Join us for a LIVE gathering of Atheopagans (a type of Naturalistic Pagan) at the magnificent La Foret retreat center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, August 30 – September 2 (Labor Day Weekend) 2024! Presented by The Atheopagan Society, this 4-day, 3-night retreat will feature workshops, rituals and lots of socializing time in beautiful spaces and around the fire. The facility includes a magnificent meeting space, the Ponderosa Lodge; a fire circle; a beautiful labyrinth and more.  I was there for the previous Atheopagan retreat in 2022 – what a treasured part of my life!  I’m de ..read more

As you read this, a blast wave of trillions of energetic particles is bearing down on us, with impact expected in just 10 to 30 hours (night of May 10 – May 12).  The resulting auroras will fill the skies in many Northern areas with shimmering green, red and blue.  If you’ve never seen auroras, this could be your chance! Ready for auroras?   Solar Cycle #25 is solidly underway now, and this is a large blast.  Back in 2003  there were incredible auroras right on Samhain due to an even larger solar flare, and it looks like we again will be blessed with auroras! It’s ..read more

What, really?  See a star explode – go Nova or Supernova?  But aren’t those completely unpredictable?  How can we know when to look? Like so much else that science shows us, it’s complicated.  The upshot is that some are very predictable, and brightest predictable one in the entire night sky in your lifetime is expected to explode before Samhain this year – literally any day now.  Here’s how to see it. The Basics While a supernova is caused the core collapse of a star (and it’s timing is not precisely predictable), and is the end of a star’s life, a nova explosion can ..read more

Celebrations Attraction! Our world reawakens, and we see beauty around  us!  In addition to each of us finding beauty in our world as part of our connection to our Universe, our wider body of humankind is about to find new beauty in the night sky – with the light from a star undergoing a Nova explosion!  But hold on, don’t those happen without warning, and can’t be predicted?  Usually, yes – but a recurrent Nova can be predicted, and the only one most of have a chance to see is expected this year!   More details soon, including a ritual for when it explodes!  ..read more

The Vernal Equitherm (Beltane) is coming!  While Beltane sweeps over our whole Northern Hemisphere (with Samhain in the Southern Hemisphere), it’s especially obvious in California, more El Nino rain has again given California a superbloom!  Check out the flowers celebrating Beltane throughout so much of that state! For those in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is well and truly coming and summer is around the corner.  Flora is bursting to life even in the northern climes, and fauna frolicks in the verdure. Those in the Southern Hemisphere experience the opposite, as autumn passes ..read more

The Horn has been saved!! One of the most powerful discoveries given to us by science has been learning the astounding and glorious history of how we got here.  A key part of that discovery was the finding of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB, see picture below), literally the glow of the Big Bang or Great Radiance itself!  The actual structure which gave us our earliest baby picture of ourselves was under threat from developers (for building a condo unit), but now, with our petition and the efforts of many others, has been saved!  A number of events are planned for ..read more

Are you ready for the Eclipse April 8th?  It’s significance to Pagans, as well as Pagan Eclipse Practices, a ritual, and practical details in how to experience totality are in the Eclipse Podcast Episode! Plus Mark’s new book “Round We Dance”, Ritual Skills, etc.   All those, and more, are on the page here. And I of course don’t know about you, but for me, every minute can be a tight squeeze in my busy life.  I used to have a 30 minute commute, which adds up to 5 hours of listening time every week.  But now, with my new job, it’s only a 9 minute commute, 3 times a week ..read more

Many aspects of our world offer compelling ways to see our deep time history, Ancestors, and often similar ways to think about future generations.  For me, total solar eclipses are a wonderful case of this.  Total solar eclipses are not common.  In any given place (say, the Sphinx of Egypt, Mt. Fuji in Japan, or the Yucatan Peninsula, etc.), one needs to wait usually many centuries from one to the next total solar eclipse.  For me here in Detroit, Michigan (which will be missed by the path on April 8th), the most recent total solar eclipse was in 1806, and the next one is i ..read more

Happy Spring Equinox, or Ostara! While many of us have seen climate change effectively remove this past winter (certainly the case here in Michigan), climate change is highly variable.  In California, it’s contributed to a massive amount of rainfall, setting off a “Superbloom” of flowers, just in time for Ostara!  This massive rain has even brought back Lake Manly, a rare lake in Death Valley (!) which last appeared around 20 years ago.  Our spirituality brings us Ostara today – a great reminder that life returns after challenges, as well as a reminder of that every cool thing ..read more

As many of you know, I’m writing from way up here in Michigan – the Great White North, eh.  When I was growing up in this same area of Detroit, the ice on the lakes would be so thick every year that we’d literally drive trucks out onto the ice with our ice fishing supplies.  No more.  That’s one more part of us that climate change has stolen. Last year, there was so little ice on the lake that ice fisherpeople could only go out there a couple days all winter (and certainly not with a vehicle). Same this year.  This was the first Imbolc where we didn’t have any snow for our ..read more