Have you read Ursula Le Guin's classic short story, The ones who walk away from Omelas? Omelas is a privileged city, almost a utopia, apart from the one thing that enables its citizens to lead full, happy, and carefree lives - and that one thing is what makes many people walk away from Omelas. Would you walk away from Omelas? Or would you consider that the bargain is justified? Read more
When they are ripped out of their environment, lifeways, and culture, they do not flourish. Look at the problems experienced by First Nations people in North America. Look at the alienation of Europeans who are divorced from our indigenous lifeways both by capitalism and barren forms of religion. The destruction of ancient pagan religions in Europe was a tragedy from which the European psyche has never recovered. As members of the contemporary Pagan revival, struggling to recover our ancestral ways from the wreck of history, we owe it to our relations, the indigenous peoples of the world, to help prevent such a tragedy for them. Read more
I have been asked twice recently why people need labels for sexual orientations and gender identities; one person commented, "aren't we all just human beings?" People have also wondered if we need theological labels like 'polytheist', 'pantheist', 'monist' etc. To me this question is a bit like asking why we need names for things. Read more
Tim was a boy who was afraid of his own shadow. It followed him around all the time, and it never said anything. It grew bigger and smaller seemingly at random. Sometimes Tim shouted "GO AWAY!" but it still clung tenaciously to his feet. Read more
Yvonne Aburrow and I are pleased to announce that we will be co-editing an anthology entitled Pagan Consent Culture: Building Communities of Empathy and Autonomy. Your contributions are invited. Read more
The Little Mermaid was …autistic? Read more
Our desire that our groups or traditions be ideologically perfect will not serve us now. Whether we are ready to face it or not, we are in a life or death situation. It is time to embrace our imperfect allies, because that is all we have, and all we are. Read more
Whenever I confront my personal ethical choices around sustainability and ecology, I realise that everything depends on everything else. One choice may be more sustainable than another, but it may have other deleterious effects. You fix one part of the ecosystem, another gets broken. You try to fix poverty by donating clothes to charity shops (thrift stores) and then discover you have undermined small-scale indigenous clothing manufacture. You buy fair trade goods and then discover that they have been shipped over vast distances. Read more
The world is alive and aware and we are part of it. Read more
Guest post: Julian Betkowski shares his impressions of the recent Polytheist Leadership Conference in Fishkill, New York. Read more
Dowsing for Divinity
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