis, a global health crisis, rising authoritarianism and cruelty. Simply reading the daily news can be a real challenge to our mental health and well being. All of this is true. You struggle with it. I struggle with it. And yet: look out the window. Above, the short-wavelength light scatters through the atmosphere to create a blue vault dancing with white, ever-changing clouds, bringing the rain that is life. Below, the green things, breathing our waste carbon and turning the light of the Sacred Sun into the sugar that will feed, eventually, nearly everything on Earth. Flitting birds: adventurers across thousands…
