Holidays
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Rituals in the Heat
It’s bitter here in the Northern Hemisphere right now, but I’ve been thinking about the South and the heat they are experiencing. Seems as though we are rich with ritual traditions and activities for the colder, darker half of the year, but after the Maypole there is very little until Hallows rolls around again. So…what do you do when it’s hot out, ritually speaking? Midsummer and Dimming want to know! So I’m blue-skying activities here, and the classical Greek concept of “four elements” seems to offer itself as a way of organizing them. First, water. This is a basic and human response to heat–we flood (ha ha) to beaches, lakes,…
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New Carols for an Atheopagan Solstice
One of the things that can be hard about moving away from the Christian Overculture is that there is a lot of beautiful art that can become meaningless to you. Architecture, painting, sculpture, music…so many centuries of accumulated human creativity and effort, all illustrating the myths of Christianity. For many who deconvert from Christianity and other authoritarian religions, these artworks can be intensely triggering, and they don’t want anything to do with them. Others miss aspects of them, like the beauty of music that has…undesirable lyrics. I was never a Christian, so I only know this from hearing the reports of others in the Atheopagan community. But I do find…
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Cozy
Here in the northern hemisphere, it’s dark time now. Three weeks to the solstice, with lights going up on houses and cars with trees atop showing up in traffic, en route to home and decoration and love. There is the consumer frenzy of the Overculture, too, of course, but I avoid all that. We no longer give gifts–we have enough things, and when we really need something, we just buy it. We choose instead to have lovely experiences and celebrate a bunch of holiday observances, which are detailed here. As the skies darken and the days shorten, grow wetter and colder, I find myself drawn more and more towards comfy…
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Planning for Eerie Season
October is nearly here! The witchiest, gothiest, most autumntacular time of year is once again approaching. If you’re like me, October requires some time commitment and advanced planning in order to get every sanguine drop out of the season. So here is a description of all the stuff I do in October to steep myself in its gothy goodness. Throughout the month, I watch movies: I like to watch creepy, campy and thematic films in October on my way to Halloween. Perennial favorites include Practical Magic, The Others, Jacob’s Ladder, The Sixth Sense, various Hammer Horror films (lots of Christopher Lee!), classics like James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein,…
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Harvestide
The season of the Harvest Sabbath is upon us again, and it is time for celebration and stock-taking! This Sabbath sometimes gets short shrift, coming as it does on the heels of every Pagan’s favorite witchy month. But it’s an important observance time and a meaningful holiday. Here are some thoughts about what Harvest means and how to celebrate it. To me, this time is the time of celebrating abundance. The winter vegetables are pouring out of the gardens now and where I live, the grape harvest and processing (“The Crush”) fills the air in the rural areas with the smell of fermenting wine. Harvest fairs take place at this…
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The Long Swing into Darkness
The sky has gone hard blue now, and the fog cycle has begun to stutter. Summer is leaving, it’s in the air, and I can feel the good cozy days of colored leaves and the spooky season on the horizon. The angle of the light has changed, the full blaze of the solstice is far behind, and here in the season of Dimming, we have warm, wan, still days before us for awhile yet. Ironically, this is a time of year that feels kind of pregnant to me, even though it is headed towards the dying of the year: it is the burgeoning growth of the Sacred Dark, a fertile…
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The Sabbath of Technology
Sabbaths have layers: layers of history, of symbolism, of metaphor. Each of the eight Sabbaths of the Atheopagan Wheel of the Year carries a rich complex of meanings and practices, new or old, and layers of history and memory. As a community, our Atheopagan ethic is that every individual practitioner can and should develop for themselves what each Sabbath means and how it is celebrated. But there are some associations with the turning of the seasons that are commonly celebrated by us and by many other modern Pagans. Examples include: At this time of year, at the midpoint between the summer solstice and autumnal equinox, I celebrate the Sabbath of…
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Major Update to the Atheopagan Hymnal
It’s been a long time since updating the Atheopagan Hymnal, which is a collection of songs, poetry, invocations and benedictions for use in Atheopagan rituals and gatherings. This is a major update–I’ve added sheet music to a lot of the songs, and increased the content to nearly 60 pages! Thanks to all the creators of this material, and please be aware that this is distributable for personal and religious purposes only–all rights remain with the creators. Download the Atheopagan Hymnal v.5 here.
- Atheology, Descriptions, Holidays, Liturgy, Practice, Principles, Rites of Passage, Ritual, Techniques
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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Midsummer 2023—The Height of the Light
These are the long days, in the Northern Hemisphere. The days of long, languid evenings, full of song and sex and celebration. Cookouts and trips to the beach; days of sunblock and wide-brimmed hats. It’s Midsummer: the Sabbath of Leisure. I imagine this was the way in Olde Europe: crops were planted and growing but not yet ready for harvest, and there wasn’t much else to do but lounge around, drink beer and fool around. Perhaps mine is an idealized imagining; it doesn’t matter, because my Atheopaganism isn’t about Olde Tymes anyway. It’s about now. The gorgeous generosity of now. As I write, the Sun is finally down and light…
