The Zen Pagan: An Introduction, and a Buddhist Earth Deity
Welcome to The Zen Pagan. "The what Pagan?" some Pagan readers may be wondering; and perhaps "The Zen what?" may be heard from Patheos Buddhist, if this should leak over there. But if prior discussions...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Festival Paganism as Pilgrimage
It's interesting to think that pilgrimage, travel for religious reasons, seems to predate civilization. The circuit of summer Pagan festivals may provide something along this line; pilgrims come from...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: The Quiet Side of Magic
It seems to me that to be a great magician is to be able to sit quietly when it is time to sit, and to be able to act boldly when it is time to act; to be able to listen and to speak, to see and to do...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Has Pagan Environmentalism Failed?
As we look around at the ecological crisis that faces us today, it's reasonable to ask if this movement has failed. But like the karate student with the broken arm, we have to ask that not in...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Martial Arts as Magical Practice
The martial arts are magic -- they use imagination to raise and direct psychological energy to alter consciousness and produce external or internal change. Those looking to understand magical practice...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Wild Naked Pagans
In other words, we must get wild with our spirituality, untamed and direct. It seems to me that this is why the Neopagan movement exists in the first place, a reaction to the inability of “civilized”...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Wild Naked Minds
Should we be afraid of wild mind? That is certainly the message of some religious paths and philosophical schools. You, in the wild state, are wretched. (That's why nakedness is sinful. Cover your...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: The Burners and the Pagans
All in all, there seems to be quite a bit of overlap between the values and ideals of the community around Burning Man and similar events, and the festival Pagan community. A more conscious and...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Gratitude, Schmatitude
I’m not going to tell you to be thankful, even as you’re about to be bombarded with that message over the next week. (And then with messages about BUY! BUY! BUY!) But I will suggest that you consider...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: #Ferguson: Righteous Anger and Wrathful Deities
As a power hierarchy becomes more and more unjust, of course more brutal and repressive means will be necessary to preserve it. "No justice, no peace" is not a threat, it's a moral law of the Universe:...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Contemplative Druidry by James Nichol (Book Review)
Nichol came to be interested in a more contemplative approach to his Druidry after a mystical experience in June 2007, "triggered simply by noticing and contemplating a wild rose, growing on the banks...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Santa Claus and the Nature of the Gods
Sophisticated cynics know that it’s a bunch of bunk, of course. There is no jolly old elf at the North Pole. There is no magic sleigh, no one coming down the chimney, and your parents are going to eat...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Not Invulnerable
The idea that one should seek to distance oneself from the world is expressly refuted in the mythology around the Siddhartha's enlightenment. This was supposedly the last temptation that Mara, the...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Gods Save Us From Glorious Struggles
Religion provides a ready-made us-versus-them narrative. This narrative often has little to do with the actual teachings of the religion, which in most cases are ambiguous at best or contradictory at...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: Religion, Identity, Practice, Doctrine, Is, and Ought
Crouch suggests that if we applied critical thinking to religion the same way we apply it to consumer choices, supernaturalism would quickly fall. But I think he is mistaken in believing that critical...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: My Best Superbowl Sunday Ever
A psychedelic can only act as a catalyst, speeding up a reaction that would have happened anyway given enough time and energy. If you are utterly lost and directionless and take a psychedelic, you will...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: What Does It Mean For the Gods to Exist?
To answer the question "Do the deities exist?", we need to answer two questions, just two trivial little matters: 1) What is a god? 2) What does it mean to exist?
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: “What does a Zen Pagan Atheist ritual look like?”
A friend inquired, "What does a Zen Pagan Atheist ritual look like?" Which is a pretty good question, and one that I'm still figuring out the answer to. I don't have a liturgy, but I do have some...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: The Politically Incorrect Pagan
Since no one else seems to want to say it, I will: the fake workshop listing in the joke program was legitimate satire and the authors don't owe anyone an apology. If anyone owes an apology, it is...
View ArticleThe Zen Pagan: You — Yes, *You* — Can Dance (If You Want To)
When I was a kid I was so uncoordinated that during gym class I was sent off to special sessions where a teaching assistant would play catch with me in an attempt to improve my hand-eye coordination....
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