Practice
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Engaging the Work: My Next Frontier
Atheopaganism is about increasing our capacity for happiness and engaging our responsibilities to the Earth and to our fellow humans. As such, it requires us to look at ourselves and the world with both curiosity and compassion; to see where there is work to be done. For me personally, after years of resistance I am coming to confront that a large portion of my work now relates to inhabiting my body. I was raised only to celebrate the accomplishments of the mind. In my family, I saw no modeling of physical recreation or exercise, and as a result, I was always the kid who was reading a book during recess. I…
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Three Percent: a Riverain Blessing
Three percent is all they say The sweet water of a water planet Three percent The cool drink, the soft rain Rare as blood, rare as luck, rare To our wet hands, shining. From the far sky, adrift in curds and blankets Whips and knots, anvils towering thunder hammers Rain the hand of kindness down To our fields, our mouths, the dancing springs And cold rivers, snaking the glens of Earth to the sky again. Do we take you for granted, o three percent? Do we curse you for flooding, pop our grumbrellas On a wet walk to the office? Not I. Not when puddles leap for joy and silver…
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Why an Acorn?
NOTE: In 2018, the Atheopagan community collaborated to nominate and select a new symbol for our religion. That symbol, the Suntree, is in the header of the blog and is described HERE. I wear a silver pendant of an acorn, and have since my transition out of more traditional Paganism and into Atheopaganism. To me, it is the symbol of my religion. If you’ve been to the Zazzle store, you will see that there are several items for sale there that also feature the symbol of the acorn, and it is also the favicon of this site. Given our diversity and wide range of backgrounds, I’m sure that among Atheopagans, there is…
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Exploring the Atheopagan Principles: Principle 6 —Praxis
This is the 6th in a series exploring the 13 Atheopagan Principles I proposed in my essay, “How I Became an Atheopagan.” To read the series, click on “Atheopagan Principles” in the tag cloud to the right. Principle 6 states, “I enact regular ritual in observance of my religion.” While cosmology and values embraced are certainly important, the 6th Principle reminds us that religion is something one DOES. To be religious is to carry out religious activities: to contemplate lessons, to celebrate the beauty of the Cosmos, to ceremonially observe holy days and life passages, to create art and other works reflective of an Atheopagan worldview. Principle 6 reminds us that Atheopaganism isn’t just…
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An Atheopagan Life: Celebrating Riverain, and Adapting the Wheel of the Year
Originally posted at HumanisticPaganism.com The eight holidays of the modern Pagan “wheel of the year” present an annual cycle of Sabbaths tracing seasonal changes, agricultural cycles, and metaphors of the cycle of life. For an Atheopagan, it’s not a bad point to start from, rooted as it is in astronomical fact (the holy days are the solstices and equinoxes, and the midpoints between them) and the reality of seasonal change in parts of the world which have a European climate cycle. And while there is a large body of mythology in the Pagan traditions which ties these seasonal changes to stories about gods, the gods aren’t really necessary for the cycle…
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The Focus
This piece is excerpted from the Atheopagan Ritual Primer. A Focus is what Atheopagans call an altar. We choose a different word because “altar” implies worship—or even sacrifice—and we want to be clear that that isn’t what we are doing. The Focus is a work of art: a still life assemblage of symbols and meaningful objects. It can be central to the enactment of a ritual, or it may be off to one side. Multiple Foci may be used if desired, designed around different themes. Building a Focus is a fun and creative activity and can itself be done as a ritual, in an intentional, Present and “focused” manner. Typically, a…
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The God Mask – A Ritual Technique
We had a great conversation at our online video chat in the Facebook Atheopagan group today. Topics ranged, but one that stuck out for me was Glen Gordon’s discussion of his work to create a new lexicon for Pagan and ritual phenomena he feels aren’t well defined by existing words in English. As I’ve said elsewhere, although an atheist I spent many years circling in ritual with various elements of the Pagan community here in Northern California, viewing the invocation of gods and the conducting of “magic” as metaphorical, psychological processes to influence the minds of participants rather than as literal communications and physically effective influencers of events. Having now…
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MULLED WINE–a Poem for the Yule Season
It begins where the smoke hits your eyes: smouldering peat, Mutton stew on a broad iron hook, Deep snow. How can it ever have been summer? Apples wrinkling and mice in the barley— With so much to fear, thank the gods for company! We’ll tell our tales, remember how we passed the cold Last year, and the one before. And those who couldn’t. The grape leans across The seasons, clasps the hand of summer’s Dried rind, dreaming the new fruit, Calling the sun back, World without end amen. —Mark Green
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An Atheopagan Life: Observances for November and December
Originally published at Humanistic Paganism. November and December certainly don’t lack for observances and holiday celebrations. In the temperate zone of the planet, pretty much every culture has had some way of celebrating the winter solstice, and the accumulation of many of those traditions lives with us today in the form of Christmas, Chanukah, the Pagan Yule, newer traditions such as Kwanzaa and even Festivus. For Atheopagans, navigating this season in a manner free of theistic and supernatural overtones can be a bit of a challenge. We’re besieged with well-intentioned messages from relatives and friends rooted in their credulous religious beliefs. Exasperating as it can sometimes be, the main thing is…
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Atheopagan “advent” calendar–a fun project for the holidays
Instructions for making your own Atheopagan “advent” calendar, complete with resizable clip art images you can use for the tiny pictures behind the windows. Includes education on Atheopagan principles and themes. This is a Word document, so the images could be embedded as resizable objects. Enjoy!
