Blood, Whiskey, & History

A year ago I decided to start practicing paganism. I began with researching Lughnasadh, and designed a simple ritual that I felt combined some aspects of traditional practice with my own invention in a way I was comfortable with. It was not my first time I acted on the desire to acknowledge an earth-centered holiday; a year or two back I had burned a small fire and sung a song on Winter solstice. But this was my first time coming to a ritual with the intent to craft a kind of practice for myself, and to do so consciously embracing some sort of paganism. Lughnasadh, 2020. So much researching, experimentation and exploration has happened in this past year. I’ve learned a massive amount about Norse and Germanic paganism, and began reading some of the best primary sources we have for this history. I began a book series — which for me, is notable because I rarely read fiction — to spend even more imaginative time there. I’ve learned to mark memories based on the full moon, and I’ve spent ho...

Blood, whiskey, and history. So why blood? It is important to emphasize at the outset that it is not because of any fascistic notion of racial inheritance or purity, as in the Nazi chant, “blood and soil.” As I’ve discussed, insofar as any of us inherit anything “from the blood,” it is a heritage belonging to every single human on the planet. To me blood means something very different. It represents some of the most delicious aspects of existence – whatever might be described as a passion. My experience of passion has been both one of the most difficult things for me to regulate in my life, and without question the side of myself that has come under the greatest scrutiny by the society I live in. I’ve conducted myself, I guess you might say, in a very unregulated way on many an occasion. This has not of course always been a good thing. The worst times were when I had anger I could not contain, and so said or did things that hurt other people. There were also times...

I've been regularly running for about three years. I always enjoyed it -- enjoyed the challenge more than anything -- but was frustrated with how little I managed to improve. When I was young I was a great runner, almost always the fastest girl; my 6th grade phys ed coach once told me I was a "running machine." So while I didn't expect to be very fast at once after a decade plus of neglect, I was surprised I couldn't get my mile time below 9:30.  Then about a year and a half ago I found out I had anemia. I had been running on low blood cells for at least two years. I started taking prescription iron, and within two weeks, my mile time had dropped by 30 seconds, and by a month, a minute.  More importantly, being able to go faster enhanced everything I already liked about running; the feeling of flight and fight, the rhythm of your body moving, seemingly by default, unless you make it stop: that rush of blood when you finally do, and ...

"The Kingdom of God is inside/within you (and all about you), not in buildings/mansions of wood and stone. (When I am gone) Split a piece of wood and I am there, lift the/a stone and you will find me." -- The Gospel of Thomas Had my younger self had a crystal ball, I likely would have been surprised to find that I would one day be associated with any system of spirituality that emphasized nature. Camping, hiking, feeling connected to the wide, wide open; that had always been my sister's MO, but never mine. I didn't dislike the outdoors, but I didn't seek it out, either, and as I grew into my chosen life as an academic I learned to be critical of sentimental or uncritical concepts of nature which posited open space as pure and untouched and contrasted them to contaminated human habitats.  However, it was this analysis, although I didn't know it at the time, that enabled me to eventually rethink how  I thought about "nature." For although wild spaces a...

I took a DNA test and found out I'm white lol lol lol Blood, whiskey, and history -- why history?  Not because I am a historian, but because I was on to something when I chose to become one -- I probably didn't fully understand it at the time, but my choice of discipline was intimately related to the need nearly all of us feel to be a part of something larger. Religion at the time was not an option, neither really was politics; but once I discovered that what I thought to be mere idiosyncrasies within myself or, at the most, related to the society of my own lifespan, were actually connected to people generations ago, even hundreds of years ago: well, that provided me with a release from alienation and a type of self-knowledge not reliant upon my own ego. Here I was, learning that I was a part of something larger; that we all are, whether we like it or not.  But thinking through how this truth relates to my spirituality has not been easy. The temptation  common today ...

I am a 30something academic working and living in California. I am an atheist, a dog lover, a leftist, and a pagan. I've started this open journal because as I move through this spiritual journey, I want to create a place to record that journey; which necessarily turns into a part of the journey itself. All my life I've been a writer, so this is a great way for me to pursue and share.  Sharing is particularly important; when I discovered there was such a thing as atheopaganism (or nontheist-paganism), that has its own community, publications, art and discussions I was elated. I had already been trying to enter into paganism for months but felt alienated and insecure because for me, believing in literal gods and goddesses and other supernatural phenomena was just not an option. So what was I doing? Did it have meaning?, or was it either ridiculous or masquerading? Discovering the depth and breadth of those who already understood their spirituality in the terms of paganism and at...