Practice
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On the Edge of Darkness: Hallows Reflections 2016
It’s a gray, dim day here in Sonoma County, under a foreboding blanket of low and heavy clouds. Forecasts are for showers throughout the day; it’s one of those Halloweens where parents crane their necks and scowl at the sky throughout the day, wondering whether they’ll get away with a dry window during trick or treating. Which seems like a pretty good metaphor for this entire year. I’ve been scowling at the sky and wondering just what kind of fresh hell may be coming along a lot, this year. Now with a week left until possibly the most important U.S. election since 1860, there are still no clear answers, but one…
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Harvest 2016
We’re coming up to Harvest this week. I’ll be having friends over to enjoy a feast of locally produced food and drink, which is how I like to celebrate this sabbath: as a kind of Atheopagan Thanksgiving. Last year, I wrote about the shadow sabbath: what happens when the events of life aren’t congruent with the metaphorical themes of a given holiday. It was a hard time of financial distress, having been forced to move from my beloved home of 18 years, and the destruction of a nearby retreat, Harbin Hot Springs, to fire. This year is better. We found another—albeit much less beautiful—place to live, and I am employed gainfully. We have enough to…
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The Ecstasy of the Mosh Pit
I love punk rock. I was in high school at exactly the period that disco became a popular genre (which means that it was already dying in the gay bars and minority clubs where it had been born; by the time straight white people took it—because there was money to be made—it was pretty well wrung out). Those years–1975-79–saw some of the most godawful popular music that had been seen to date: lush, overproduced orchestral rock anthems with pretentious lyrics, whiny love ballads, the Eagles (enough said) and ubiquitous disco enjoinders to dance and screw, the soundtrack of the Seventies Bacchanal that set the table for the AIDS epidemic. There were exceptions, of…
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Audio: My Favorite Ritual Tool
This is a test of podcasting function for AP.
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My Favorite Ritual Tool
Ritual tools are personal things. They are objects that we find evocative, meaningful, symbolic. They whisper stories to us, and those stories are folded into the meaning of the rituals which we perform with them. Atheopagans vary widely in the kinds of ritual tools they use, including those who don’t use tools at all. The use of tools in rituals—typically, ritual knives (“athames”), wands, patens or pentacles, chalices and incense burners and so forth—is one of the threads of Western occultism that was woven into the fabric of Neopaganism as it arose in the mid-20th century, and it persists today in most of the Wicca-style Pagan traditions. I use tools…
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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 me. I was never a Christian, nor a Jew nor Muslim. So I don’t feel the oppressive weight of the concept of sin that those religions transmit. Please bear this in mind as you read the following. I’ve been involved with the Northern California Pagan community for a long time–30 years next year. And in that time, I have seen a deep imbalance between the community’s orientation to pleasure-seeking…
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The Sacred Body
We are unique manifestations of the Universe. Each of us is a roll of a billion dice, a singular event in the history of the Cosmos that has never been before, nor will be again. And what we comprise—all that we are, insofar as the available information would indicate—is of our bodies. We are our bodies. It is our bodies which perceive, which act, which experience. Our bodies which think, which feel, which create. Our bodies are, in fact, the Universe perceiving itself. The Cosmos crafted each of us, according to physical laws played out in near-miraculous, painstaking detail. Each of us is a magnificent expression of the Universe…one that…
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Summer’s End
As I celebrate the Wheel of the Year, the midpoint between the summer solstice (Midsummer) and the autumnal equinox (Harvest) is Summer’s End. I call it that because this is the moment when Autumn first becomes detectable in my region: in the angle of the light, in the hard blue of the sky, in the sputtering of the fog cycle to bring searing hot days, and in the first turning of early leaves. Summer’s End’s metaphorical meanings relate to work and craft, to technology and toolmaking and effort. It is the time when the harvests of hay and blackberries and early summer vegetables are at their height, so there is a lot of work…
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Ritual Technologies: Movement
Since probably before humans were even human, there has been music. Rhythm, at least. And where there is rhythm, there is dance. There are preserved footprints in painted caves in France that indicate young boys dancing 20-30,000 years ago. Some ritual dances are still performed today after untold continuous centuries. Ritual isn’t just something that happens in our heads. When effective, it is an immersive experience, involving our entire beings. We are not, after all, just brains carried by flesh robots…our nervous systems extend throughout our bodies and participate heavily in our brain states. Effective rituals involve some kind of engagement of the body: singing, for example, or clapping, dancing, walking, or other movement…
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The Fire Circle: An Ecumenical Ritual Tradition
I am a member of the Spark Collective, based in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, which holds monthly indoor “fire circle” rituals (around a centerpiece of candles, instead of an actual fire, of course). These are a way of maintaining and building community for fire circle aficionados throughout the course of the year. But there is nothing like a true outdoor fire circle in Nature. This is a ritual tradition that has been under development at Pagan festivals since the early 1990s and is now the operational structure of multiple festivals held throughout the country. Spark holds a “real” fire circle festival in the summer, and I just…
