There’s just been too much cool stuff to write about lately. So I’m going to hit several items rapid fire, and maybe I’ll get around to more detailed posts in the future. 1. Care and feeding of “Atheist Pagans” While I prefer the term “non-theist”, this was a much needed post. I am so tired of hearing certain theistic Pagans cry victimhood while simultaneously demonstrating the same level of contempt for non-theistic Pagans that they accuse non-theists of. (Not to... Read more
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. But the earth abideth for ever. — Ecclesiastes 1 So last night I was going through blog posts that I had saved up to read later and came across this one by Rua Lupa at No Unsacred Place: Colloquial Quandaries: Referencing the Sun. Reading Rua’s posts for me is sometimes like banging my head against the wall. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong... Read more
I came across this article on Yoga as the “New Satanism” recently on MMM. It would have been more accurately titled, “Yoga is the new Satanic scare” — since it has nothing to do with actual Satanism, but rather is about certain Christians’ demonization of yoga. The article called to mind an earlier report in NPR about the yoga in the public schools and the allegation that it is promoting Hinduism. Let me start with a caveat: There are many... Read more
This is not news, but I just came across these two obituaries for men that both died in 2011, around the time I began this blog, men whose ideas are very important to my vision of life. Theodore Roszak (November 15, 1933 – July 5, 2011) Theodore Roszak died in 2011 at the age of 77. Roszak was the author of The Making of a Counter Culture (1969), Where the Wasteland Ends (1972), Unfinished Animal: The Aquarian Frontier and the... Read more
Check out my new post at Dreaming the Myth Forward: Jungian Eco-Psychology: Touching nature through psyche and psyche through nature. I present some of the basic insights of a Jungian Eco-Psychology and put the Jungian concepts of a collective unconscious, Self, and individuation in an ecological context. Read more
Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them. — Cormac McCarthy, The Road I’ve never been good at tradition. But going it alone, I have found, has its pitfalls too. I was raised Mormon. Mormonism is an authoritarian religion, so truth is defined and practice dictated from the top down. This works well for children and adolescents, who need varying degrees of structure. But I eventually came to believe that the Mormon church wanted... Read more
P. Sufenas Virius Lupus has published another provocative post over at Queer I Stand, entitled “Seeing the Forest for the…Ents?!?” in which he denies that Paganism can accurately be described as “nature worship”. Specifically, he denies that Pagans worship natural phenomena, like the sun or trees, as contrasted with the “divine force” within or behind the phenomena, which Lupus analogizes to Tolkien’s Ents, which personify the “spirit of the trees”. Lupus wrote: What does not go on in modern Paganism... Read more
I am in a spiritual slump … again. I have not been able to get into my practice for a long time. I even took off my Pagan necklace because it just didn’t feel right. It’s not that I don’t identify as Pagan. It’s that I’m not feeling it. I’ve lost my Pagan groove. Actually, this is kind of the story of my life. Emerson wrote, “Life is wasted in the necessary preparation of finding what is the true way,... Read more
Last week, at my Unitarian discussion group, I got a humility check. That’s a big part of the reason I attend the Unitarian church. The people I attend with often challenge my assumptions. I sometimes end up feeling like an ass, but better for it in the long run. On this particular occasion, I had made a comment about people who believe in an afterlife. We had been talking about the belief in heaven and hell, and I made a... Read more
Teo Bishop recently wrote about adding context to Pagan rituals: “I wish that just once I could go to a CUUPS ritual, or an ADF Druid ritual, and someone would get up and speak. I wish they’d provide me with context. I wish they’d say — this is how all of this fits into my life, and this is something for you to reflect on as you stand in this circle, or sit before this altar. I can’t tell you... Read more
The Allergic Pagan
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