Community
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Ten Favorite Posts from 2019
As we wrap the arbitrarily-defined year up tonight, I thought I’d go back through my posts of this year and pick some favorites. Your mileage may vary! Abuse, the Pagan Community and Our Commitments Burgeoning Toward a Culture of Happiness Authenticity There is No Resurrection Towards a Spirituality of Responsibility Atheopagan Practice and Mental Illness The Book is Here! Hour-Long Radio Interview on Atheopaganism Things End Old Ways, New Days As 2019 winds down, I wish you a happy and prosperous 2020! I’m excited at the prospect of a new year of creativity and adventure, and excited/fearful for the 2020 US Presidential elections, which will determine whether or not we…
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Show Your Pride! Atheopagan Pendants and Products
We now have several sources for Atheopagan products. Here’s how you can buy them! First, there is The Atheopagan Store at Zazzle, where mugs, bumper stickers, Winter Solstice cards and t-shirts can be purchased, as well as collar pins and ritual stoles for when you need that clerical look. Prices on these products are nearly at cost, and all proceeds go to the Atheopagan chosen charity for the year. For laser-cut wooden suntree pendants, Yule ornaments and Focus symbols, visit Akashazamora.com. Beautiful work at very affordable prices! Next, there are splendid bronze and pewter suntree pendants at Meuleurgy on Etsy! Also very reasonably priced. Finally, if you have access to…
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More on Community Transition
Recently, I wrote an optimistic piece about the evolution of the Pagan movement. Some insightful commenters were not so sanguine as I, and I’d like to address their contentions here. Their arguments fell into several general buckets: The Internet is not a substitute for in-person contact and relationships. Rigid ideologies and fundamentalism are tearing us apart, and newcomers seeing this will be alienated and flee. We cannot have kinship and a culture—and, therefore, a cultural impact—unless this divisiveness ends. Paganism has reached the end of a 40-year cycle common to spiritual movements and, having not gained much social traction, will now fade. People are leaving Paganism and “occult” practice, even…
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The Pagan Community in Transition
Once upon a time, there was a deeply oppressed minority whose very existence was illegal: the gay community. And though we* are far from winning the fight for full equality for LGBTQ folks, it is fair to say that much progress has been made, and the LGBTQ community has made transitions as a result. For one thing, it isn’t as necessarily committed to secrecy, to clandestine gathering in obscure locations like dive bars and bathhouses to avoid police and the general, critical public. I believe the Pagan community is arriving at a similar crossroads, and is changing as a result. Recently, two major announcements have discomforted the North American Pagan…
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The Point of Friction
Once upon a time in the mid-80s, few of the Pagans I knew ever even talked about what they believed. We just did rituals together and enjoyed one another’s company. Sure, there were shout-outs to various gods and goddesses in most of the rituals, but those were easily understood as metaphorical (as I did). When the subject of beliefs did come up, they were all over the map: there were those who believed in everything, from gods and magic and fairies to alien abductions and Atlantis…and then there were those like me who saw our rituals as meaningful but ultimately symbolic and metaphorical practices. And no one cared. We were…
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Hour-Long Radio Interview on Atheopaganism
I was interviewed about the new book on my local public radio station. Listen to this! https://media.krcb.org/podcast/mouthful/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/mful_20191006.mp3
