Atheopaganism is a religious path in a general sense, but it’s really a diverse set of individual paths that each of us crafts for ourselves, using pieces of my work or the work of other community members and our own creativity and spirituality.
That’s the way we want it! I hope your Atheopagan practice is exactly as you want it to be so it brings you the most meaning, wonder, joy and inspiration possible. You can hear about the diverse ideas, rituals and observances of some Atheopagans on our YouTubechanneland through the guest posts here and on the Wonder podcast; feel free to borrow anything that strikes your fancy as you build your own practice.
Having said all that, there are some commonalities we ask of those who join our communities, like endorsing the 13 Principles. That isn’t because we (or I) want to be dogmatic–it’s because if we all share a common ethical lexicon built around inclusion and kindness and other such compassionate values, we will get along well and create a safe environment for everyone, including the marginalized.
We’re rolling around to May Day season again, and I’m looking forward to dancing around a Maypole for the first time in several years, and I’m spending a lot of time minimally clothed with the soft spring air on my skin. I love this season and look forward to celebrating every year.
But I’ve been writing here about May Day and ways to celebrate it (both sexyand non-sexy) for nearly 10 yearly cycles now. I’ve pretty well tapped my ideas for the season’s rituals: I have my favorites and try to repeat them every year.
What I’m interested in at this point is: what do YOU think? What are your cool ideas for celebrating the Sabbath at the beginning of May?
Because this is the way we work in the Atheopagan community: we are a kind of collective think tank where we share our ritual and celebration ideas with one another and develop our individual practices using the elements that appeal to us.
So let’s hear it in the comments! What will you be doing to celebrate the May Day season this year?
Recently, I’ve had a number of opportunities to feel shame.
They come to all of us. We do things or say things we wish we hadn’t, especially in anger but sometimes out of simple ignorance or carelessness.
Like all of us, I have done and said my share of shameful things.
Shame is not always harmful. It’s an emotion we feel that reminds us to learn from an experience, to make different choices going forward. But it is not useful if it becomes chronic, if it becomes a weight around your neck that you carry, day by day, throughout your life. Then, it has mutated into its toxic cousin, guilt.
Shame can be dissipated with the humble understanding that we are all human, and all make mistakes. With the resolution to do better going forward. At that point, it is right and good to let shame go, and return to a sense of self esteem.
But guilt is truly poisonous. It gnaws at us, whispering not I did something wrong, but I am a bad person. It opens the door to the inner critic that wants us to be small and unhappy. Guilt is an utterly useless and cruel self-abuse. It does not contribute to growth. It just hangs around and creates misery.
The 4th Atheopagan Principle, Humility, is not about self-flagellation. It’s not about having poor self-esteem. Rather, it’s a caution against pomposity and putting on airs. It tells us that all of us are equal in value, including ourselves, and we should conduct ourselves accordingly.
We have every reason to be proud of ourselves. Each of us is a complex, unique and brilliant expression of the Universe. That is true no matter what we say or do, no matter how damaged we are. Truly evil people are rare, and if you’re reading this, you’re not one of them.
The opposite of humility is not pride; it is egotism and arrogance. Healthy self-esteem is an essential step in a growth path. And it bears saying that the Overculture encourages us to feel shame about things for which it is completely inappropriate, like about our bodies, our sexual desires, and our appearance.
Achieving healthy self-esteem can be very challenging. It certainly was for me. I had been told by my parents that I was evil and destructive, and thought that I was ugly and worthless. It took many years and a lot of work–including both ritual work and a lot of love received–before that changed. And a large part of that work was letting go of the enormous weight of guilt I was carrying, for actions both real and imagined.
So though the sick feeling of shame has visited me recently, I now understand that having something to be ashamed of doesn’t mean that I am Bad. It means I fucked up. I must make what amends I can and learn from the experience so as hopefully not to repeat it.
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 separate from it.
That fear isn’t an accident. Civilization has required that, in order to live in such dense populations, we damp down The Animal: that we be less violent, certainly, less physical, but also less embodied, less lively than we might otherwise have been. We suffer social punishment if we do not do this.
Other cultures throughout the world–including bygone European cultures–have had ways of celebrating and accommodating The Animal: rites of wildness and chaos. Bacchanalia. Dionysian rites. Feasts and orgies. Dressing up like Wild Men and Wild Women. Holidays in which power roles were reversed, like the Lord of Misrule at Yule, and The Animal was allowed to come out for awhile, before tucking safely back behind our civilizing cultural norms.
