Practice
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It’s here!
My new book, Round We Dance: Creating Meaning Through Seasonal Rituals is published and launched! I had a lovely book launch party yesterday in Oakland, California. It was great to see friends, read some passages and sell and sign some books. It has been about a year and a half since I submitted the manuscript for Round We Dance, and as I read pieces of it I found myself thinking hey, this is good stuff! Nice to feel that sense of pride in my craft. Here I am, signing. Isn’t Kimba’s coat amazing? She said it was like being inside a Muppet. I’m really proud of this book and I…
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First Look at My New Book!
I got some galley proof copies of ROUND WE DANCE: Creating Meaning Through Seasonal Rituals, and it looks and feels great! It is always a real thrill to hold a first copy of one of my books in my hands, and this is no exception. ROUND WE DANCE releases on April 8–the same day as the impending solar eclipse. You can read more about it and pre-order your copy by clicking here.
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Brightening 2024
Today is the midpoint between what I term Midwinter (the winter solstice) and High Spring (the vernal equinox): thus, Brightening. Or Imbolc. Or Brighid. Or–my choice–Riverain, the Festival of Water. Depending on where you live, you might have different names or associations with this point in the Wheel of the Year. (or, in the Southern Hemisphere, this could be Dimming or High Summer for you) It is raining torrentially today, so we have good thematic weather this year. And I find myself thinking about the disparate pieces that make up my traditions for this Sabbath: bits of themes from back when I was practicing (if not believing in) theistic Paganism,…
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Rituals in the Heat
It’s bitter here in the Northern Hemisphere right now, but I’ve been thinking about the South and the heat they are experiencing. Seems as though we are rich with ritual traditions and activities for the colder, darker half of the year, but after the Maypole there is very little until Hallows rolls around again. So…what do you do when it’s hot out, ritually speaking? Midsummer and Dimming want to know! So I’m blue-skying activities here, and the classical Greek concept of “four elements” seems to offer itself as a way of organizing them. First, water. This is a basic and human response to heat–we flood (ha ha) to beaches, lakes,…
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New Carols for an Atheopagan Solstice
One of the things that can be hard about moving away from the Christian Overculture is that there is a lot of beautiful art that can become meaningless to you. Architecture, painting, sculpture, music…so many centuries of accumulated human creativity and effort, all illustrating the myths of Christianity. For many who deconvert from Christianity and other authoritarian religions, these artworks can be intensely triggering, and they don’t want anything to do with them. Others miss aspects of them, like the beauty of music that has…undesirable lyrics. I was never a Christian, so I only know this from hearing the reports of others in the Atheopagan community. But I do find…
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Cozy
Here in the northern hemisphere, it’s dark time now. Three weeks to the solstice, with lights going up on houses and cars with trees atop showing up in traffic, en route to home and decoration and love. There is the consumer frenzy of the Overculture, too, of course, but I avoid all that. We no longer give gifts–we have enough things, and when we really need something, we just buy it. We choose instead to have lovely experiences and celebrate a bunch of holiday observances, which are detailed here. As the skies darken and the days shorten, grow wetter and colder, I find myself drawn more and more towards comfy…
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Planning for Eerie Season
October is nearly here! The witchiest, gothiest, most autumntacular time of year is once again approaching. If you’re like me, October requires some time commitment and advanced planning in order to get every sanguine drop out of the season. So here is a description of all the stuff I do in October to steep myself in its gothy goodness. Throughout the month, I watch movies: I like to watch creepy, campy and thematic films in October on my way to Halloween. Perennial favorites include Practical Magic, The Others, Jacob’s Ladder, The Sixth Sense, various Hammer Horror films (lots of Christopher Lee!), classics like James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein,…
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Harvestide
The season of the Harvest Sabbath is upon us again, and it is time for celebration and stock-taking! This Sabbath sometimes gets short shrift, coming as it does on the heels of every Pagan’s favorite witchy month. But it’s an important observance time and a meaningful holiday. Here are some thoughts about what Harvest means and how to celebrate it. To me, this time is the time of celebrating abundance. The winter vegetables are pouring out of the gardens now and where I live, the grape harvest and processing (“The Crush”) fills the air in the rural areas with the smell of fermenting wine. Harvest fairs take place at this…
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The Long Swing into Darkness
The sky has gone hard blue now, and the fog cycle has begun to stutter. Summer is leaving, it’s in the air, and I can feel the good cozy days of colored leaves and the spooky season on the horizon. The angle of the light has changed, the full blaze of the solstice is far behind, and here in the season of Dimming, we have warm, wan, still days before us for awhile yet. Ironically, this is a time of year that feels kind of pregnant to me, even though it is headed towards the dying of the year: it is the burgeoning growth of the Sacred Dark, a fertile…
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The Sabbath of Technology
Sabbaths have layers: layers of history, of symbolism, of metaphor. Each of the eight Sabbaths of the Atheopagan Wheel of the Year carries a rich complex of meanings and practices, new or old, and layers of history and memory. As a community, our Atheopagan ethic is that every individual practitioner can and should develop for themselves what each Sabbath means and how it is celebrated. But there are some associations with the turning of the seasons that are commonly celebrated by us and by many other modern Pagans. Examples include: At this time of year, at the midpoint between the summer solstice and autumnal equinox, I celebrate the Sabbath of…
