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The morning sun rising in the east calls to the Bright Youth in me, and the Bright Youth responds. The full moon calls to the Muse, and the waning and dark moon to the Dark Maiden who is a part of me. The earth I touch with my fingers calls to the Mother, in both her guises, Nurturing and Devouring. The bright green shoots rising from the earth and the green leaves on the trees on my street in the spring, these call to the Stag King, while the red leaves fallen to the earth in the autumn call to the Dying God. The spring storm that rises up suddenly in the west calls to the Storm King. The night sky, the dark space between the stars, calls to Mother Night, my death come to make peace. The gods-without call and the gods-within respond.

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"10,000 Pagans Raise Their Voices For Environmental Action": Help make this a reality

b2ap3_thumbnail_lumia-730-selfie.jpg"10,000 Pagans Raise Their Voices For Environmental Action"

This might be the headline this summer. 

Help us get 10,000 signatures by Summer Solstice this year (June 21) for "A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment".

Why 10,000?

It's been 2 weeks since "A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment" was published and already over 2,000 people have signed from all over the world.  10,000 Pagans represents just 1% of the Pagans in the United States.  Since we are collecting these signatures from all over the world, the goal is even more realistic.

Why the Summer Solstice?

The Pope's environmental encyclical is going to be published this summer.  It is expected to be historical, and it is already drawing a lot of media attention.  A previous environmental encyclical by Pope Benedict explicitly contrasted Catholic earth stewardship with "neo-paganism" and another statement by Pope Francis suggests he may have a similar perspective on paganism.  Regardless of whether Pope Francis explicitly mentions paganism this summer, there is going to be talk in the press about paganism, and this is an ideal opportunity to share a Pagan vision of ecological sustainability with the world.

Here's what you can do:

  1. If you belong to a Pagan organization that has a mailing list, email list or newsletter, ask someone in the organization to promote the statement to its members.
  2. Share the statement with 5 Pagan friends in a personal email or personal Facebook message. We need signatures, not Facebook likes (so a post on your wall is good, but not enough). So ask your friends to go to ecopagan.com to sign the statement.
  3. If you haven't already done so, go to ecopagan.com to sign the statement.
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John Halstead also writes at AllergicPagan.com (Patheos), HumanisticPaganism.com, GodsandRadicals.org, GodisChange.org, Neo-Paganism.com, and The Huffington Post. He was the principal facilitator of “A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment” (ecopagan.com), and the editor of the anthology, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans. John is also a Shaper of the fledgling Earthseed community (godischange.org). To speak with John, contact him on Facebook.

Comments

  • Greybeard
    Greybeard Friday, 08 May 2015

    When I learned Wicca, I was told that Wiccans believe in abundance of Mother Earth. I now find all these doom and gloom prognostications unfortunate. Lots of guilt for human existence is promoted by certain pagan leaders and groups along with pseudo-science and left wing political agendas. Not all pagans share the radical political agenda despite the pseudo-science and guilt.

    Jung (writing about Germans) said collective guilt was "for psychologists a fact, and it will be one of the most important tasks of therapy to bring the Germans to recognize this guilt" The same kind of collective guilt is a big part of neo-pagan thinking about humans "damaging the ecosystem." A Jungian solution would focus on dealing with the guilt.

  • John Halstead
    John Halstead Sunday, 10 May 2015

    I don't think Jung was saying that the Germans' collective guilt was unfounded, only that it needed to be brought to consciousness. Likewise, for our collective guilt for harming the ecosystem, we need to bring this to consciousness. Climate-change denial works against this.

    Here are some links discussing what you mischaracterize as "pseudo-science":

    NASA - http://climate.nasa.gov/
    Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/
    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) - http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/literacy.html
    American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - http://whatweknow.aaas.org/
    National Academy of Sciences - http://dels.nas.edu/Report/America-Climate-Choices/12781
    Government Office for Science (UK) - http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121212135622/http://www.bis.gov.uk/go-science/climatescience

    If these groups don't speak for the mainstream scientific community, then I don't know who does.

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