Atheology
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Between Worlds
It’s a thing many Pagans say: “We are between the worlds”. It signifies that within the contained context of ceremonial ritual, we are apart from the mundane—that we are somehow outside of the natural world, and suspended in a space wherein all is possible. Where magic can happen. It isn’t something I say. I know that whether or not I have drawn the circle or otherwise created the felt sense of a container of sacred ritual space, I am still in the natural world, which is the only world there is. Many things are possible there, but not all. We are constrained by physics, by the nature of sacred Reality.…
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Why Ritual?
For atheists new to the “pagan” part of Atheopaganism, the frequent question to crop up is: what’s up with these rituals? Why do you do those? And to speak to the rational parts of their minds which are commonly what they most rely on, I answer that ritual enables us to enter the Ritual State (limbic/”trance” brain state, also known to artists as “flow”). It’s pleasurable. It adds depth and meaning to life. But there is more than that. In marking the passage of the seasons, in conducting rituals to recognize, transform and heal our personal woundedness, we gain new hope and motivation towards our goals, and express deep intentions for…
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Living in Dark Days
One thing most Pagan theists have that Atheopagans do not is a belief that their gods care about Earthly matters. Necessarily, this means that gods are trying to achieve their goals through the unfolding of history. Theists try to divine the will of their gods and behave in accordance with it. They tell themselves that what they care about and their hopes for the future of humanity have Larger Forces helping them to manifest. For Atheopagans, change is inevitable, but it is not necessarily positive change. It conforms to the will of no conscious being. It is simply the unfolding of the Universe, and if it involves the actions of humankind,…
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It’s On Us Now
As an Atheopagan, I have Principles. They are a set of values about what is Sacred and how we should conduct ourselves in the world. Those values are about to be severely challenged as the far-right government of Donald Trump threatens the world with environmental, economic and military cataclysm and gives tacit permission to racists, sexists and homophobes to assault, threaten and intimidate people of color, LGBTQ people, religious minorities and women. The last is happening already with disturbing frequency. Those of us with a naturalistic worldview already understood that our world is under deep threat. We knew that creating a better future wasn’t going to be easy. It just didn’t seem…
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A No-Bullshit Religion
A week or so ago, when I published “Is Atheopaganism Political?“, I expected some pushback. I suspected that there might be some who have embraced—even subconsciously—the dualistic idea that religion/spirituality lives in a separate realm of human experience from that of pragmatic matters such as public policy. So I thought there might be some commentary along the lines of “well, that’s okay for you, but I don’t concern myself with such things.” Or some such. I doubted you, friends, and I should not have. There was no such response. Feedback was nothing but positive. And this tells me that the Atheopagan group and the readers of the blog get it: that our pursuit of…
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Audio: The Guardian Trees
Another in my series of Sonoma Stories: mythology for a sacred landscape of meaning. Text version here.
