Opinion
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Mendicant Traditions and the Accumulation of Wealth
A mendicant is a beggar: a poor person who importunes others for money or other material support. In Pagandom, we remember many holiday traditions rooted in mendicant practices. This post is about the special wonders of traditions involving house-to-house beggary, and the deeper meanings associated with many of them. I’m thinking about these traditions, and what they mean. What their function is. But to start with, let’s look at them! First and most famously, there is Wassailing in England: the homes and the orchards. As well as… Thomasing in England: The former custom of going from house to house on St Thomas’s day (December 21) to beg for small gifts…
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A Straight, Cis Dude’s Reflection on Pride
They make it all about sex. The sneerers and spitters, the blithe dismissers, the judging castigators who allege that being queer is just about who you rub your body parts against. Who you create orgasms with. The hatred is bound up with the sex. They simply hate and fear sex. The power of it, the vulnerability of it, the lack of control. And as they conflate queerness with sex, they hate, and fear queerness. Once upon a time, I dated a stripper. She was brilliant, graduate of a prestigious Eastern university, after which she had ridden a bicycle to California. She was an activist, a thinker. And a stripper, very…
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Against the Golden Age
So, we were talking about “origin myths” in one of the Atheopagan community Zoom mixers the other day. And Mícheál, who is a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, suggested–somewhat facetiously–something like this for much of mainstream Paganism: Long ago, people lived in peaceful, egalitarian matriarchal/matrifocal societies that revered the Earth Goddess in many forms*. Since then, patriarchy has poisoned the relationship between humans and the Earth, subjugated women and created war. We must get back to that prior way of being. Now, this is grossly oversimplified, of course. But it is, at root, the story that many Pagans have told themselves, and often still do. Some still extend the…
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Now Comes the Tainted Holiday
It’s American Thanksgiving again. Time for turkey, stuffing, cranberries and cognitive dissonance. Like so much of the history of the United States of America, Thanksgiving is a happy smiley story layered over appalling crimes against humanity. Ask the Wampanoag what they feel about the meal they shared with white colonizers 400 years ago. It is not a happy, smiley story. They are not grateful for encountering those people, or for that day. And yet, part of me is so pulled to the concept of a holiday for gratitude. Which is, after all, one of the Atheopagan Principles. Shouldn’t we have one of those? Yes, I think we should. The Harvest…
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Defying the Death Cult
It’s time for a frank conversation. The US Supreme Court handed down a ruling this week that will be devastating to the environment. It casts into question the government’s authority to regulate environmental destruction in general. Pollution, death and rapine of habitat lands will result. So let us speak very plainly. I have posted before about the Overculture: the subtext of beliefs, values and norms that inform culture in the English-speaking world, and to some degree the entire Western world. The Overculture has a lot of very serious moral and ethical (and practical) problems. It doesn’t contribute to human happiness or fulfillment. It doesn’t work well for any save the…
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Aging, Intimacy and Atheopaganism
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…
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NATURALISTIC PAGANISM: A Challenge to the Paradigms of the Overculture
A Presentation to the 2023 Conference on Current Pagan Studies: January 15, 2023 THANKS for inviting me to present to the 19th annual Conference on Current Pagan Studies! I’d like to extend my appreciation to the organizers and co-creators of this event. We live in times of deep crises: Clearly, people who are aware of the challenges we face need to be vocal about their concerns, and work to see them gain traction. We also live in times of deep religious transition: These phenomena offer both challenges and opportunities for Pagans.As stated in the description of this conference, the witch embodies a rebellious archetype, and on the face of it…
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A Pagan in a Christianized Society
We discussed many of the ideas in this post in this week’s episode of THE WONDER podcast–check it out! Being a Pagan often isn’t easy–and especially being a naturalistic Pagan, in a world dominated by an Overculture that flies in the face of one’s values. I live in the United States: a country deeply steeped in conservative Christianity and in which, as belief in more traditional religions wanes, the most reactionary of Christians–including a majority of our Supreme Court–are scrambling to enshrine their beliefs into laws we must all follow. On issues like sexual morality, gender equality, bodily autonomy, racial equality, environmental protection and reproductive rights, these Christians could not…
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Knowledge, Understanding, and Anti-Colonialism
I am an anti-colonialist and anti-racist. This is a life commitment I have made and, though as for all people raised in a culture steeped in white supremacy and racism it is hard work to try to get beyond them, it is joyful work, even when it is hard. If you view the world through an Atheopagan lens, it becomes pretty evident that colonialism, capitalism and their resultant white supremacy and genocidal engagements with other cultures have been disasters for both the Earth and for its so-successful species, humanity, and have created tremendous suffering for those colonial empire has not valued. As such, I take listening to marginalized voices very…
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Welcome to the Resistance (US)
With the leak of a draft opinion overturning the pivotal Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed all people with uteruses the right to an abortion through the first trimester of pregnancy, shock waves are rippling across the United States. It won’t stop here. This Court has revealed its radical, reactionary and activist nature. It is highly likely that the right to access contraception, the right to privacy in consenting conduct between adults (which legalized same-sex sexual acts but also has implications for people in alternative relationship configurations like BDSM relationships and polyamory), and even the right to same-sex marriage are on the chopping block. Unless some unforeseen change…
