Coming down from the mountain
–Meat Puppets
I have seen the lofty glory
I will go again some day
But for now, I’m coming down.
There is an ache in my heart right now, a longing for the people and experiences of Suntree Retreat.
...An Atheopagan Path: Journeys in the Sacred World
Musings, values and practices in non-theistic Paganism
Mark Green
Mark Green is an activist, writer and nonprofit professional with a background in environmental public policy and electoral campaigns. He is the author of "Atheopaganism: an Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science", published in 2019. A Pagan since 1987, he presents at Pantheacon and has been published in Green Egg and the anthology "Godless Paganism" (for which he wrote the foreword). His Pagan writing appears here, at the Humanistic Paganism website (humanisticpaganism.com), at the Naturalist Pagan site (naturalpagans.com) and at the Atheopaganism blog.
Spring is rolling around into summer (at least, in many places in the Northern Hemisphere), and we have come to that major pillar of the annual celebrations of many Pagans, May Day or Beltane, and the night before, which is known by many as Walpurgisnacht.
While we may not be able to conduct the usual festivities, we can still observe this Sabbath in all its richness while sheltering in place.
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Ours is an engaged spirituality: engaged in society, engaged in the world. Atheopagans care not only about our own growth, joy in living, discovery and wonder, but the well-being of our fellow humans and the biosphere of which we are each a part.
Our Atheopagan values, enshrined in the Four Sacred Pillars and the 13 Principles, are modern, progressive, inclusive, and in some cases have radical implications for improving conditions in our world. We understand the destructive and unsustainably rapacious nature of industrial capitalism, and know the values that dominate the world must change for justice, biodiversity, kindness and happiness to prevail.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the Overculture lately: how the dominant values and paradigms of our societies inform how we think, how we speak, and what we do.
For a discussion of all that, I invite you to listen to this week’s episode of THE WONDER podcast. That will give you a good sense of what I’m talking about. It was a great conversation with Arwen Gwyneth.
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John Halstead wrote an article around a table lifted from the anthology Deep Green Resistance*. It's a great piece: go ahead and read it.
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Why not consider some of the great suggestions Jon Cleland Host has over at Naturalistic Paganism?
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Much as the Christian Overculture has made it its business to erase, co-opt or appropriate pre-existing religions in the West--as well as to eradicate and supplant other cultures and traditions throughout the world--archeology presents us with treasures now and again that remind me of a different world that existed prior to the imposition of the angry sky gods of the Levant.
One prominent such example was discovered buried 13 feet deep in a peat bog in Russia in 1890. It is now known as the Shigir Idol. Made of larch wood, it is 17 feet tall, towering more than three times the height of the people who built it.
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