Naturalistic Paganism
Let Your Paganism be the Soundtrack of Your Life!
For me, the whole point of my Paganism is to use what tools we have (especially those that evolution has given us) to make the world a better place for both future generations and ourselves. Our brains are the most wonderful and incredible thing evolution has ever produced, and music unleashes so much emotional power directly in our brains that there’s not many things that compare to it.
The Spring Equinox Approaches! + Online Rituals
March brings us the promise of returning life in spring, and for me at least, a time to look again at the pandemic. In 2020, the pandemic really started in March, after news of cases appearing in February. Then, in March of 2021, the vaccines became widely available in many industrialized countries such as the United States. (Oh, if you’d rather skip all the covid stuff and go right to the practices and online rituals, just page down).
No Nonsense Paganism: The baby and the bathwater
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
I’ve heard that phrase a lot, especially in the context of talking about Religious Naturalism and Naturalistic Paganism. I’ve said it a fair number of times as well. It means: don’t lose the good stuff while you’re trying to get rid of the bad stuff. The problem is, one person’s “baby” is another person’s “bathwater” and vice versa.
So, what is the “bathwater” for me? As I wrote in the introduction to this series, the bathwater is “occultist make-believe, New Age sloppy thinking, adolescent rebelliousness, capitalist exploitation of all this, and any excuse to dress up like a goth fairy.” It’s supernatural belief, literalistic theism, anthropocentrism, instrumental magic, dogmatic historical reconstuctionism, poorly planned and poorly executed rituals, and pointless silliness.
Read MoreWow! We are #3 among Pagan Blogs! And The Wonder is #3 among Pagan Podcasts!
Can you imagine that as recently as 2015, we were attacked and excluded, and now Naturalistic Paganism is near the top among both Pagan blogs and Pagan podcasts?!?! Wow!
No-Nonsense Paganism: What ritual really does
Last year, the Sunday before the winter solstice, my Unitarian Universalist minister led our congregation in a solstice service. When Unitarians do religious services that aren’t sermon-centric, they tend to consist of a series of quotes and hymns, more or less tied together by theme–in this case the solstice. During one part of the service, our minister read from a script describing the meaning of the Wheel of the Year and the role of ritual. The service was recorded so I was able to transcribe it:
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Pagan Coming Out Day – May 2nd
Naturalistic Paganism 