Ritual tools are personal things. They are objects that we find evocative, meaningful, symbolic. They whisper stories to us, and those stories are folded into the meaning of the rituals which we perform with them. Atheopagans vary widely in the kinds of ritual tools they use, including those who don’t…
There’s been some discussion of the concept of “sin” in the Pagan blogosphere lately: here, and here, and my own contribution some time ago, here. Now, I should say: that’s a freighted word for many people, but not so much for…
This post is an apology. It has now been more than two years since I waded into the broader online Pagan conversation on behalf first of myself, and then of what has turned out to be the many Pagans who do not believe in literal gods. In those early days,…
Honestly, it’s the most heartwarming thing. Because I know the feeling so well: the feeling that I’m the only one, that there must be something wrong with it. That I must have missed something. When I first discovered Paganism in the mid-1980s, an opening in my heart signalled that I…
These days are hard. Not just the Orlando massacre. Not just the awful depths to which our political dialogue have descended. Not just the prospect of a preening narcissist with complete inability to control his impulses as a potential President of the most powerful nation on Earth. There is the dying of…
What does the Moon mean to an Atheopagan? Well, to this one, at least, the Moon is the bringer of “magic light”. Low light conditions tend to damp down the activity of the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, enhancing the role of the limbic system in consciousness. In moonlight, we…
