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Reciprocity vs. the Overculture
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Overculture lately: how the dominant values and paradigms of our societies inform how we think, how we speak, and what we do. For a discussion of all that, I invite you to listen to this week’s episode of THE WONDER podcast. That will give you a good sense of what I’m talking about. It was a great conversation with Yucca. The Overculture is tricky to talk about because it is the water within which we fish swim: it’s everywhere, and to talk about other ways of living seems alien and farfetched. But we know they exist: we did not always live in a…
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My Top Ten from 2021
The year is drawing down, and it’s time to take a look back at what we’ve published and pick some favorites! Here, in no particular order, are my favorite ten blog posts of 2021. If you have a favorite that isn’t on the list, please comment below! You Have Permission to be Witchy When Life is Hard Riffs on a Meme: Enchanting the Mundane Playing with the Senses During Ritual (Guest Post) Deep Paganism The Deep Secret of Emergent Complexity Why Paganism hasn’t Failed…Yet Doing the Work The Sacred Rite of Composting Imagining Ancestors I invite you to revisit these, or, if you missed them the first time, to take…
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Approaching Sixty
A month from today, I will reach 60 years of age. I can’t believe it, honestly. I still feel 35. Where has all that time gone? Now, I’m aware that I can’t look at this dispassionately. A combination of the American cult of youth and the very real fact of impending mortality makes this a milestone I can’t ignore. And it is true: my body does not have the capacities it once did. I am no longer the man who scampered into the Sierra Nevada high country for solo backpacking trips every summer in his late 20s. Or even the one who paddled the Grand Canyon in his 30s. Aging…
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If You Give Gifts at this Time of Year…
Why not consider some of the great suggestions Jon Cleland Host has over at Naturalistic Paganism? Remember, too, that we are coming to the end of 2021, when our Atheopagan Chosen Charity has been BLACK LIVES MATTER. All proceeds from the Atheopagan Zazzle store will go to BLM through December 31. So head over there and see if there is something you’d like to gift, or for yourself! Like, say, our famous Axial Tilt Winter Solstice Cards…which are currently 50% off!
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You Have Permission to be Witchy
All of us in the nontheist/SASS*/Atheopagan sphere start out having to contend with that pesky internal Critic Voice that says, as we begin to move out of our ordinary mental states and towards creating or participating in ritual, “THIS IS STUPID. YOU’RE MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF.” For we are practical, rational folk, yes? We sift the world for evidence to make our determinations. So actions for no concretely definable reason become questionable at best. Ergo, the Voice. Yes, that voice speaks JUST LIKE THE CHARACTER DEATH in the late lamented Sir Terry Pratchett’s novels, with as much authority and gravitas and certainty. The difference between Death and your inner…
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The Sacred Rite of Composting
Before we slide into the joyous, let-us-eat-now-for-tomorrow-we-freeze holidays of December, let us take one final, sincere look at the time of Hallows and the meaning of this season. This post relates to a previous piece, Death, the Creator. Go ahead, read that first. In my Wheel of the Year, the period between Hallows, the Sabbath of Death, and Yule, the annual “birth” of the Sun, is the time of composting and recomposition: metaphorically, it is when I recognize that after death, my body will be disassembled through the process of decomposition, and its component molecules will return to cycling through the vast and wonderful apparatus of Life. It is the…
