Via the blog of OBOD Chief Philip Carr-Gomm, here’s a link to a video by the BBC on a project by a Pagan group called HAD (Honouring the Ancient Dead) that seeks to rebury ancient human remains currently stored in museum basements and such. They’re having some success. The BBC website doesn’t seem to have a way for me to embed the video here, but here’s the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8530281.stm. The video is worth watching if only for the opening few... Read more

A big part of my spiritual quest is an attempt to better understand the origins of religion. Along those lines, I’ve had several people recommend The Alphabet Versus The Goddess by Leonard Shlain. I finally read the book, and from the very beginning my assessment of it has been “correlation does not equal causation.” Shlain’s basic concept is that writing in general and writing with alphabets in particular (as opposed to writing with hieroglyphs or pictograms) is a decidedly left-brain... Read more

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Stephanie on the Ethical Witches list asks “Are Science and Paganism mutually incompatible?” No more so than science and any other religion, which from my viewpoint is a firm “no.” Paganism is a Nature religion, and science is humanity’s collective effort to explain and understand Nature. Most Pagans have at least a passing interest in science and a strong respect for scientific knowledge – I’ve yet to meet a Pagan who argued against evolution. But we see Nature as poetry... Read more

A friend forwarded an excerpt of an e-mail Q&A; with Bishop John Shelby Spong. The excerpt dealt with worship – in particular, the questioner felt like the word “worship” was an inappropriate label for their church services. He recommended calling them “celebrations” instead. In his response, Bishop Spong pointed out that changing what you call the service won’t matter if you still approach God as some great disconnected Other out there. He said: If worship is to have meaning, it... Read more

Here’s a rather long piece from the New York Times Magazine titled “Is There an Ecological Unconscious?” It deals with “the notion that evolution endowed humans with a craving for nature.” Apparently this concept is somewhat controversial among professional psychologists. It seems obvious to Pagans, and to most people who spend any time in the natural world. The article presents a related issue, “a fundamental problem of ecopsychology: even if we can establish that as we move further into an... Read more

I was at Avebury in 2007. But before I went, I had memories of being there in the 1930s. Via WitchVox, here’s an article from Psychology Today on reincarnation – in particular the work of Professor Ian Stevenson, who catalogued “over 2,500 cases, from cultures around the world, where small children would describe previous lives and deaths they had experienced that turned out to correspond in detail with those of real people whose stories the children could not have known.”... Read more

Via the Wild Hunt, here’s an article on Lisa Johnson, a “for-hire expert in all your voodoo needs” – who’s also the sister of former NFL (and Southern Methodist University) running back Eric Dickerson. Johnson says the Saints won yesterday’s Super Bowl because every “root doctor, voodoo priest, and conjurer” was working magic for New Orleans. I’ve never had much use for athletes who thank God for helping them beat their opponents to a bloody pulp in some athletic contest.... Read more

Here’s an interesting exchange: New Atheist Christopher Hitchens interviewed by UU minister Marilyn Sewell. I found the article via Religion Dispatches, where it was summarized / reviewed by Eric Reitan of Oklahoma State University. As I think I’ve made clear, I find it frustrating when Hitchens et al claim that fundamentalism is the only “real” religion. Sewell describes herself as a liberal Christian, Hitchens responds “you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.” I don’t know how Hitchens is... Read more

In my look at the argument between theists and atheists, one of my key points is that “not knowing” is OK. The big questions of Life are beyond our ability to know with any real certainty. We don’t know what existed before the Big Bang, we don’t know what happens to our individual consciousness after death, and we don’t know The Meaning Of Life. We have hints and intimations, bits and pieces that are meaningful and helpful to some of... Read more