My circle met at my home yesterday. I’ve been circling with the same group for 27 years as of this upcoming Hallows (Samhain). We started as a group of six, and over time have expanded to ten, but all the original members are still here. It’s pretty remarkable. Dark Sun…
Accountability: a Pagan Missing Piece?
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…
Ritual Technologies: Scent
As I’ve mentioned before, the most powerfully evocative of the human senses is the sense of smell. The olfactory centers are in the most primitive parts of the brain, and they can summon vivid memories in an instant, simply from a remembered scent. For…
The Sabbath of Water
In my Wheel of the Year, the cross-quarter which lands around the beginning of February is Riverain: the Feast of Water. That’s because where I live, in Northern California with its Mediterranean climate, that time of year is the heaviest with rainfall. The mountains grow emerald green with winter grass, the…
It Starts with Just One Thing
It’s a gunmetal grey day, portending welcome rain. The last of the autumn foliage is still evident, this being Northern California, and somehow it is calm and silent in our neighborhood despite the proximity to shopping districts. Today is the day I declare it: the season of Yule has begun.
We Die.
We’re going to die. All of us. Grappling with this fact may be the single most powerful factor in what it means to be human. It is so profound and unarguable a fact that every religion has to confront it in one way or another, and Atheopaganism must, as well. And while…