paganism

Earth Day 2013

April 22, 2013 By Gus diZerega Leave a Comment

Today is Earth Day. Established by Senator Gaylord Nelson and some college students back in 1970, Earth Day records and honors a moment when many Americans decided to honor their home and make a personal commitment to protect it. At its root, Earth Day encourages a shift away from the ideal of domination to one of care-taking. Earth Day offers an alternative vision to the religious and secular insanity that sees our proper role as lords and masters of “creation.” It is one of the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Earth Day, environmentalism, Pagan, paganism, power, technology Leave a Comment

The Transforming Power of Pagan Religion in a Christian World

April 11, 2013 By Gus diZerega 16 Comments

Over 1000 years of Christian domination, enforced by swords and guns, fires and pogroms, has decisively changed the way even most non-Christian Westerners view the world. Most particularly, it has made it difficult for people to see the world as anything more than a backdrop of the human drama, the stage upon which we strut, and a supply of resources to be used as we wish. In America, this tendency reached its most extreme expression. The Protestant conception of God tended to be … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: animism, beauty, ecotheology, harmony, immanence, Pagan, Pagan theologies, Pagan theology, paganism, shamanism 16 Comments

Why I Am a Pagan

April 1, 2013 By Gus diZerega 6 Comments

Patheos has asked writers to explain in 200 words why they practice their religion. Had anyone told me I would be a Pagan a day before Midsummer, I would have laughed in disbelief. I was a guest at a Midsummer Sabbat. When it finally started, over two hours late, I was happy mostly because that meant it would eventually end, and I could go home without insulting the person who invited me. A circle was formed in a glade by participants and guests. The priest walked to its center and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Pagan, paganism, religious identity, Why I Am a Pagan 6 Comments

A Pagan Perspective on Wilderness

March 26, 2013 By Gus diZerega 8 Comments

I recently spent a weekend at a Geography of Hope conference focused on the thinking of Aldo Leopold, perhaps America’s most important environmental thinker. He is rivaled today only by Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. I personally consider Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac a classic because, for me, the test of a classic is how the author seemingly gets smarter and more insightful each time we read him. Such has been my oft-repeated experience with Leopold. There is likely no major … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Aldo Leopold, colonialism, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Pagan, paganism, place, wilderness, wilderness preserves 8 Comments

The Mirage of Monotheism

February 15, 2013 By Gus diZerega 27 Comments

For thousands of years people lived in a world they experienced as populated by a multitude of spiritual forces. Apparently they did not think of them as being subordinate to some central divine king, if for no other reason than because they were acquainted with no such concept. Today many scholars see this primordial awareness of spiritual multiplicity as a first step towards more sophisticated spiritual understandings, a spiritual journey culminating in monotheism. To them, we contemporary … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: monotheism, Pagan, paganism, polytheism 27 Comments

If Thought Forms Exist, What Can We Do About Them?

February 7, 2013 By Gus diZerega 7 Comments

I have tried to make the case that ideas are more important than we usually acknowledge. They are more than just fleeting flights of subjectivity that pass through our minds and are gone. Thought forms are ideas on steroids. They are also our creations, though I suspect they have other sources as well. Thought forms are dependent on the people who generate the mental energy empowering them. Good or bad, they are expressions of human creativity. Take away our energy and focus, and they … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: egalitarianism, hierarchy, meditation, Pagan, paganism, politics, positive magick, right wing, thought forms 7 Comments

Thought Forms and the American Crisis: Esoteric Insights

January 26, 2013 By Gus diZerega 6 Comments

If Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker can become thought forms able to influence a sensitive medium, human history becomes a great deal more complicated. The idea of a thought form holds that we create and empower psychic energy by molding it through disciplined focused attention. The literary thought form concept suggests something similar can arise from less disciplined, less focused attention by many people over a prolonged period. This would be particularly likely if the center of focus … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: egalitarianism, hierarchy, liberalism, Pagan, paganism, politics, right wing, thought forms 6 Comments

Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Thought Forms

January 11, 2013 By Gus diZerega 22 Comments

I have been over my head in a scholarly writing project, and my blog posts have suffered. However, the paper I am working on melds matters metaphysical with contemporary political phenomena, even though I will not go explicitly into the metaphysics there. But the metaphysical issues are important, maybe very much so. It dawned on me that an earlier blog post I’d made had set the stage for that discussion of politics and metaphysics. Further, a mostly Pagan audience is more receptive to the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: channeling, Don Frew, Ouija, Pagan, paganism, psychic phenomena, Star Wars, thought forms 22 Comments

How the ‘Christian’ right is destroying Christianity in the Middle East

December 26, 2012 By Gus diZerega 20 Comments

I have linked to a sad but hopefully thought provoking story about the current travails of Christianity, which is facing possible extinction in the Middle East. My concern is not so much the faith itself as with the people adhering to this faith. Christians are apparently at genuine risk of disappearing from the Middle East. The usual reason given is “radical Islam.” I will be the last person to say anything nice about radical Islam, the Muslim world’s equivalent to Christian … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: christian right, Pagan, paganism, politics, radical Islam, toleration 20 Comments

Looking Back on the Election: A Pagan Perspective

December 4, 2012 By Gus diZerega 7 Comments

Editor's note: To give Gus more posting flexibility, we've moved Pointedly Pagan to a new format! Please update your RSS feeds, or subscribe via e-mail (link on the right-hand sidebar). And now, here's Gus... Having enthusiastically urged Pagans to vote a straight Democratic ticket in every case where Republicans were competitive, it is fitting I describe how I think the election's outcome affects our community. I think it will be profoundly for the good. My book on the culture war and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2012 election, conservatism, Pagan, paganism, politics, right wing 7 Comments