Atheology
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Exploring the Atheopagan Principles: Principle 7—Inclusiveness
This post is part of a series exploring the Atheopagan Principles proposed in my essay, “How I Became an Atheopagan.” To see the whole series, click on “Atheopagan Principles” in the tag cloud to the right. Principle 7 is inclusiveness. It reads, “I celebrate diversity and am respectful of difference.” Sounds simple, right? Don’t be a bigot, and you’re good. Not so fast, friend. From the time we are newborns, we learn to differentiate Our People from the Others. At first, it’s because they don’t sound the same, don’t smell the same…and then when our eyes begin to focus, it’s because Others don’t look the same as our parents and any other close…
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Reality, Language and the Inner World
As you may have gathered, I don’t believe gods are real. Thus, the “Atheo-” in Atheopagan. Recently, however, I had a long conversation on Facebook that turned into a discussion about what we mean when we say something is “real”. From that conversation, I have concluded that “real” is a nearly useless word unless it is heavily qualified…and that it would be helpful to have more narrowly-targeted terms than “real” when discussing experiences. In the past, when I have said something is “real”, I meant it has physical, material entity. It’s a thing or a process in the physical Universe. By that standard, there is no compelling evidence that disembodied, interpersonally communicative intelligences such as god,…
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Exploring the Atheopagan Principles: Principle 6 —Praxis
This is the 6th in a series exploring the 13 Atheopagan Principles I proposed in my essay, “How I Became an Atheopagan.” To read the series, click on “Atheopagan Principles” in the tag cloud to the right. Principle 6 states, “I enact regular ritual in observance of my religion.” While cosmology and values embraced are certainly important, the 6th Principle reminds us that religion is something one DOES. To be religious is to carry out religious activities: to contemplate lessons, to celebrate the beauty of the Cosmos, to ceremonially observe holy days and life passages, to create art and other works reflective of an Atheopagan worldview. Principle 6 reminds us that Atheopaganism isn’t just…
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An Atheopagan Life: Celebrating Riverain, and Adapting the Wheel of the Year
Originally posted at HumanisticPaganism.com The eight holidays of the modern Pagan “wheel of the year” present an annual cycle of Sabbaths tracing seasonal changes, agricultural cycles, and metaphors of the cycle of life. For an Atheopagan, it’s not a bad point to start from, rooted as it is in astronomical fact (the holy days are the solstices and equinoxes, and the midpoints between them) and the reality of seasonal change in parts of the world which have a European climate cycle. And while there is a large body of mythology in the Pagan traditions which ties these seasonal changes to stories about gods, the gods aren’t really necessary for the cycle…
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The Atheopagan Principles Explored: Principle 5: Humor and Perspective
This is the fifth in a series of pieces exploring the 13 Atheopagan Principles. To see the rest of them, click on “Atheopagan Principles” in the tag cloud on the right. “I laugh a lot…including at myself.” So reads the Fifth Atheopagan Principle, and I think it is one of the most important of them. For, wonderful as it is, hard as it can be, one thing can be said unequivocally about this world: it is filled with absurdity. And that warrants many a good laugh. Laughter is a tonic so powerful that it gives us strength to carry on despite long odds and many disappointments. It cements good feeling among friends,…
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The God Mask – A Ritual Technique
We had a great conversation at our online video chat in the Facebook Atheopagan group today. Topics ranged, but one that stuck out for me was Glen Gordon’s discussion of his work to create a new lexicon for Pagan and ritual phenomena he feels aren’t well defined by existing words in English. As I’ve said elsewhere, although an atheist I spent many years circling in ritual with various elements of the Pagan community here in Northern California, viewing the invocation of gods and the conducting of “magic” as metaphorical, psychological processes to influence the minds of participants rather than as literal communications and physically effective influencers of events. Having now…
