People often describe Paganism as a “nature religion” and talk about venerating the natural world as a fundamental tenet of Pagan practice. But what exactly does that mean? What do we mean when we talk about nature–and what are some of the troublesome assumptions underlying that language? (Hint: It’s just anti-industrialism in sheep’s clothing.)
Read more "Video: Nature Doesn’t Exist"What is the ethical underpinning of Wicca, if there is one at all? Most often, you’ll hear people answer this question by pointing to the Wiccan Rede or the Threefold Law of Return. Personally, though, I think that Wicca–at least, the version of Wicca I practice–doesn’t teach ethics. Rather, there’s an expectation that people come […]
Read more "Video: Wiccan Ethics"I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the connection between religion and values. In some respects, this connection is so obvious that it doesn’t bear articulating. Patriarchal societies have patriarchal religions; in agrarian societies we see religions structured around the symbols of sowing and harvest. The gods of the steppes are cavaliers and the gods […]
Read more "What You Worship Is What You Value"Polytheistic worship involves cultivating relationships with deities, but those relationships are a lot of work. Here, I talk about the varying degrees of intimacy that might exist in a relationship of worship, the different kinds of relationship structures that polytheists might have, and why I don’t have the energy to worship lots of gods. The […]
Read more "Video: I’m a Bad Polytheist"We’re often used to thinking about religion as imposing a top-down cohesion in theology, myth, and ritual: A religion has a fixed pantheon of gods, shared myths, and certain beliefs and practices that all of its adherents adopt. In reality, this is a very narrow idea of religion that doesn’t map onto the ancient world–nor […]
Read more "Video: The Gods of Right Here"It’s been a while since I’ve written about my Slavic polytheist practice. That’s not because I’m not practicing! Things have just been on the quiet side. I still do regular devotionals (although I’d be lying if I said I kept up with a daily routine on that), I still have a relationship with Baba Yaga, […]
Read more "Slavic Polytheism: Ideas That Aren’t Part of my Practice Anymore"If you look at texts on Paganism from the nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, you’ll see a lot of the word “fertility.” But what does fertility really mean in this context? In the 21st century, we look at it and tend to think of human reproduction, but in historical context, it more often means something else […]
Read more "Video: Fertility and the Pagan Revival"In a previous video, I talked about the “schmidentity” of deities–the way that two gods can be somehow distinct from each other and yet the same, especially in cases where their cults share a common historical origin. Here, I turn my eye to the Gods of traditional Wicca. I discuss a few figures from ancient […]
Read more "Video: Who Are the Wiccan Gods?"A lot of the conversations we have about “religion” as a general concept betray underlying assumptions that all religion resembles Christianity in key ways. In this video, I dissect some of those assumptions, focusing on the idea that the function of religion is to provide explanations–whether we’re talking about the creation of the world, what […]
Read more "Video: Is Religion Supposed to be Explanatory?"I’ve just returned from a fabulous trip to the United Kingdom. While I was there, I had the opportunity to spend time with some online friends from the British Wiccan community, and doing so got me thinking about some of the broad cultural differences in Wicca between the US and UK. The three differences I […]
Read more "Video: Wicca in America Versus Britain"
Jack Chanek 