Ritual
- Principles, Practice, Techniques, Holidays, 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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Self-Initiation Rituals
Sometimes you know you have crossed–or are about to cross–a threshold. You are moving from one chapter in your life to another, or changing your status in some way. Perhaps it’s attainment of a professional license, or moving to another location. Perhaps it’s taking on a new role that you take very seriously as a part of your identity. Such a moment may be a time for a very special rite of passage: an initiation. And particularly, you may need to do that initiation alone, so this post is focused specifically on how to create such a ritual for yourself*. I did such an initiation for myself many years ago.…
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Meeting the Meat: An Animal Initiation
We are reasoning Pagans. We revere the Earth and Cosmos without gilding the lily with the supernatural. We are poets and singers, dancers and artists. We paint the sky with our pigments, our tones, our voices, the products of our loving hands. And under all that, all that lovely amazing late-evolution neocortical creativity and executive function, there is The Animal. The Animal that, frankly, kind of scares us. It’s sweating and eating and breathing and excreting and lusting, and none of that is under our control. It’s as if our consciousness is surfing a powerful, turbulent wave of capricious, hungry, insistent flesh…except that the consciousness is the wave, too, not…
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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…
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GUEST POST: Atheopagan Testify! A Banishing Ritual
A guest post by Kaigi-Ron I needed to purge some major ugliness from my life, and command it to GET LOST, so I could move forward with my life. Banishing Ritual: For my banishment items, one was a stick figure of a particularly negative person. I embellished it with stink lines and 3 buzzing flies. Then X-d out her heart and face. And lastly, burnt her. So there, nyah. Did it work? YES!! I felt immediate relief afterword. And I was left with a feeling of greater command over my life, and a feeling of stronger security. I kicked those creeps outta here! So I hereby TESTIFY, AP clerics and…
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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…
