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Ten Favorite Posts from 2019
As we wrap the arbitrarily-defined year up tonight, I thought I’d go back through my posts of this year and pick some favorites. Your mileage may vary! Abuse, the Pagan Community and Our Commitments Burgeoning Toward a Culture of Happiness Authenticity There is No Resurrection Towards a Spirituality of Responsibility Atheopagan Practice and Mental Illness The Book is Here! Hour-Long Radio Interview on Atheopaganism Things End Old Ways, New Days As 2019 winds down, I wish you a happy and prosperous 2020! I’m excited at the prospect of a new year of creativity and adventure, and excited/fearful for the 2020 US Presidential elections, which will determine whether or not we…
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Old Ways, New Days
It is midnight on the 29th of December. I have just returned from the Sebastopol Wassail, which is conducted annually by the Apple Tree Morris dancing team in my local area. Wassailing is an old English tradition. Poor people going from house to house begging became conflated with people going from tree to tree in the apple orchards, making offerings in the deep winter in the hopes of bountiful harvests in the coming year. There are many songs, many dances, many traditions. And we hope you prove kind with your cakes and strong ale Or we’ll come no more nigh you until the next year Tonight, I sang the songs,…
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Show Your Pride! Atheopagan Pendants and Products
We now have several sources for Atheopagan products. Here’s how you can buy them! First, there is The Atheopagan Store at Zazzle, where mugs, bumper stickers, Winter Solstice cards and t-shirts can be purchased, as well as collar pins and ritual stoles for when you need that clerical look. Prices on these products are nearly at cost, and all proceeds go to the Atheopagan chosen charity for the year. For laser-cut wooden suntree pendants, Yule ornaments and Focus symbols, visit Akashazamora.com. Beautiful work at very affordable prices! Next, there are splendid bronze and pewter suntree pendants at Meuleurgy on Etsy! Also very reasonably priced. Finally, if you have access to…
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Happy Solstice!
A very joyous Longest Night (or Longest Day, in the Southern Hemisphere) to you! Here is a compendium of Yuletide traditions, projects and rituals you can use to inspire your own celebrations. Wolcum Yule!
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The Secrets, Pt. II: Ritual and Observance
I’ve been thinking more about the idea behind this post. Had a good comment exchange with Yvonne Aburrow about the concept of a day when we can share our deepest and most shameful secrets. She agrees that it could be really beneficial for many; an opportunity for the kind of “absolution” that Catholics, for example, seem to get out of confession. Now, I think of guilt as the most useless of emotions except possibly envy. It doesn’t make us better people; it just gnaws at us long after we have learned the lesson of whatever we did to disappoint ourselves. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, but we…
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The Secrets
What if we could speak the unspeakable, shameful secrets, just for one day? What if we could say, I have come to hate my child, or I make my money illegally, or I like rough sex, or I am impotent or I am using heroin or I am a compulsive shoplifter or once, I hit my partner? What would it be like if we could bare ourselves to one another, just for that one day? If that One Thing that inspires a cascade of shame could be spoken to another, without being judged? If we, as a society, had a culture of radical honesty on one particular day? I have…
