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Introducing SLOGG: The Winter Demi-Sabbath
January is a hard damned month for me. There, I said it. After the colorful lights and parties and presents and many festivities of Yule comes a dark, cold time when we all go back to work. No fun for us now: just trudging through the snow or freezing rain, in the dark, to and from our obligations. It’s the longest, most miserable month of the year. Here where I live, in the wine country north of San Francisco, January is a time when the hills are green from whatever rain we’ve had thus far (not much yet, this year), and rain is typically common. We’ve had flooding in January…
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My Five Favorite Posts of 2017
2017 saw more content than ever posted at Atheopaganism (as well as an upsurge in membership of the Facebook group). Here are five of my favorites among this year’s posts, in no particular order. Farewell, 2017, and happy New Year to you all! A Dawn Prayer Care and Feeding of the Atheopagan Activist There is a Way Happiness, Ecstasy and Threading the Needle Do Not Ever Let
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The Cauldron of Hope: A New Year’s Eve Ritual
If you are gathered with friends or family for New Year’s Eve, here is a light ritual you can do that isn’t interruptive of festivities but can add some meaningful heft to the launch of the new calendar year. Place a dollar coin, for luck and prosperity, into the bottom of an iron cauldron or Dutch oven. Pour in 2″ of fresh water (rainwater if you have it). Add a handful of kosher salt or sea salt, for strength and patience, and stir until as much salt as possible has dissolved into the water. Each guest is invited to drip a small libation in the cauldron from whatever they are drinking,…
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“Harm None” Ain’t Good Enough: A Call to Action
There has always been something about the Wiccan Rede that has bothered me, and I’ve finally figured out what it is. The Wiccan Rede, for those new to the community or coming into Atheopaganism from atheist/skeptic circles, is the only widely (though far from universally) adopted moral precept in the Pagan community. It reads: “An (if) it harm none, do what thou wilt.” To start with, the Ye-Olde-Tyme-Englande language rubs me the wrong way, using “an” for “if”, and calling it a “rede” instead of a “rule”. The Wiccan Rede is a 20th century creation, not bloody Shakespeare. But that’s a small point. The primary bone I have to pick with…
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Yule Offering #3: Love
My final wish for you all this Yule season is that you be surrounded with love. We are social apes, we humans, and loneliness is a terrible burden to us. Here at the dark and cold time of year, we can feel even more isolated, even more as though we must face life’s trials on our own. It is quite likely that this was one of the main drivers of the creation of our Winter Solstice traditions in the first place. I happen to be someone who has no blood family any longer. It’s better that way, overall: the dynamic within my family was toxic and abusive and would not, could…
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Yule Offering #2: Courage
My second hope for you at Yule is that you engage the season with bravery. This is the time when we stand up to darkness and cold and the prospect of much more of it, and we do so with a combination of brazen silliness and real strength: the kind of strength it takes to deal with difficult family members and multiple obligations and inclement weather and looming deadlines and planned projects and lists and unsnarling the bloody lights and figuring out where we put the tree stand last year and deciphering Grandma’s 40-year-old spider-scrawl on that recipe that simply MUST be made. The many demands of life multiply at…
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Yule Offering #1: Stillness
Here’s my first hope for you at (what I consider) the New Year: the Winter Solstice, or Yule. That after the holiday frenzy of Silly Season, after the parties and dinners and rituals, there comes a moment when you can just stop. And be still. And feel within you the glow of all your life’s wealth: the beauty, the love, the gifts that the very Earth itself rains down on you. I hope that—even if only for a moment—you will feel your body swell with the joy that is your birthright, and you will know that you belong here, between soil and stars, a unique expression of the very Universe, looking…
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What Shall We Give for Yule?
For those of us who care about our Earth, this season presents a conundrum: How do we navigate this most commercial and consumeristic of seasons and remain true to our values? Well, here are some thoughts. I hope they help. First of all, the tree. Buy a real one. Artificial trees create three times the carbon impact of a real tree, and they’re made of plastic that lasts for thousands or even millions of years. The best option is a live tree you can plant outside after the holidays, but short of that, get a live tree cut…you can save the trunk for next year’s Yule log. When it comes to…
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The Yule Log—A Winter Solstice Ritual
This year, the longest night of the year—Winter Solstice, or Yule—takes place on Thursday, December 21st. On the night of the Winter Solstice, an old tradition that we have adapted for Atheopagan purposes is the burning of the Yule log. Yule marks the moment in the year when the sun’s steady decline, with days growing shorter and shorter, comes to a halt, and the days begin to become longer again. The day the sun begins to return is celebrated by cultures throughout the world and going back far into prehistory; indeed, such archaeological marvels as the Newgrange passage burial in Ireland were constructed precisely so that they aligned with the sunrise…
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Do Not Ever Let
I am here to shout against the rising dark. To say to you—yes, you, individually, yourself reading this—that I know how hard it has become. To believe in a future. To aspire. Do not let them do this to you. Do not allow the ways of the world, this bitter storm turn you away from its rage. Grimace in the teeth of it, and breathe the cold, alive despite it. You have a future. And in it is love and warmth, skies and seas and trees and all the wonders they reveal. No matter how small the men who grind the world become, you will have your days, your skies, your…
