Practice
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Beginnings
Ask around in Pagan circles, and you’ll get disagreement about when the year actually begins. Some say at Hallows (Samhain): the new year is birthed at the very moment of the death of the old. Some say Yule, with the rebirth of the “baby Sun”. And some—not many, but some—go with the calendar year, January 1. I fall in the second camp. To me, the period between Death at Hallows and Birth at Yule is the time of decomposition and recomposition, of decay, uptake into existing life, and spinoff through pregnancy or seed production into new individuals. I wrote about this recently. We have come to the time of year…
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Yule: the Big Picture
Yule is of course a joyous time for celebrating love and family and the return of the Sacred Sun. But it also marks the end of the cycle of the year and the beginning of a new, and it is this I’d like to address today. I often talk about the “arc” of the year instead of the Wheel of the Year, because in my conceptualization of how a human life maps metaphorically onto the year’s cycle, there is an important segment–the period between Hallows and Yule–which we never experience at all, because they are the time of Decomposition and Recomposition. They are what happens after we die, and before…
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Rituals in Quarantine
So, there’s this pandemic. And it’s going crazy in a second wave. There’s plenty to say about failure of leadership and idiots who won’t wear masks because Freedumb and the whole sad story of this year, but it’s already been said elsewhere and it’s not the focus of this post. No, this post is about how we can use video conferencing platforms to conduct group rituals, easing the personal impact of sheltering in place from the pandemic on the near-universally beloved celebrations of the solstice holiday season. Yes, many of us are Zoom-burnt. We’re having to do our work, maintain our relationships and so much more through the virtual window…
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Holy Days
OK, to start with let me just say: they’re all holy. Every unique, magnificent, rare and extraordinary day of your life, whether you sleepwalk through it or not, is a holy day. Because there are only so many of them, and then you are gone forever. So try to keep it in mind: every day is a holy day. But a special day, what we usually call a holiday–a Sabbath–whether invented or traditional, is a moment when we step out of routine into ritual: whether it’s convening a meal with loved ones at Harvest or erecting a decorated evergreen at Yule or lighting candles for Hanukkah. We have now entered…
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GUEST RITUAL: Annual Lascaux Cave Rediscovery Celebration
This ritual was proposed by Michael Halloran of the Atheopagan Facebook group and perfected through input of other members of the group. Perform this ritual every September 12 to commemorate the accidental finding of this French cave in 1940. Objective: Celebrate the rediscovery of this impressive prehistoric cathedral as a community. Since most people can’t visit caves like this, and it’s often actively discouraged in order to preserve the works of art, this is a way to learn a little history, connect with the past, and have some fun as a community or family. You could use this as a lead up to your autumnal equinox celebration, since it takes…
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An Underworld Focus
At this time of year, I pay a lot of attention to one part of my Focus*. As altar-y spaces go, it is unquestionably the “witchiest” part of mine: bones, skulls, fossils of extinct species, a mummified bat, images of prehistoric cave paintings, megalithic spiral carvings and departed loved ones, a dried pomegranate. It is where I keep the black jar of rose water with which I have anointed several dead people, and the tiny jar of cedar oil, veteran of so many Hallows rituals, whose scent reminds me of the inside of a coffin. It is The Underworld. My Focus is built in a bookcase, with one shelf removed…
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A Deeper Look into Atheopagan Moon Observances
Not long ago, I posted about a wonderful idea that arose during the weekly Saturday Atheopagan Zoom mixer: to corollate the 13 Moon cycles of the year with the 13 Atheopagan Principles. This enables us to have “themes” for each Moon cycle of the year, and to more deeply contemplate each of the Principles as its cycle rolls around. So I floated the idea before, but no details about how each of these Moons might be celebrated. Here is a more fleshed-out presentation of these Moon themes and what we might incorporate into our celebrations of them. Note that because the Moon cycles do not mesh regularly with the solar…
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The Atheopagan Calendar of Moons: an Optional Set of New Observances
In the Atheopagan Saturday Zoom Mixer conversation this week, the group came up with a fantastic idea: to correlate the 13 Atheopagan Principles with the 13 cycles of the Moon each year, and observe each Moon as a time to contemplate and celebrate that particular Principle. This is optional, of course. You don’t have to observe them that way if it doesn’t work for you. But I was excited about the idea and I know the rest of the group was, too–it’s a way to add a celebration of lunar cycles to the Solar cycle of the Wheel of the Year in your Atheopagan practice. Each 28-day cycle of the…
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So, um…Wanna Get Ordained?
Today, I learned something amazing: In the U.S., if your religious organization’s income is ordinarily expected to be $5,000 per year or less, YOU DON’T HAVE TO FILE FOR TAX EXEMPT STATUS! What this means is that The Atheopagan Society is ALREADY a tax-exempt nonprofit. We have some steps we have to take, like formally convening the Society Council and filing some documents with the state, but we don’t have to mess with convincing IRS that we are a “real” religion until we have much higher income than is projected to be needed for the first year or two, at least. And so–like any religious nonprofit, anywhere–we can ordain people.…
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GUEST POST: An Atheopagan Example (starring: Hekate!)
by Kaigi-Ron Why did I choose Hekate? Because she controls liminal space – including the thin line between Life and Death. I was so deeply depressed, I felt doomed to die – so I wanted to cut a deal with her: If I die, please do what you can to prevent me from suffering too much on the way out. The one Atheopagan Principle I’ve generally been weak on is #6 (“PRAXIS: I enact regular ritual as a part of my practice”). But this ritual actually helped save my life. So, for those on the fence as to whether or not it’s worth it to do ritual, I say: At…
