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The Rise of an Atheopagan
A guest post by Rachel. Reblogged from woodsmokeandchaos.wordpress.com. The term ‘Atheopagan’ I first learned from this blog: Atheopaganism, but the basis and principles had been growing in me before I realised there could be a name for it. It was just an idea, a notion of loving mythology and ancient cultures, absorbing the lessons they teach. It was knowing the importance of the planet and power of the cosmos, but seeing it from an entirely scientific and physical- as opposed to supernatural– point of view. Where it began. I never needed a creation story to make the universe wonderful. A deity making a universe in seven days made no impact on how immense and…
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Come Join Us at Pantheacon!
For the fourth year in a row, Atheopagan events will take place at Pantheacon, the largest indoor gathering of Pagans in the United States. Pantheacon 2018 will be held February 16-19, at the Doubletree convention hotel in San Jose, California. Pantheacon is an adventure: there is wide-ranging content on all sorts of Pagan paths, and the attendees include many memorable, wonderful, and colorful folks. Much of the material isn’t really germane to Atheopaganism, but I always find useful and thought-provoking presentations to attend, and the experience of seeing in person friends I rarely get to experience other than online is a real treat. This year, I am involved in three…
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In Memoriam: Ursula K. Le Guin, Cultural Radical and Deep Humanist
Ursula K. LeGuin has died. I won’t recount her many works or the impact she had on speculative fiction in her long career as a writer. That information can be found in the obituary linked above, and elsewhere. No, this is a personal memorial. For of all writers, I believe Ursula K. Le Guin’s impact on me has been the most profound. She dared to ask subversive questions. What if there were no gender? What if people in wealthy societies were required to confront the suffering that supports them? What if human society successfully integrated technology and rich culture and environmental sustainability? What if…what if…what if. She wrote with such…
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Announcing the Atheopaganism Patreon Campaign!
Atheopaganism has really taken off in the past couple of years! Our web traffic is up, our Facebook group is soon to break 1,000 members, and we’re engaged in the broader online conversation of the Pagan community to a significant degree. This is exciting! It’s also quite a bit of work. I am unemployed at the moment, so I have the time, but soon I will (presumably) be going back to work and Atheopagan activities will need to fit in around that. For this reason and after a lot of soul-searching about it, I have decided to create a Patreon fundraising campaign to ensure that Atheopaganism gets the attention and…
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We Are All Connected: On Atheopagan Counseling
We are all connected: to each other, biologically, to the Earth, chemically, to the rest of the Universe atomically. —Neil deGrasse Tyson So, I’ve written about our responsibility to the Earth. About how being who we are—Atheopagans—implies a necessary requirement that we stand up, in whatever great and small ways we can, for a better world. And I’ve written about Atheopaganism as a path to greater happiness: an individual path of growth and wisdom. A way to open into the joy of the magnificent Universe, into celebrating the extraordinary beauty of noble, flawed, gorgeous humanity. And those are true things. But there is a point between the global and the…
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The Ritual Cycle of the Rain Baby: An Example
So, last year I wrote about a new tradition for Riverain, the Water Sabbath, which is how I celebrate the holiday that falls between the Winter Solstice (Yule) and the Spring Equinox (High Spring). Riverain comes at the height of the wet season in California’s Mediterranean climate, when the hills are green and the creeks and rivers are running high. Riverain is an example of my firm belief that the Sabbaths (holidays) we celebrate around the Wheel of the Year should be rooted in the actual climate, culture, growth cycles, and land where we live, rather than reflecting some other culture or place in the world. The traditional Pagan holiday at the…
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No Gods. No Masters. No Priesthood.
It’s a sadly familiar tale in the Pagan community: the coven or local organization that is run by a charismatic “high priestess” or “high priest” (or both), doling out “training” and “degrees of advancement” based on how well the subject toes the line, fawns over the “priest/ess”, and, in some particularly sad cases, provides them with sexual favors as a part of the “initiatory process”. Or…the narcissistic Pagan “leader” who works to cultivate a young and pretty entourage of on-tap adorers as a part of imparting their “wisdom” to followers…and for whom those not so young or pretty never quite seem to make the grade for advancement. Or…the dirty secret…
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Killing the Sixties: Abuse, Consent, #MeToo and the Pagan Community
Today, the revelation of accusations of child molestation against the late Ar nDraiocht Fein founder Isaac Bonewits hit the Pagan community. This comes in the wake of the conviction of Kenny Klein, a prominent figure in Blue Star Wicca, ongoing concern about Pagan sexual culture provoked by the likes of the Frosts, and community discussion about violation of boundaries and consent at Pagan conferences and gatherings. It is also, of course, currently in the context of the #MeToo movement, which has brought countless women forward with their own stories and acknowledgement that they, too, have been harrassed and/or assaulted…and concerns on the part of some about how, exactly, due process…
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Approaching the Animal Self
I’m a white guy. I mean, a seriously white guy. My 23andme.com DNA profile shows me as having 100% Northern European ancestry, pretty much all of which is English/Irish except for 1.2% Scandinavian, which has GOT to be a Viking raider. Not one of my ancestors ever had the courage to mate out of group, to choose someone different than the people s/he was raised by. As a white guy, I’m the first to admit that I’m kind of crippled. I am the product of centuries of European cultural “bleaching out” of human wildness in favor of manners, rectitude, forebearance, privacy, and shame. Of steady alienation from the body in favor…
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Crunch Time: Pagan Priorities and the Otherworld
The fundamental difference between theistic Pagans and Atheopagans is that the former propose that there exists an “Otherworld”: a parallel dimension of reality in which reside gods, spirits, fairies and other such beings. Atheopagans, having a naturalistic worldview, don’t subscribe to this idea. As I look around the community, I think there are questions about this kind of belief that haven’t been asked, and really ought to be. They are: Is such a belief useful? In other words what, exactly, is the point of supposed interaction with an Otherworld of gods, fairies and suchlike? In a time of cultural and environmental crisis, is prioritization of this theory healthy, both individual…
