Community
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Soil and Sky; Love and Joy
There are those who try to hijack Paganism in the name of their bigotry and their hatred: who crow “blood and soil!” as if that means something. As if it is anything more than an adolescent boy’s angry braying. Like most big lies, the “blood and soil” of neo-Nazis–some of whom describe themselves as “folkish” Pagans or heathens– contains a tiny kernel of truth buried in its pile of garbage. Because there is nothing wrong with a sense of allegiance to land and to family. The problem is in how right-wing haters narrowly define land and family: they value only this land where “we” came from…and “our people” is only…
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A Mood
I have been thinking… No. I have been feeling about this community of people, the nontheist Pagan community. I have been feeling because sometimes such appreciation, such gratitude wells up in me to be with you all. So a wrote a thing. THIS Community We’re having none of the bullshit, thank you. We’ve seen the paths of the lost and confused, and chosen. We aspire: To lofty goals and a kinder world, To sense, sensibility, sensuousness, sexiness, Self-made-Sacred: Sifted Through the fine grate of experience, cultivating it, the joy. And to be better. We’re having all of the work, thank you, Because we are stained. None has escaped The gray…
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Presenting the Atheopagan cleric Introductory Guidebook!
This guidance resource for Atheopagan clerics includes information on legal rights and responsibilities, pastoral counseling (and what it isn’t), conducting weddings, working with the dying and grieving and conducting funerary rites, and other rites of passage. Check it out! Click here to download!
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Intermediaries
When I think about Paganism, the first thing that comes to my mind is reverence for Nature–for the physical Earth. For Life, here and now. And I think that’s true of a lot of theistic Pagans, too. For Pagans–theists and Atheopagans alike–direct access to the Sacred* is a core aspect of our spiritual experience. We need no intermediaries–unlike, say, the Abrahamic monotheisms, where the sacred rites must be performed by a trained man (usually) who serves as an intercessionary between their god and ordinary humans. In Paganism, on the other hand, subjective personal “gnosis” is often presented by theists as evidence of their gods’ reality. It seems to me that…
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Here Come the Atheopagans!
When I first wrote an essay outlining the rationale, Principles and practices of Atheopaganism, I did it for myself, to sort out my thinking and decidedly mixed experience of the Pagan community. That was in 2008-2009. After it was done and I was settling into my new practice and approach, a handful of people I talked with about it expressed curiosity about it, so I threw the essay up on Scribd. It wasn’t long after that people started coming to me at gatherings and conferences and expressing like-mindedness, and Atheopaganism as a movement was born. As the founder, I was naturally the central figure in creating materials, resources, analysis and…
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So, um…Wanna Get Ordained?
Today, I learned something amazing: In the U.S., if your religious organization’s income is ordinarily expected to be $5,000 per year or less, YOU DON’T HAVE TO FILE FOR TAX EXEMPT STATUS! What this means is that The Atheopagan Society is ALREADY a tax-exempt nonprofit. We have some steps we have to take, like formally convening the Society Council and filing some documents with the state, but we don’t have to mess with convincing IRS that we are a “real” religion until we have much higher income than is projected to be needed for the first year or two, at least. And so–like any religious nonprofit, anywhere–we can ordain people.…