“Wild Men” of Central Europe
The “Lion-Man” of Hohlenstein-Stadel
I don’t know enough about cultures of other places to represent them here, but I know enough to say the theme of the Animal-informed person is widespread across the globe and across time. Thus, “spirit animals”, clan totems, the many animal mask/dance ritual traditions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania, and so forth. Indeed, the oldest humanoid figure known to survive is a lion-headed man carved of mammoth ivory and found in Germany, dating from 40,000 years ago.
We, however, inheritors of the Puritanism of the Protestant Reformation and its sour disapproval of pretty much everything except prayer, profit-making and obedience, do not live in such a culture. Even as capitalism works to stir our Animal hungers to try to sell us products, the palpable disapproval of those hungers lingers in our societies.
In today’s Pagandom, we realize what we have lost through the civilizing process… particularly when it comes to the rejection of bodily pleasure that so characterizes the miserable faiths of the Abrahamic line. We don’t look askance at wild dancing and thundering drums, at howling at the Moon. They feel good, the animal exhibitions of passion and celebration. And so long as we don’t hurt the Earth or each other, we embrace feeling good.
Sometimes—particularly when I need to wear a suit for some work reason, like lobbying an official—it will suddenly strike me: I’M AN ANIMAL. Walking, under this civilizing armor, I am warm, wet bones, muscles gliding in smooth motion, penis shifting back and forth, skin singing with the touch of fabric from a thousand points. I am my hunger, the sense of middling fullness in my bladder, the energetic zing of caffeine. I am an animal, alive and aware. Hunting. Foraging. Seeking. Safe, and confident in its power.
I feel it as a secret power. Not that others aren’t also animals, but they are doing their best not to know it. I am embracing it. And somehow it makes me powerful.
So here is a solo* ritual you can do to acquaint yourself with your Animal self.
NOTE: This is a ritual that requires a significant degree of comfort with your body. The Animal is embodied and physical–if you have challenges in this area I would encourage healing work to build love for and confidence in your physical self before conducting this ritual.
NEEDED:
Access to a bathtub and a full-length mirror, and a prepared space you don’t mind getting dirty.
Aromatic fresh herbs such as thyme, culinary sage, and rosemary, tied up in a cheesecloth sachet.
Epsom salts.
Liquid slip made from white, red and/or black clay, each mixed with water to make a thin paint, in separate dishes. You may make a paintbrush for daubing this slip on your body by chewing the end of a stick, if you wish, or use your hands.
Hearty food edible by hand (a piece of cold cooked meat, or some heavy, crunchy vegetables are good choices) and water.
PREPARATION: Preferably, do this on the night of the full Moon.
Take a bath in water into which a sachet of fresh aromatic herbs and two handfuls of epsom salts has been cast. Use be sure to submerge all parts of yourself at least once. Dry yourself, but don’t dress. If you have jewelry you use during rituals, you can put that on if you choose. Put on some ritual music. I like drumming for work like this, especially the complex, liberating rhythms of Afro-Caribbean, Middle Eastern or African drumming. As examples, here are some YouTube videos that you can choose from for a playlist soundtrack for your ritual:
ARRIVAL: Light candles to illuminate your ritual working space. If you like, burn earthy incense like myrrh or sandalwood. Carefully and mindfully lay out a Focusof all-natural objects: stones, fur, leaves, feathers, leather, bones, wood. Fossils are a good choice.
Close your eyes, and regulate your breathing until you are taking long, deep breaths. Feel your belly and chest rising and falling with your breath, and listen to the sound of your breath in your ears. Feel the pulse of your heartbeat in your chest. Your body is living, processing, carrying out all the many functions of being an animal.
Now, begin to accelerate your breathing until you are panting. Make noises while you are panting until you are grunting and snarling. Feel your animal nature rising within you, with its hungers and instinctual responses. Continue until you feel fully transformed into your animal nature.
QUALITIES/INVOCATIONS: Now that you are transformed into the Animal, grunt and snarl your invocation of your animal nature. The rest of the ritual is done in a preverbal mode: without human words.
WORKING: Continuing to growl, slowly, deliberately, run your hands over your body. Feel your skin, your muscles, the lean places and the fat places. Own this: it is you.
Gaze into the mirror, and growl at yourself. See the Animal there: the primate’s jaw and brow, the close-set mammal’s eyes, sprouting hair, sound-gathering ears. See yourself, and know that you are an animal creature of Earth.
