I’m in the process of moving. Now that my doctorate is finally complete, there’s a lot less tying me to the physical environs of New Jersey. My lease is up at the end of this month, and while I haven’t yet secured a job and a permanent place to live, it’s time for me to […]
Read more "Baba Yaga Lied to Me (And That’s Okay)"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"Lately, my Slavic polytheist practice has been feeling stagnant. Part of that is that I’ve been ridiculously overworked for the past two months (which is also why this blog has basically gone dark). I’ve been so busy that I’ve been neglecting religion, because at the end of each day I’m so exhausted that I can […]
Read more "Slavic Polytheism: Updating my Prayers"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"Pagan and polytheist theology is a lot more complicated than just “soft polytheism” versus “hard polytheism.” In this video, I discuss the ways in which gods relate to each other: how they’re different from each other, but also how (under some circumstances) we may see them as the same.
Read more "Video: On the Schmidentity of the Gods"I haven’t written about it in a while, but longtime readers of the blog may remember that I have a devotional relationship with Baba Yaga. This is, nominally at least, part of my practice of Slavic polytheism, but in many ways it’s its own sort of thing. I hadn’t really anticipated forming this relationship, and […]
Read more "Baba Yaga and the Gods"In my previous post, I talked a bit about Erich Neumann’s book The Great Mother and how, despite the various problems with it and the need for context-sensitive critical reading, it can provide a great theoretical framework in which to understand the Wiccan Goddess. Wicca is about experience, not theory, and a theoretical perspective like […]
Read more "The Horned God, Schematized"Some rambling thoughts about a popular theological viewpoint in Paganism, which I term the “Pratchett-Gaiman” theology: The idea that we create the Gods through our belief in and worship of them. I understand why this theology is appealing, but it doesn’t quite resonate with me, and I try to talk through the reasons why. Be […]
Read more "Video: Do We Create the Gods?"
Jack Chanek 