Charles Foster writes for Aeon on the subject of edginess: The cosmos is an edgy place. We are on the far edge of a rapidly expanding Universe, hurtling into nothing. Earth is now further away than it was when you began to read this sentence, from the place where, at the time of the Big … Read more“Embrace the edge!”
I first came across this poetic essay by the controversial anarchist philosopher Peter Lamborn Wilson – more widely known as Hakim Bey, author of the TAZ theory among many other provocative ideas – sometime in the early ’90s. I lost track of it over the years and only recently rediscovered the text, which (faint bell) … Read more“The Runaway Child”
Mythopoetic ritual bypasses much of the intellect and engages the subjective senses, bodily movement, imagination and emotion. It shrugs – subversively, mightily – at color-coded spread-sheets. Ritual speaks in the immersive repetition of gesture, ullulation, mystic symbol and profuse sweat. It is profound meaning-making undertaken in a self-aware spirit of Deep Play. The role of … Read moreMythopoetic Ritual as Deep Play
Stephen Bradford Long reflects on his time in the Satanic Temple: I didn’t have to work to see Satan as a hero. I didn’t have to contort my mind to see him — and the attendant iconography, dark though it may be — as beautiful and inspiring. Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t become a … Read more“The Weird Travails of a Post-Satanist”
From the countercultural beginnings of the neoPagan movement, belief in literal gods and magic have been more nuanced, ambiguous, playful and experimental than critics, outsiders and even many insiders often assume. Entire currents of Pagan practice began not with metaphysical certainty but with immersive theatricality, deliberate mythmaking or even outright satire. Discordianism remains the clearest … Read moreSaying the Quiet Part Out Loud: Mythopoetic Paganism
Click here to read the full review by Finnish scholar Essi Mäkelä: Since their basis of practice is not a historical writing or tradition/ritual that has been followed for hundreds of years, for many new religious movements it might be hard to see themselves as belonging to the category, while at the same time they … Read more“Poetic Faiths Vol. I” Reviewed for the International Journal for the Study of New Religions
Wayne Martin Mellinger writes on the past and future of religious naturalism, arguing in favor of a more Dionysian, intuitive, deeply playful approach than has often been evident in this niche movement: Abstract The Rise of Religious Naturalism: A New Public Theology of Sacred Nature explores the emergence of Religious Naturalism (RN) as both a … Read more“The Rise of Religious Naturalism: A New Public Theology of Sacred Nature”
Jason Ananda Josephson Storm writes for the Center for the Study of World Religions on the short-lived new religion of Denshinkyō: Scholars dismiss The Religion of the Electric Gods as a byproduct of a 1945 Japanese law code that granted tax exemptions to religious institutions without specifying exactly what constituted a religion. Indeed, groups such … Read moreThe Religion of the Electric Gods
James Parker reviews Manvir Singh’s new book Shamanism: The Timeless Religion for The Atlantic: Singh is less interested in the specific contents of trance states, or in a psychic map of shamanic otherness, than in shamanism as a world-historical phenomenon, popping up all over, almost a function of human consciousness. It starts, for him, in … Read more“Return of the Shaman”
Click here to read D.G. Charlton’s illuminating essay on 19th century secular religions, as exemplified by the life’s work of French man of letters Louis-Nicolas Menard.