Here’s the outline for my family ritual for All Hallows. Because I was exhausted on Halloween, we decided to delay the ritual for a week, and so we celebrated it this past Sunday, which was closer to the mid-autumn point (Nov. 7) anyway. This ritual is geared for the ages of my children 9 and 13. As they they get older, we will alter the ritual accordingly. All Hallow’s Eve / Mid-Autumn 2011 My son reads: The last time we... Read more
About a year ago ( September 30, 2010), my uncle killed himself. I was the first time I had experienced the death of someone close to me that I loved. This past Sunday, my local UU church observed a Day of the Dead service, and my family and I remembered Dan’s passing. We brought pictures of Dan to the church to place on an altar with other pictures congregants had brought of loved ones. The pastor slowly struck a bell... Read more
Well, I said I would post the warts and all here. Now I know why Pagan parents might not want to have a Pagan family ritual on Halloween. After spending two days constructing a haunted house on my front walk and porch (and spending ungodly amounts of money), and then getting myself and everyone else in costume, and then walking my kids for two hours through the neighborhood in the mid-40’s, and then forgetting to eat dinner, all after a... Read more
Over at Patheos, Star Foster has posted about Halloween and the Christian “war” on Halloween. She emphasizes that Halloween is a “secular holiday”, even for most Pagans: “Yet only a very small minority of us actually claims to celebrate Halloween as a religious holiday, and generally if they do it’s either to use a common term that’s easily understood or for promotional reasons. The majority of Pagans don’t claim Halloween as a holy day, though we do celebrate on October... Read more
I was just listening to a lecture which I downloaded from The Teaching Company entitled “The Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition”. (By the way, I love these lectures from The Teaching Company. I’ve purchased over a dozen of them — always when on sale though.) Anyway, the lecturer, Teofilo F. Ruiz, was speaking about the Waldensian heresy, which was started by Peter Waldo in the 12th century. Waldo was a rich merchant converted to... Read more
Tradition, tradition! Tradition! Tradition, tradition! Tradition! Who, day and night, must scramble for a living, Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers? And who has the right, as master of the house, To have the final word at home? The Papa, the Papa! Tradition. The Papa, the Papa! Tradition. From Fiddler on the Roof A few days ago, my wife and I had conversation number 7. We have certain conversations that we have over and over in our... Read more
Why I love Neopaganism: #1 I love that Neopaganism honors the dark as well as the light. Jung wrote that “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,but by making the darkness conscious.” Probably the most significant realization of my life has been that I am not one; I am many seeking to become one; and that true power does not come from setting the parts of myself at war with one another, but from integrating my many... Read more
Why I hate Neopaganism: #1 I hate magic. Most Neopagans seem to believe in some form of instrumental or practical magic (i.e., spells). I have complained extensively about this elsewhere. Not only do I not believe in the mechanics of “raising energy” or the premise that intention is power, but I find the notion of controlling nature as a religious practice to be discordant with what I understand as the Neopagan ideal of atunement with nature. I am fortunate... Read more
Yesterday we had an amazing storm. The wind blew and blew, for hours. The rain fell, but did not pour, the whole time. This is unusual for where I live. Our storms are usually violent, but brief. Since we are nearing All Hallow’s Eve, my mind was naturally drawn to the legend of the Wild Hunt. I could imagine that the the Hunter had released the Wild Hunt yesterday and all manner of wild dark spirits were racing through the... Read more
A little while ago, I posted about my favorite movie, The Fountain. It is one of three of my all time favorite movies. The second one is Solaris. I first saw Solaris at the international film theater as an undergraduate. It was the 1972 Russian version by Andrei Tarkovsky. I went right out at read the book by Stanislav Lem, which became one of my favorite books. It was remade in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh, and starred George Clooney. The... Read more
The Allergic Pagan
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