Practice
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GUEST POST: An easy, one-minute daily Atheopagan micro-practice
If you’re unsure where to start with ritual or looking for something new to add to your daily practice, consider trying the 13 o’clock mindful moment. By Michael H. In Ireland, the first thing you notice about the 6 o’clock news on public television is that it is not the 6 o’clock news. It’s the “Six One News.” This is because it starts at one minute past six. Those first sixty seconds are dedicated to the Angelus, a Catholic devotional prayer and the longest-running TV show in Irish history… even if it jumped the shark many years ago. Since the beginning of Irish TV, a static religious image would appear…
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A Brightening Ritual
It’s the February Sabbath! Midpoint between the winter solstice (Yule or Midwinter) and the spring equinox (which I call High Spring), it is the time when the light is noticeably returning after the deep darkness of winter, and the hope of spring is growing. It can thus be called Brightening, anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Where I live, it’s the time when it rains constantly, and so I have named this Sabbath, for my own purposes, Riverain, the Festival of Water. This is a concept for a Brightening/Riverain ritual I came up with this year. We did an adapted version of it in the Atheopagan Saturday Zoom Mixer today. The…
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A Happy Solstice to You!
The Shortest Day has arrived (in the Northern Hemisphere–Longest in the Southern)! It’s a day viewed with awe and relief by ancestors throughout the world, marking the beginning of the Sacred Sun’s long arc of return to strength. I just want to wish you warm, meaningful and joyous celebrations of this time of year, however you may observe them, and thanks for being a part of the Atheopagan community. Wolcum Yule!
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Sabbath Drop
So, the first week in November was Hallows. The whole week. I wrote about this before: the fun/gross/sexy/creepy launch of Halloween, the days between with their various observances, and then actual Hallows/Samhain, the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, on Nov. 7 or so. It’s a whole week of fun, introspection, contemplation of mortality, and goth goodness. We Pagans love our Festival of Darkness and Death. It’s a/the high point of the wheel of the year. I got to see and circle with two groups of friends, which, frankly…well, are any of us getting face-to-face time with friends much any more? But it’s over now, and I’m…
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Deep in Hallows
We’re deep in the season of Hallows now. Halloween is a memory; the true midpoint between the equinox and solstice still some days ahead, on the 7th. By then, the clocks will have turned back, and darkness will descend quite suddenly on the evenings. This week always feels liminal to me, a between-time very like the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day: the world holds its breath, and everything is laden with meaning. I’ve been doing my rituals. Took my annual walk in the cemetery on Halloween; gathered a spring of yew that will dry on my Underworld Focus for the next year and then be used to light…
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October
In the arc of the Pagan wheel of the year, October is the time leading up to Samhain or Hallows (the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice). It is, of course, the time when we all go a little crazy with spooky décor and witchy aesthetic, leading up to Halloween night, although the actual midpoint is around Nov. 7. October is a time when we contemplate mortality and memory, remembering those who have died and our ancestors leading back into the mists of time. The skulls and bones and spider webs remind us that we are here only for a limited time, and will also one day…
