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Beginnings
Ask around in Pagan circles, and you’ll get disagreement about when the year actually begins. Some say at Hallows (Samhain): the new year is birthed at the very moment of the death of the old. Some say Yule, with the rebirth of the “baby Sun”. And some—not many, but some—go with the calendar year, January 1. I fall in the second camp. To me, the period between Death at Hallows and Birth at Yule is the time of decomposition and recomposition, of decay, uptake into existing life, and spinoff through pregnancy or seed production into new individuals. I wrote about this recently. We have come to the time of year…
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Yule: the Big Picture
Yule is of course a joyous time for celebrating love and family and the return of the Sacred Sun. But it also marks the end of the cycle of the year and the beginning of a new, and it is this I’d like to address today. I often talk about the “arc” of the year instead of the Wheel of the Year, because in my conceptualization of how a human life maps metaphorically onto the year’s cycle, there is an important segment–the period between Hallows and Yule–which we never experience at all, because they are the time of Decomposition and Recomposition. They are what happens after we die, and before…
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Rituals in Quarantine
So, there’s this pandemic. And it’s going crazy in a second wave. There’s plenty to say about failure of leadership and idiots who won’t wear masks because Freedumb and the whole sad story of this year, but it’s already been said elsewhere and it’s not the focus of this post. No, this post is about how we can use video conferencing platforms to conduct group rituals, easing the personal impact of sheltering in place from the pandemic on the near-universally beloved celebrations of the solstice holiday season. Yes, many of us are Zoom-burnt. We’re having to do our work, maintain our relationships and so much more through the virtual window…
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Holy Days
OK, to start with let me just say: they’re all holy. Every unique, magnificent, rare and extraordinary day of your life, whether you sleepwalk through it or not, is a holy day. Because there are only so many of them, and then you are gone forever. So try to keep it in mind: every day is a holy day. But a special day, what we usually call a holiday–a Sabbath–whether invented or traditional, is a moment when we step out of routine into ritual: whether it’s convening a meal with loved ones at Harvest or erecting a decorated evergreen at Yule or lighting candles for Hanukkah. We have now entered…
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Meet the Atheopagan Society Council!
This year, terrible as it has been in so many ways, has seen Atheopaganism evolve to a new level. We have created a legal entity which can carry on the work of the path beyond the life span of any individual: The Atheopagan Society. This nonprofit corporation is as remarkable for what it isn’t as for what it is. It isn’t a membership organization: no one is going to make you pay just to be an Atheopagan. Instead, it is simply an organization designed to create resources, provide education and training, and organize support for Atheopagans and for the promulgation of Atheopagan values in the world. The Atheopagan Society has…
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Soil and Sky; Love and Joy
There are those who try to hijack Paganism in the name of their bigotry and their hatred: who crow “blood and soil!” as if that means something. As if it is anything more than an adolescent boy’s angry braying. Like most big lies, the “blood and soil” of neo-Nazis–some of whom describe themselves as “folkish” Pagans or heathens– contains a tiny kernel of truth buried in its pile of garbage. Because there is nothing wrong with a sense of allegiance to land and to family. The problem is in how right-wing haters narrowly define land and family: they value only this land where “we” came from…and “our people” is only…