Use the clay slip to draw designs on your face and on your body: perhaps tiger stripes or spots, or other animal designs. People all over the world use clay to decorate themselves–you can look for examples, many of them are very beautiful. Clay will wash off easily, but you may want to have a cloth to stand on to protect the floor while painting it on. Or not–animals really don’t care about such things!
Once you have applied your clay decorations, be sure to admire yourself in the mirror.
If there is a safe and private place where you can go outside, do that and howl at the Moon. If not, put on a robe or other covering and go out (or to a window) to gaze at the Moon and quietly “howl” at it.
GRATITUDE: Take the food you have prepared and eat it with your hands, washing it down with water. Be messy. Feel the nourishment entering your body, the good Earth providing for you. Know the gratitude of an animal well fed.
BENEDICTION/CLOSURE: With a final few growls or a howl, honor your Animal nature before letting it sink back to within your skin and down under the layers of culture and civilization that inform you. You can now draw upon your Animal nature at any time you feel you need it; it is especially adept at survival and setting firm boundaries.
Wash the clay from your face and gaze in the mirror again: see the Animal lurking in there? It’s your deepest ally, a powerful part of yourself. Speak your name to yourself in the mirror, and say, “welcome back.”
Blow out the candles. The ritual is complete.
Be sure to thoroughly groundwhen you are done, perhaps with a shower to wash off the rest of the clay.
*This ritual can easily become a powerful and intimate couple or group ritual if participants are comfortable enough to do it together. They can use the slip to paint designs on one another, and dance their animal natures after the slip dries. If done as a couple or group ritual, communicate nonverbally until the ritual is over: with grunts, whistles, hoots, imitation bird calls and so forth.
Illustration: “The Sorceror”, engraving from the Neolithic cave at Lascaux, showing half man/half animal figure
As Pagans, we live in a vivid world full of wonders. For we naturalisticPagans, 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 reasonare 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 simple faith (choice), or out of reliance on unverified subjective experiences, depending for “proof” on the vagaries of our so-fallible human brains.
It takes effort to sustain such a belief system. You have to keep telling yourself that there are mysterious meanings in ordinary events and coincidences, that strange undetectable forces and Participants are involved in your life. As a community, Pagans generally create that consensus reality; as I have written before, in the cultural context of the broader Pagan community it is heretical to dare suggest that supposed omens, magical outcomes, and messages from Invisible Beings are most likely really nothing more than apopheniaand wishful thinking.
That is what the available evidence suggests.
As Atheopagans, being naturalists, we understand the line between fantasy and reality. For us, the world which can be verified by science is marvel enough. But we also understand the power of imagination.
In our rituals, we dance along that line, incorporating myth, storytelling, symbols and metaphors through a deliberately chosen suspension of disbelief. This is similar to the voluntary suspension of disbelief we choose when watching a movie or a play, or reading a novel. We know the events in the movie aren’t really happening to us…but for awhile we are immersed, disregarding the fact that we are in reality sitting in a comfortable chair and watching a screen. Effective ritual is similar: an immersive process that seizes our attention and feels absolutely real during its duration.
Atheopagans do rituals because they aid us psychologically, because they feel good, and because they help us to heal and grow and perform at our best–all of which have been verified by scientific studies. When we are done, we return from our suspension of disbelief, grounding our understanding in the good, solid, verifiable Earth.
Living in a fantasy is unhelpful. It can make you afraid of things that aren’t real, and believe that actions which won’t make any difference at all will help you (such as “crystal healing” or “reiki” for real health issues, or spellcasting for money, or prayer to a deity for help). People have died or suffered long-term damage to their health because they refused the treatment that would actually have helped them, as a result of living in such fantasies.
Sadly, there are plenty of people in the Pagan community who are obsessed with “wards” and “magical shielding” against “psychic attacks”, “curses” and “hexing”. These beliefs contribute to anxiety at a minimum and I have seen them extend to full-on paranoia–including the delusion of grandeur that the person is important enough for someone to bother to “hex” them. The fear and sense of oppression that some such believers experience is terrible to see—as is their sense of moral righteousness and sometimes outright glee as they “magically retaliate”.
All this, as a result of a fantasied worldview. Of imagination run amok.
Because there is no such thing as a hex.
