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Talking Paganism in the Mainstream
Ross Douthat, conservative columnist for the New York Times, has stirred some Pagan feathers with a column arguing that rather than becoming fully secular, the US may be moving away from a transcendentalist religiosity (such as that of Christianity and Judaism) and towards “paganism”, which he describes as a religion of “this world” as opposed to one focused on some other world or afterlife. He followed up with this piece, further expanding on these ideas and suggesting that the “civic religion” of the United States may be moving away from Christianity and its paradigms. Douthat is clearly unenthused at the prospect that his theory is correct, but I think he…
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A Community Project: Choosing a Charitable Cause for Atheopagan Support
Atheopaganism isn’t just for its practitioners. As noted in Atheopagan Principle 8, we understand our responsibility to our societies and to future generations. Accordingly, I thought it would be a good thing for all of us, as a community, to identify a charitable cause to support in 2019. I would advertise for contributions to the selected agency on the website, and we could take a collection for the agency at Atheopagan events. The process I have in mind for this selection is as follows: Identify criteria for the agency we will choose Nominate agencies that meet the criteria Vote to select the agency we want to support So let’s talk about the…
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The State of the Path: Atheopaganism in 2019
Atheopaganism is a particular spiritual/religious path: a subset of both Paganism and atheism. There are other atheistic Pagan paths, so ours isn’t the only one, but our particular path has now existed for ten years and has been steadily growing for five. I thought that for my first post of 2019, I would talk a bit about the current state of the Atheopagan path, and where I think we’re going. The primary theme I can see trending within the Atheopagan path is growth. We are growing in numbers, in visibility, and in recognition. Both in followers of the website and in membership of the AP Facebook group, we continue steadily to add…
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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…
