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Closing the Door with Gratitude
2018 was rough for me. I was unemployed the whole time, begging and borrowing to stay under a roof. It was necessary, but it filled me with shame and embarrassment. I had a series of near-misses with job seeking, finishing second repeatedly. In one case, it seemed I was the top candidate, and then the employer decided against filling the position at all. In July, I was sitting at a stop light when a reckless driver veered around the corner and totaled my car. Two weeks later, I fell, broke and dislocated my left arm. It required surgery—and pins and screws and a metal plate— to repair. Unable to type,…
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Favorite Atheopaganism Posts of 2018
2018 was a hard year. But I did get some writing done. I published more than 100 posts to the Atheopagan website this year on a wide range of topics. In celebration of the New Year, here are thirteen of my favorites, in no particular order: Killing the Sixties: Abuse, Consent, #MeToo and the Pagan Community Unquestionably the most-linked and most-visited post of the year. Crunch Time: Pagan Priorities and the Otherworld If there is a supernatural Otherworld…does it matter? Approaching the Animal Self The beast within. No Gods. No Masters. No Priesthood. Is Pagan clergy a good idea? Producing Your Own Atheopagan Event Planning resources for event production. Walking Our Talk: Modeling a Vision…
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The New Ones
Much has been made in both the popular and Pagan press recently about the “witchcraft fad”. There is lots of witchy imagery in media and popular culture right now, including fashion, television, film and literature. Witchcraft, so they say, is having a moment. And not just in the media, but in reality: self-described witchcraft (which has at least some nexus with what we generally call Paganism) is enjoying a surge of interest. People—particularly Millennial and Generation Z women —are enthusiastically embracing not only a witchy/gothic aesthetic, but practices such as Tarot reading, creation of their own ritual “spells”, and in many cases, Earth-devotional or Goddess-oriented spirituality. The response of established…
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In the Cold Midwinter
Today, the Wheel turns again: a new year is born and the sun begins its long swing back to warm the northern hemisphere. It has been a challenging year for me. I have been unemployed the entire time, and survival has been a severe struggle. But one bright spot in my life has been Atheopaganism and the growth of our community. I wrote over a hundred posts to the website this year, on topics ranging from sigils and candle rituals to rites of passage to sexual ethics in the Pagan community. We had guest posts on various Atheopagans’ practices, and we selected a beautiful symbol for our tradition: the suntree.…
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Starting a Practice, Creating Rituals
For those who are starting out on an Atheopagan path—or any Pagan path—it can be bewildering to know how to start a practice. Fortunately, Atheopaganism is in many ways easier to “learn” than other Pagan paths, because there aren’t any procedural rules about how to do things, and you don’t have to have anyone else teach or “initiate” you to get started. You can and should craft your practice to fit you: to be consistent with the climate where you live, the symbols and meanings that matter to you. You don’t need to learn tables of correspondences or memorize invocations or learn the metaphorical associations of the four directions of the compass (though…
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Candle Rituals
One of the more characteristic “witches’ tools” used in rituals is the candle. There are many ways we can work with them to create psychologically powerful and effective rituals. Candles provide a “magical” atmosphere for many reasons. Low light conditions tend to provoke a spooky desire on the part of people to be quieter, possibly as a result of our roots as diurnal animals afraid of nocturnal predators. Flickering golden light provides a soft, hushed ambience that works perfectly on a Focus (or altar) and which is conducive to the brain’s Ritual State (aka trance, or “flow”). And after all, lighting candles is a rather “magical” act, in that it creates…