Being the kind of angry and vindictive person who so harbors malice that they would try to “curse” another will make one bitter and unhappy, though. I choose not to be that sort of person, so even when I am doing ritual work to establish a boundary or separation of myself from another, I don’t do it with malice towards them.
I’m glad that I don’t live in a world where people’s malevolence can magically fly around and hurt others. So many of us are wounded and damaged and filled with rage and even hatred. I began my adulthood pretty damaged and angry myself, and I can imagine I might have inflicted a lot of harm before I began to heal.
Intimacy is the gold standard of human relating. It is the authentic, vulnerable sharing of the inner worlds of those connecting with one another, and is a deeply nourishing, though sometimes scary experience. It is a human need; we thrive when we have it, and often suffer when we don’t.
Under the Overculture, intimacy is usually conflated with sex, the idea being that the only times we are intimate and the only people with whom we are intimate are those we connect with in our sexual lives. This is a sad state of affairs, and one we should work to transcend. It is one of the places where our Atheopagan valuesof inclusiveness, pleasure positivity and kindness intersect and show us that we need to broaden our thinking and understanding.
Sex can be intimate. Skin-on-skin contact certainly feels intimate; it causes the body to release the “love hormone” oxytocin, which can be intensely pleasurable and emotionally opening. Massage, cuddling, dancing, music, singing, and ritual or praying (for the religious) can all lead to release of oxytocin, which is a strong argument for why we do those things.
So can connecting deeply with a friend. Deep friendships are intimate. In them, we share details about our inner lives, our fears, wounds, triumphs, joys, discoveries, struggles, and growth. No sex required, though certainly deep friendships can involve sex if that is what the parties involved choose*. But still: under the Overculture, intimacy generally means sex…and sex, generally speaking, is for the young.
In short, the Overculture’s obsession with youth and conflation of youthfulness with sexiness has the result that we assign the only culturally recognized form of intimacy–sex–to the young and youthful.
But what about the rest of us?
Well, the fact is that many older people suffer from lack of touch and lack of intimacy. We sometimes replace these with touch shared with pets–cuddling and petting a dog or cat can also release oxytocin.
That stereotypical mad old cat lady isn’t so crazy after all–she’s getting her needs met as best she can.
As I write this, I am 61 years old. I confront natural deterioration of my body, as well as ageism in the job market. I am fortunate in that I have many truly close friends, and the warm embrace of the Atheopagan community. I have that kind of intimacy.
But that skin-to-skin thing that brings your whole body alive? Not so much, I regret to say.
And it’s hard. It’s like a full-body thirst, an ache that never quite goes away.
It is a condition I share with millions of older people in my country and elsewhere.
Atheopaganism is about the elevation and happiness of all people, and getting into right, reciprocal relationships with one another and the planet. We need to consider the needs of everyone, including the ageing, as we pursue these goals.
So I’ve taken a step to facilitate some connection around these issues; I created the Atheopagan Elders Facebook affinity group, which is a place where members of our community over 59, or who think of themselves as elders or dealing with elder challenges, can meet to discuss pertinent issues. Maybe we can help one another to figure some things out.
At the very least, we can talk, discuss, and listen.
*There is also sex which is not intimate. There’s nothing wrong with casual sexual encounters so long as they are consensual and safe, but they often don’t lead to the kind of deep sharing that is the meaning of intimacy.
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:
Cast a circle & call to the 4 directions
Inside the circle, you can call on anyone/anything you like to assist you
Place physical representations of the things or beings you want to BANISH in the fire pit
TELL them you are hereby banishing them from your circle – repeat for all 4 directions
Burn ‘em with Fire! Make certain any writing has been completely turned to ash
Disperse the circle
Dispose of ashes in the furthest part of the yard
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 allies: AP Ritual WORKS! (no woo required!)
…I was getting ready to wrap up the ritual when I suddenly realized I hadn’t “logged off” (!) – in other words, I had not dispersed the circle I’d cast. It was like leaving the phone off the hook.
The fact that this concept dawned on me during the ritual is proof that if you start off from the Atheist perspective, you can, through practice, better understand the Pagan perspective. “Magical” thinking does abide by rules, after all, even if it is not rational.
Ritual: The File Management System of Your Mind
A ritual uses IRL objects to represent thoughts and concepts. It’s basically a type of GUI.
Now you’ve truly “got a handle on it” – because through ritual, you are literally manipulating representative items. It’s tactile – simple, yet effective.
BUT you have to really MEAN it for it to work – it’s Method Acting time, my friend.
