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LORE DAY: A New Holiday for the Hallows Season
So, six months from now—in the Northern Hemisphere, mind—there is a two-day traditional holiday comprised of Walpurisnacht on April 30, followed by May Day. The former is a sort of mini-Hallows: ghosts and scary Visitations. Then May Day itself is joy and lusty celebration. Why isn’t this end of the year like that? Why don’t we have a happy joyous day followed by a solemn spooky day? I propose we remedy this situation! Halloween is what it is: it is jolly death-fun with skulls and bones and blood and dress-up. Candy for kids, parties for adults. A denatured, but still potent Festival of Death. Hallows comes at the actual midpoint…
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At the Mercy of the Elements
So here it is again: evacuation in the face of wind-driven wildfires. Second time in two years. Climate change is real, y’all. More severe winds, higher temperatures leading to lower humidity: boom. Fire. It disturbs me how little the subject comes up as the whole community freaks out over the fires. This is not a random event. Once? Maybe. It happened in 1964, and again in 2017. But two years later. Again? After continuously record-breaking temperatures, month after month, year after year, this is not a random event. It’s an inevitable event. I’m sitting at friends’ house, glad to have a place to retreat to. We even still have power,…
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With Both Hands in Grave Dirt
‘Tis the season for we Pagany/witchy types. There is an entire aesthetic we—or most of us, anyway—enjoy that has a brief moment in the waning sun each year, and this is it. Now, as Atheopagans, we don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or Dark God/desses. But that doesn’t matter: there is plenty of rich fodder for ritual, for reflection, and for psychological transformation at this time of year. We’ve all been hurt. We’ve all suffered loss. And we have only to look out to the world around us to find ample and overflowing reason for rage, for sorrow and for lament. Bones, skulls, graves and funerary ceremonies are powerful images…
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Things End
I’m in an odd space right now. On the one hand, excitement about The Book and the newness of all the Author Stuff like promoting it, doing interviews, etc. is really thrilling. But on the other, beloved things are coming to an end, and I’m sad about that. Pantheacon, which has been the largest gathering of Pagans in North America, has announced that 2020 will be its last year. The owner of the event is retiring and no one else has been willing to take it over. Now, I’m skeptical that this will come to pass. There is enough of a population of people who love the event—and enough money…
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Hour-Long Radio Interview on Atheopaganism
I was interviewed about the new book on my local public radio station. Listen to this! https://media.krcb.org/podcast/mouthful/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/mful_20191006.mp3
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Out
As of tonight, I am out. I acknowledged the publication of my book and publicized a radio interview coming up on Sunday to my entire friends list on Facebook, which includes professional and political associates. For my entire career, I have kept my religious life out of my professional life. It doesn’t belong there, and the last thing I would want to do is to make anyone uncomfortable. But now I’ve written the book, and I’m about to do an interview that could be heard by thousands of local residents, and honestly? I just don’t care any longer. I’m out of the Atheopagan closet. Now, I live in a progressive,…
