Atheology
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In Memoriam: Michael Dowd
After a life of convention-challenging thought and leadership, Michael Dowd has left us, quietly in his sleep last Saturday. There is a lot to say about Rev. Dowd. He was certainly a big thinker and he, with his wife Connie Barlow, was a pioneer in the framing of the very story of the Universe and evolution themselves as a grand spiritual narrative. He was also a “post-Doomer”, believing that climate change, ecological and civilizational collapse are inevitable and promoting a philosophical position that eschewed big-picture hope, but rather chose small acts of bettering the world immediately around us. I disagreed with him on this, and we had a couple of…
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Naturalistic Animism
“Animism” has meant a lot of things over time. It was a racist slur against indigenous people; it has been claimed by panpsychists (who believe everything has consciousness). Robin Wall Kimmerer describes in her brilliant book Braiding Sweetgrass that the core of the indigenous relationship to the natural world* is not about thinking rocks have souls or consciousness. It is about reciprocity: about approaching the creatures and features of the world as worthy of respect and deference rather than as inanimate materials which can be consumed at will. There have been discussions about this on the Atheopaganism Facebook group and I thought I would offer some thoughts of my own.…
- Holidays, Principles, Practice, Techniques, Liturgy, Rites of Passage, Ritual, Descriptions, Atheology
The Atheopaganism Book is Now Available As an Audiobook!
In the two weeks before I started my new job, I realized that I wasn’t going to have an extended run of days in which I could record an audiobook of ATHEOPAGANISM: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science–a long-planned project–for a long time, and it was the moment! So here it is! You can buy it from all the various outlets except Audible, because Amazon. Click here to purchase from Libro.fm, which donates to local independent bookstores!
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With the Fog, Summer has Returned
In many modern Pagan reckonings of the seasons, as well as in some places in the world like Ireland, the solstices and equinoxes do not mark the beginnings, but rather the peaks of each season. The “cross-quarters” in February, May, August and November are the seasonal beginnings. So May Day would be the beginning of summer, as it was reckoned in earlier times in Europe. This has always made sense to me; it is the only way to logically parse that the summer solstice is also traditionally called “Midsummer“, and the winter one “Midwinter”. But different people have different approaches, and that’s fine by me: adapting the Wheel of the…
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Shame, Guilt, Pride and Humility
Recently, I’ve had a number of opportunities to feel shame. They come to all of us. We do things or say things we wish we hadn’t, especially in anger but sometimes out of simple ignorance or carelessness. Like all of us, I have done and said my share of shameful things. Shame is not always harmful. It’s an emotion we feel that reminds us to learn from an experience, to make different choices going forward. But it is not useful if it becomes chronic, if it becomes a weight around your neck that you carry, day by day, throughout your life. Then, it has mutated into its toxic cousin, guilt.…
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Why Hexes Don’t Scare Me
As Pagans, we live in a vivid world full of wonders. For we naturalistic Pagans, those wonders have names like photosynthesis and aurora borealis and cumulonimbus and flamingo. We pay attention to the world around us, and learn about its extraordinary creatures, phenomena and history. Science and reason are our toolbox for discovery of the endless glories of the Earth and the Universe. For many in the broader Pagan community, however, living in an “enchanted world” means believing in a lot of stuff that doesn’t really pencil out when scientifically tested: omens, pseudosciences, instrumental magic, communication with deities and spirits, fairies and so forth. These things are believed out of…
