What naturalistic (small-p) pagan books have been an inspiration to you?
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Category: John Halstead, Latest Posts
Tags: Adrienne Rich, animism, Annie Dillard, books, David Abram, David Whyte, Mary Oliver, metaphysical section, Natural Pagans, naturalism, Pagan, Paganism, poetry, Rile, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Steinbeck, Terry Tempest Williams, Wendell Berry, Wordsworth
Maybe that’s why I love summer so much. More than any other, it’s the season of liberty. It represents an enduring freedom of the spirit. Sometimes, on the best days, it seems that summer stands outside of the regular flow of time, magical, eternal.
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What simple, seemingly mundane objects or events in your life might become sacred for you? Have you ever felt compelled to pour a little water from your water bottle onto the dry ground? What would it be like to experience the numinosity of a soap dish or a window latch? What might your kettle or your cooking pot teach you about the sacred?
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General acceptance of the phrase, “the rights of nature”, could trigger a paradigm shift in Western consciousness, a shift from viewing nature instrumentally–as having value only for humans–to viewing nature as inherently valuable–as having value in its own right. And that could have profound consequences for human behavior and our impact on the more-than-human world.
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Category: John Halstead, Latest Posts
Tags: blue rights, classical liberalism, community, green rights, individual, Natural Pagans, negative rights, personhood, persons, positive rights, red rights, rights, rights of nature, social contract theory, trees
The goal of my naturalistic practice is not to project my will onto the world, but instead to harmonize my will with reality, which is Nature. In other words, I want to fully inhabit my life in this one world just as it is. I have no evidence for an otherworld, but belief in an otherworld is not required, for the meaningful practice of magic.
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