You would be hard pressed to find someone who would disagree with the notion that the earth is the source of all life. And if you do find such a dolt, introduce them to a farmer who will give them a nice long lecture. But leap from an empirically confirmed reality to the notion that the earth is itself a divine spirit is something quite different. But the more immediate and requisite question is this: Is the earth actually alive. Is it in any sense of the term an organic life form to which we can even consider attributing any sense of divinity? We can start with what was already discussed in ..read more

In a previous blog post I described the biblical creation story as a fairy tale. And while I hold that as a literary genera, that the description is absolutely correct, it nevertheless fails to fully grasp the defining influence that the story has had on Western culture. Calling it a fairy tale is not an attempt to trivialize it but only to properly categorize it as a literary work. Fairy tales, like any other literary genera, come in a variety of flavors. For example, some fairy tales are complete works of fiction. They are strictly for entertainment, both for children and for adults. Other t ..read more

Where do you find divinity? For some folks it’s a god somewhere up there, beyond the stars as if was even possible to move beyond the stars. At one time way back when, according to the Western bible, space was nothing but a void. Or, perhaps, space itself, the space our universe occupies, did not exist. But through some powerfully divine magic and over the course of seven days and nights, an odd concept since without the earth spinning on its axis while orbiting the sun, days and nights is at best merely an abstract concept. But, be that as it may, over the course of those initial seven days ..read more

It’s literally been a month since my last blog entry. I really need to get it together, or as the cliché goes, get with the program. Nevertheless, it’s still way to rainy to begin the work of turning my backyard weed patch into the kind of a lush garden that a Druid wannabe can take pride and thus drop wannabe from my self image. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own spirituality, where I’m at and where I’d like to be. And, of course, the garden is a significant part of that. I’ve been examine my personal beliefs, trying to put a label on it. Not to pidgin hole mysel ..read more

Western Oregon normally has pretty moderate weather compared to other part of the country. But over the last few days we’ve had some very cold temperatures. Last night, the temperature fell below freezing. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground that quickly disappeared as the temperature warmed to above freezing and a light rain began to fall. Now, sadly, it’s just overcast . Sitting in my room, looking through the sliding glass door to my yard, I am reminded of all the work awaiting me when we get close to spring and the weather warms. Weeds, that seem to thrive no matter the seaso ..read more

Celebrating the time of the new moon is like celebrating Yule/Midwinter also known as the Winter Solstice. It is a time of hope and of new beginnings, a time of restarting or starting anew, a time of rebirth. By the same token, the full-moon is like Midsummer, the sun and the moon are both at their zenith. Though we don’t actually use the terms waxing and waning to describe the sun in the course of it’s annual cycle, nevertheless, both the sun and the moon are waning, slowly moving down hill until they reach their ultimate death, only to be reborn three days later ..read more

While Rome was pagan, Rome did not have a formal state religion that it required all its citizens to adhere to. Yes, there was the Roman pantheon with the sky-god Jupiter at its head. The official state religion was Mithraism, with Mithras being honored as the patron of loyalty to the emperor. Generally, when the Roman army conquered another people, there were no forced conversions and the folks in the conquered territories kept on practicing wherever they were practicing before Rome moved in. Thus, Christianity was simply one of many barely tolerated and mostly persecuted religions. Tha ..read more

Contemplative meditation is a term that I’d never heard before I came across it in John Beckett’s The Path of Paganism, a book I can heartily recommend to anybody exploring any flavor of pagan practice. Contemplative meditation is a form of prayer and could simply be called contemplative prayer except that it has too many specifically Christian overtones to be acceptable to a polytheistic pagan, such as myself. So, what exactly is Contemplative meditation? It is definitely not like what we think of as traditional or Buddhist style meditation wherein the objective is to sit quietly with y ..read more

One of the things that brought me to modern druidry is the realization that divinity resides within me (I am, so to speak, my own god) but that it’s not exclusive to me. We are all divine, but so are trees, squirrels and my very demanding pet kitties. That’s the polar opposite of the western idea that we both reject that teaches that god is up there (wherever “up there” is) and the lucky stiffs that we are, we get to participate in that divinity by the divine grace of a loving god. The problem is, to my thinking, upside down an backwards. Divinity resides in nature to which we, like the trees ..read more

To think about the Great Mother in our patriarchally oriented society is more than merely radical, especially when the one doing so is a male who has come to reject the great father in the sky with whom he grew up and instead to embrace the Great Mother who is all around us, in us, and through us. That the first gods were female should be self evident. Our earliest ancestors, Homo Sapiens Neanderthal, Homo Sapiens Cro-Magnon and Homo Sapiens Sapiens (modern humans), originally lived in small communal groupings or tribes. Their most important communal values were sustenance, nourishment to ..read more