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From the Atheopagan Society: A Statement of Policy Values
Ours is an engaged spirituality: engaged in society, engaged in the world. Atheopagans care not only about our own growth, joy in living, discovery and wonder, but the well-being of our fellow humans and the biosphere of which we are each a part. Our Atheopagan values, enshrined in the Four Sacred Pillars and the 13 Principles, are modern, progressive, inclusive, and in some cases have radical implications for improving conditions in our world. We understand the destructive and unsustainably rapacious nature of industrial capitalism, and know the values that dominate the world must change for justice, biodiversity, kindness and happiness to prevail. This is not just abstract. Activism is a…
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Ritual and Self Care for Protesters
Had enough? World just about all you can take? Well, first of all, if you aren’t one, welcome to the world of black and brown people. Maybe reflect on that for awhile. But beyond that, let’s talk about tools to help us manage. To help us feel better despite the Plague, despite the horror, despite the injustice and the violence and the betrayal by those who were supposed to help. It’s Wednesday evening as I speak. It has been two weeks and two days since the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman and his accomplices. Protests continue to thunder around the United States and elsewhere in the world,…
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Citizens’ Climate Lobby launches Earth-based Spirituality Action Team
12 September 2019 — The CCL Earth-based Spirituality Action Team announces its formation and inaugural conference call. The team will offcially launch just after the southward equinox on 24 September 2019, with an interactive call featuring guest speaker M. Macha NightMare. Citizens’s Climate Lobby is a nonproft, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy organization focused on national policies to address climate change. “CCL has over 50 action teams in a wide range of areas, including a dozen faith-based teams,” said T. Todd Elvins, CCL Action Coordinator. “The Earth-based Spirituality team will give greater visibility to an often-overlooked religious orientation.” “The Earth-based Spirituality Team is for Pagans, Wiccans, Witches, Occultists, Druids, Gaians, Goddess-worshippers, Earth-worshippers,…
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Your 2019 Community Chosen Charity: PLASTIC OCEANS INTERNATIONAL
The votes are in, and the Atheopagan community has selected the 2019 Atheopagan Chosen Charity. Plastic Oceans International (plasticoceans.org). POI raises awareness of the impacts of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, and works with communities and nations to reduce their oceanic plastic impacts. We will advertise for POI on this site for the balance of 2019, and encourage Atheopagans, their friends and anyone who cares about the Sacred Earth to donate by clicking on the banner ad to the right. Thank you!
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And So We Fight On
We believe in a better world We believe in justice We believe in a better world We believe in peace We believe in a better world We can heal our planet We won’t bow down. We won’t bow down. –An Atheopagan ritual chant It matters now to hold a vision. It matters not to think this moment is forever. It matters now that we are good people, and we uphold kindness and simple human decency as a value. It matters that we love the world with all our hearts. The deathgrip of white male capitalist supremacy will not persist. It will not. Women’s…
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Presenting Ourselves to the World
It is not a surprise that as it was being founded, Neopaganism looked to an imagined pastoral and pre-industrial way of life as an inspiration. Modern Paganism’s inaugural moment in the United States, about 50 years ago in the late 1960s into the mid-1970s, occurred at the same time that the Romantic idealizations of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Dungeons and Dragons and Renaissance Faires and the newly created fantasy genre and the rosy aspirations of the “back to the land” movement were taking over the aesthetic and emotional landscape of young people: particularly smart, geeky college students of the exact demographic which eventually became the Neopagan base. After…
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What If We Are Screwed?
John Halstead very eloquently and thoroughly puts the question to us in his post “’Everything is Going According to Plan’”: Being an Activist in the Anthropocene”. Take time to read the whole thing. It’s well worth it. So really: what if it’s simply too late for any kind of peaceful transition to a sustainable post-disastrous civilization, and a messy and bloody collapse of industrial capitalism and Earth biodiversity in the context of skyrocketing global warming is now firmly set on course? It could be true. It may very well be true. What does this mean to us as Atheopagans, when we state explicitly that it is a part of our ethos to…
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Rituals Are Important. But They Aren’t Activism.
In times like these, those of us who are of sound mind and values know: we must do something. In Atheopaganism, we believe in the power and necessity of human ritual. We understand the science about why rituals work, and why they are important to us. We celebrate the turning of the seasons and personal and familial milestones in life, and we conduct rituals to focus our attention, our intention, and our future activity in pursuit of our goals. It’s important and meaningful stuff. However, we also understand that ritual’s effect is the transformation of consciousness: more specifically, the transformation of the consciousnesses of the ritual’s participants. It is powerful and effective…
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The Pitfall of Consumer Paganism
I don’t buy “pagan stuff”. No crystals (mined destructively from the Earth), no chalices or blades or wands or new Tarot decks. Sometimes I’m tempted, but I don’t do it. Well, other than candles. I already have enough incense to last the rest of my life, stored carefully so as to remain fresh and pungent. I don’t take great pride in this, because the fact is that 25-30 years ago, I DID accumulate some of that stuff. I have enough “things” to dress a Focus (altar) and to symbolize all the various qualities and attributes I might wish to include in a ritual. I’m a bit short on ritual clothing,…
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Atheism, Paganism, and Agreeing to Disagree
I’ve been thinking lately about the crossroads where Atheopaganism lives: straddling lines between atheism, Paganism, and activism. In the atheistic world, skepticism is a given. There, when you propose something—a policy, a factual claim, a strategic approach to problem solving—it is assumed that you will have both material evidence and cogent argumentation to back your position. Others are welcomed to interrogate, prod at, and refute the position as best they are able. This is a process by which we can arrive at a position which is more likely to be correct than if we did not so critique the initial proposition. The process is central to the operation of science…
