Naturalistic Paganism
Call for essays: “Atheism and Meaning”
Friedrich Nietzsche died on August 25 in 1900. Nietzsche is perhaps best known for his declaration that “God is dead”. The statement is commonly interpreted as a declaration of atheism, but it as much a comment on what Nietzsche perceived as the nihilism of the culture of the time. In honor of Nietzsche, our themes for the month of August will be atheism and meaning. For those of us that are atheists, how do we find meaning in the world, in spite of, or perhaps because of our atheism?
Send your submissions to humanisticpaganism [at] gmail [dot] com.
[Starstuff, Contemplating] “Lunasa: The Power of Summer!” byHeather and Jon Cleland Host
We are assemblages of ancient atoms forged in stars – atoms organized by history to the point of consciousness, now able to contemplate this sacred Universe of which we are a tiny, but wondrous, part.
(Lunasa,* Lughnasadh, Lammas, or the Summer Thermstice: August 1)
Standing in a clearing in the woods one morning, with the air still cool around me, I felt the heat of the Sun on my back. I tell my kids, “Feel that Sun? It’ll be hot soon.” The cool nights are simply not long enough for the heat to dissipate, and the long hot days with direct sun mean it has been getting hotter since before Summer Solstice. Lunasa celebrates this heat at its peak: this is the hottest part of the summer. It is also the holiday to celebrate the fruits of summer’s heat with the first harvests of the year. Read More
“The Transcendentalists: An Original Relation to the Universe” by John Halstead
This essay was originally published at Neo-Paganism.com.
“In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau’s famous quotation, near his cabin site at Walden Pond
Nature Religion in the United States begins with the Transcendentalists in mid-19th century New England, most notably with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Both Emerson and Thoreau were early conservationists, promoting the preservation of threatened forests. Read More
“Beyond Female Role Models: The Triple Goddess as Nature” by John Halstead
The Evolution of the Androcentric Triple Goddess
Probably no motif is more ubiquitous in the Neo-Pagan culture than that of the Triple Goddess in her threefold aspects: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. While there are some historical antecedents for the Neo-Pagan Triple Goddess, she is really a 20th century creation of the author and poet, Robert Graves. Graves’ conception of the Triple Goddess evolved over several years. One of the earlier incarnations, in his book The Golden Fleece, took the form of “Maiden, Nymph, and Mother” which corresponded to the “New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon”. (“Nymph” is the Greek word for bride.) Absent from this description of the Triple Goddess was the dark “phase” of the Goddess, the “Crone”. In his next book, King Jesus Graves described her as the triform goddess of birth, love, and death, and associated her with the figures of mother, consort, and witch. Read More
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