Naturalistic Paganism
Happy Winter Solstice!
Happy Winter Solstice, or Yule! Of course, our spherical planet also gives us the beautiful symmetry of the Summer Solstice (Litha) being celebrated now by our Southern Hemisphere friends. With the exact Solstice moment at 5 pm (EST) on December 21st, the longest night for most of those in America is the night of the 21st, but for some in Eastern Eurasia, the longest night is the night of the 20th. This is different for every time zone, and is easy to figure out. If the instant of the Solstice is in the morning (before noon) in your local time zone, then the longest night is the night before. If it’s in the afternoon or evening, the the longest night is the night after the Winter Solstice for you.
Playlist for the Wheel of the Year: Winter Solstice
Over the years, I have created rituals to celebrate the Wheel of the Year with my wife and children. Music has been an essential part of the experience. Without it, it would be much more difficult to create the sense of sacred time and space and to evoke the experience I desire for each ritual. So I want to share with you my playlist for each station on the Wheel of Year. Here’s the last list. Enjoy! And share your suggestions in the comments below.
Read MoreYule (the Winter Solstice) is coming up fast, + a bunch of Online Rituals!
For many of us, this is a big Sabbat, which takes a more preparation (and if you are buying gifts, the Naturalistic Pagan Gift List here might help). Whether it’s due to cultural inertia, or kid’s expectations, the importance of Stars and this Sabbat, or whatever, it’s a big deal in our family. We are already well along with the the Solstice doors Advent practice and with decorating. If you have been doing your Winter Solstice traditions for years, if you are just starting your family and are currently building the traditions which will bring the Universe to your kids, or anything in between, I hope that the traditions and practices on this post are found to be useful, inspiring, or just comforting.
No-Nonsense Paganism: My Winter Ritual
In my first post in this series, I explained how I wanted to strip away everything non-essential from pagan ritual and build it from the ground up–literally, starting with our interaction with the earth and the other-than-human beings who we share it with.
In the second part, I talked about various occasions during the winter season which present opportunities for ritual. As pagans, we need way more ritual in our lives than just eight times a year. The shift from Daylight Savings, feeling the first bite of winter, the solstice, the first snowfall, Christmas, New Years, and the coldest day–these are all good times for ritual.
And in the last post, I talked about the process of creating a ritual, starting with listening–to nature, to our own bodies, and to our unconscious. Ritual is a conscious structure applied to an unconscious response to the more-than-human world. And I focused on using simple gestures and poetic language, inspired by the practice of deep listening.
In this part, I said I would share my own ritual for the solstice. I vacillated about sharing this, because I’m not certain about it’s usefulness to you. If you create a ritual using the process I described in the last post, it’s not going to look anything like mine. But I’m going to share it anyway, just to give you an example of one outcome of the process.
Read MoreNo-Nonsense Paganism: Creating a Ritual (part 2)
In the last part, I wrote about how to get inspiration for creating a ritual from listening to the living world around us, to our own bodies, and to our deep selves. In this part, I’ll talk about how to create a ritual with a simple gesture and some poetic words.
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Pagan Coming Out Day – May 2nd
Naturalistic Paganism 