Blood, Whiskey, & History

  One of the many game-changing moments for me in my spiritual explorations was when someone said “you are the universe experiencing itself.” Think about the shift that this perspective induces: instead of a segregated “I” looking out to an unknown or alien “it” (god or gods, the universe or multiverse), you return to yourself as inherently integrated with the rest of the world; you are the “it,” as a matter of fact.   This is, I realize, another variation on the oft-cited idea that “we are made of star-stuff.” But for some reason, that expression of it never really resonated with me; it’s nifty, of course, but to simply be built of the same material as something else did not, for whatever reason, trigger any major change in how I conceived of myself or my own consciousness. But to say that we are the universe experiencing itself – that, somehow, does. I suppose that’s because one can build many different things out of the same material, without commenting on the qualities or ...

Last week I got my ninth tattoo. Three circles stacked vertically running down my right forearm, each a different symbol. The first, a sigil I designed derived from “know no shame.” The second, the symbol atheopagans adopted for themselves, the Suntree. The third, one of many variations on a rose by Scottish turn-of-the-century designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.     Each of these small circles has a story behind it, and brought together they look fucking gorgeous. As I walked through the park with my dog 30 minutes later, I would glance down at my arm and think, good lord, how did I ever tolerate just blank skin staring back at me instead of this beauty?  I’ve had the same experience with all of my tattoos. The rush of looking in the mirror once you get home, and feeling shocked that the piece of artwork shining back at you is actually  on  you is one of the best parts about the whole process.   This surprised me as much as anyone. Had you known me before...

When I started my atheopagan practice, I created a journal for all my related thoughts and plans. I don’t know if I had a clear idea of what would end up going into that journal, but it ended up being more, I’m sure, than I imagined. It’s become home to my plans for spring and fall gardening, the place where I write down divination card pulls that resonated with me, where I keep an ongoing list of organic-to-my-life moon names as they occur to me. My atheopagan journal, in all its blood-spattered glory. But most of all, it’s the home of my ritual inspired poetry; I keep it near me during every major holiday’s ceremony. Which means it is, to a significant degree, a journal of drunk poetry. I hope this makes you smile, or giggle. It makes me smile. I smile because instead of feeling ashamed, I feel love; I feel compassion. Compassion for the part of me that opens up and spills out all my sentimentality, all of my earnest longing and soft vulnerability, when I let go of whatever shame abo...

What to do with passions with no narrative? When you are thrust back on belittled words like “feelings” or “emotions” to describe your fire or your ice, because the lack of a story to attach them to deprives you even of the use of metaphors — after all, those require something sturdy to anchor them to.   I once shared a piece of music I loved with a friend. She sat back and said, “you must have had a terribly sad past life.”  But I don’t believe in past lives. My life has not been perfect, but I’m nearly positive I’ve had it much better than most. And I’m not complaining.  And yet. And yet it does feel strange, to feel without rhyme or reason; and to long for those deep, murky places where mystery meets your skin, runs down your spine, trails down your cheek. This simply being human, plants you in the world with roots already plunged so deep: and so we all fear and dream of dragons, without ever knowing what for sure they reference.  They say ancient Easterners in...

On Aug 1st, my birth mother Lynne passed away. I did not know her well. Her life had been marked by trauma and addiction, and shortly after we met when I was 21, what had been the longest period of sobriety in her life came to an end. Although I gained good relationships with a younger and older half-sister – I share a different parent with each – and with my birth father, I never really got to know Lynne. As of today, we still do not know for sure what finally caused her heart to stop beating (the toxicology report is still pending), but years of serious health conditions and alcohol abuse meant that no one was surprised when she went. In addition to not knowing her well, I never felt the need or desire to have an emotional connection with her on the basis of being her bio daughter. So when I got the call from my sister (who I was raised with and was also Lynne’s bio daughter), I felt some gravity but I was not hurting. I went for a walk in an usually cloudly and cool morning, and rea...

I sometimes think about how theistic pagans must feel about me. Here is someone who builds altars to the gods, who celebrates the wheel of the year with elaborate rituals, and who makes an effort to learn about a particular pagan tradition of the past. And yet, I don’t believe the gods exist as fully autonomous, supernatural beings, nor do I readily accept various traditions that posit the independent reality of a spiritual realm filled with ghosts, spirits, and other mysterious forces. So, as far as they are concerned, I don’t believe at all.     I imagine (and know, from some firsthand experience), that some of them feel deeply offended by this. Because what I’m doing, from their point of view, is partaking in all of the outward actions and rituals of their belief and yet, not really believing. It must seem upsetting or even deeply disturbing, that I could pretend, as it were, to be a part of the faith when I’m really not. I would expect to hear accusations of dishonesty or ...

When I first began to feel drawn toward pagan practice, I was searching for an outlet and a vessel. A place –   a way   – to pour all those moments I encountered in contexts that seemed unsuited for them. Hearing a song during a party that transported me to a more somber, serious place; wanting to dash out of the coffee shop at the season’s first sign of rain to welcome it; attempting to convey to skeptical Skeptics the overwhelming feeling of ecstatic experience that made the term “spiritual” unavoidable for me.     Such moments had been with me as long as consciousness, but as I grew into my young adulthood they increasingly made for an awkward fit into the rest of my life. In college I discovered how much I loved to think – critically and purposefully – and that moreover, I was pretty good at it. After graduating I went straight into a PhD program for history, and as my intellectual confidence grew (an unusual dynamic in grad school but, I was lucky in many ways i...