How Do You Know It’s The Gods You’re Listening To?

September 20, 2012 By
Photo by Marty Desilets

Since I began working through the Dedicant Path this second time, I've run across a number of people who are also starting their studies with ADF. They're showing up in the comment section on Bishop In The Grove, on Facebook, and I'm wondering if there's some deeper meaning behind it. A friend of mine suggested that we should distrust the Volkswagen Bug syndrome. You know -- the one where you buy a VW bug, and then all you see around you are VW bugs. They start popping up everywhere -- in … [Read more...]

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Are You There Gods? It’s Me, Teo.

August 9, 2012 By
Looking Up

Sometimes I think there's a good reason for blind faith, religious ignorance, unwavering piety. Sometimes those seem like a much easier choices than being inquisitive, being contemplative, being patient with your own uncertainty. The dialogue around the last post extended deep into the theoretical as well as the practical, even spawning an interesting offshoot post on ecological polytheism, and a resurgence of questions about an American goddess named Columbia. The explosion of ideas did a … [Read more...]

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I Spotted Thor Down at the Quik Mart

August 7, 2012 By
Chris-Hemsworth-Thor

In a recent discussion with a group of Pagans about the development of an American pantheon for use in ADF ritual, someone said this: "When we look at historical evidence to find the ancient deities, we look at what was left behind and what survived for long periods of time, such as the stories that remained popular ... These and many other things help us to form a picture of the beliefs of an ancient culture. I'm using the same types of techniques to examine our modern culture ... Elvis is a … [Read more...]

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What is the Point of Your Religion?

April 17, 2012 By
Sprout_Lightbulb

Last week I asked, "Where does compassion belong among Pagans and Polytheists?" Beneath this first question there is another, more relevant question; one that has been nagging at me for several days: What is the point of your religion? I think this is a valuable inquiry, and no one has asked me this just yet. Yesterday I enrolled at Marylhurst University, the first step in a course of study that I hope will one day lead to a Masters of Divinity. I trust that during that course of work … [Read more...]

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Where Does Compassion Belong Among Pagans and Polytheists?

April 9, 2012 By
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I'm having a hard time with compassion. So far, I've developed a daily ritual at my altar, I've reconciled (for the time being) my differences with my Christianity, I'm working to hold the tension between my Druid Revival leanings and my ADF approach, and all of that feels good. I feel like I'm developing a balanced, sincere, honorable religious practice. And yet, I'm uncertain about compassion. By saying that I'm uncertain about compassion I don't mean to imply that I don't feel … [Read more...]

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More On Christian-Pagan Relations

September 20, 2011 By
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Pagans hate generalizations made about Pagans (he writes with a smirk). That’s one generalization I feel confident in making. In my last post I made some bold statements about the unwillingness of Pagans to accept the existence of the Christian god, knowing full well that those statements were not completely accurate (or, perhaps even close to accurate). I did so in order to get the conversation started, and I recognize that there are better ways to initiate dialogue. Many of my readers … [Read more...]

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Christian-Pagan Couples Counseling

September 16, 2011 By
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Pagans don't want to accept the possibility that the Christian god is real. Doing so might open us up to a diatribe about salvation, our inherent sinfulness, or our "need for conversion". We've had that talk a time or two, and - thank you - we'll pass. Christians are of the "One and Only God" camp. Not two. Not many. Not Columbia (probably not a god) or Thor (totally a god) or any of the other "false" gods. They aren't having the conversation about how their god relates to other gods. It's … [Read more...]

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One God, Two Gods; Red God, Blue Gods

July 6, 2011 By

Pass The Fortune Cookie Over dinner at a Chinese restaurant, my husband, a practitioner of the intuitive arts (a.k.a. a Psychic) told it to me straight-- as straight as a gay man could tell it. He talked to GOD - the one that the Monotheists worship - and GOD told him things that most Monotheists (and a number of Polytheists) would gawk at. GOD, it seems, is misunderstood. He paused from his explanation and asked if I thought he was crazy. "No", I told him. "No more than the rest of us. Plus … [Read more...]

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