Naturalistic Paganism
Category: nature
Naturalistic Paganism’s Spectral Challenge – Part Two: Calling the Specters by Émile Wayne
We cannot continue to live in ignorance of each other’s stories, or fail to hear the wailing of each other’s specters. What other specters haunt our landscape, our shared social and ecological flesh? Who struggles most under the weight of these legacies? Might this practice of listening to specters reshape our collective relationships to each other and the land? A whole haunted history is implicated in our traumatically fractured, complex present.
Read MoreRevolutionary Ideas for Imbolc, by Renee Lehnen
Like simplicity and socialism, Paganism, Naturalism, and Humanism, are also very old, very good ideas. They offer us spiritual sustenance and inspire courage to try old and new ideas as we dig ourselves out of a planet-sized pile of our own night soil. I think afternoon skaters and readers of Humanistic Paganism know that already. Have a blessed Imbolc!
Read MoreNaturalistic Paganism’s Spectral Challenge – Part One: A Haunted Landscape, by Emile Wayne
If we wish to be re-bodied, made subjects, and called-into-being through our relationship to place, we must do so with the knowledge that the land holds the memory of suffering bodies, of exploitation, dispossession, abuse, lynching, poverty, and a whole host of other specters, all of which arose out of the wounds that are our collective history. We must be ready to listen to the voices of the specters haunting the land and our histories, even if those voices call out to some of us in rebuke.
Read MoreA Shinto Experience in New Zealand by Megan Manson
It may seem strange that one of the most profoundly Shinto experiences I’ve had was in New Zealand. The whole trip, from the cave’s entrance to the meditative atmosphere of the glowworm chamber, felt like a pilgrimage to a particularly powerful Shinto shrine. To me, this visit to Te Ana-Au Glowworm Caves demonstrated how universal the concept behind Shinto – the sense of respect and awe we feel in the face of Nature’s wonders – really is, and that the kami themselves truly are to be found everywhere.
Read More“Plants as Aliens”, by Brock Haussamen
Plants are so familiar to us that we don’t see them very well. We look at them and think about them according mostly to how we use them—for food and beauty. To shift our perspective, I’ll look at plants as if they were strangers from another planet, as plant-aliens. Making them weirder may make them more vivid.
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Pagan Coming Out Day – May 2nd
Naturalistic Paganism 