Naturalistic Paganism
What the Perseids (just a few weeks away, Aug 11-13!) Taught me about Parenting, by Starstuff, Contemplating
This a favorable moon phase this year, so this may be your only chance for many years to see the Perseid meteor shower! Your life could change before the next chance in 2026 – and if you have kids, this is your only chance to share it with them when they are their current ages. Here is how my kids taught me this:
My sons a few years ago, as we planned for that year’s Perseid Meteor trip:
K: Next year the Moon will prevent our trip, but the Moon is perfect this year, it could be an awesome show – maybe like the year we watched by Lake Michigan!
R: Yeah, and the bulldozer we saw there was kinda weird.
K: No, not then. That show was good, but nothing like the Lake Michigan year.
R: But that was a lot of meteors!
K: Yes. It was cool, but not as many meteors as the Lake Michigan year…..
R: But we’ve never seen them over Lake Michigan!
K: Yes, we have. We were out on the sand for hours!
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The Summer Cross-Quarter (Summer Thermstice) Approaches (+ online Lunasa Rituals)!
Lunasa is the start of the prime campfire and stargazing season – bringing the unique combination of both warmth and longer nights “Sunlit Summer”, see the 8 season names here. Lunasa arrives again, but it’s not like last year, nor the year before. Why not? Because the many nested and interwoven cycles of our solar system make each stargazing season unique, and hence make every Lunasa unique! Last year the moon washed out the Perseids. This year, it looks like we’ll have a wonderful Perseid show, with the moon mostly out of the picture – August 13 – 15! Plus, here are a half dozen online Lunasa ritual opportunities!
Meeting the Meat: An Animal Initiation, by Mark Green
We are reasoning Pagans. We revere the Earth and Cosmos without gilding the lily with the supernatural.
We are poets and singers, dancers and artists. We paint the sky with our pigments, our tones, our voices, the products of our loving hands.
And under all that, all that lovely amazing late-evolution neocortical creativity and executive function, there is The Animal.
Finding My People, by Susan Paterson
Meeting new people is pretty scary. Not knowing how to behave in a new context is also scary. I am certainly not the prime example of social anxiety, but still, the feelings are there and they are uncomfortable. Signing on to the Atheopagan Web Weaving conference was intimidating, softened only by the fact that I have interacted with a handful of the attendees online in the past.
No-Nonsense Paganism: Keep It Simple
In this series, “No-Nonsense Paganism”, I have been striving to strip Paganism down, take away its ancient or faux-ancient terminology, its mythological and legendary pretensions, its foreign (to wherever you are) folk practices, its superstitious and pseudo-scientific justifications, and its esoteric ritual structures, and get down to the phenomenological core of pagan experience: our interaction with the earth and the other-than-human beings who we share it with. You can check out previous posts in this series here.
In this part, I want to talk about why and how to keep ritual simple.
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Pagan Coming Out Day – May 2nd
Naturalistic Paganism 