⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆ @rainsandrains - Tumblr Blog

Since I actually have a couple of followers on here now, I feel I should make a pinned post to acknowledge a couple of things.

I am a naturalistic pagan. This means I am entirely atheist and do not believe in anything supernatural or divine. I use the language of magic or spirituality as a metaphor, and I am interested in folklore and mythology and such as metaphor and for their role in building community. Feel free to ask me about it!

I am a white English person, so if I am unintentionally appropriating something or being insensitive to another culture, please do let me know.

I am not Wiccan, and I am not a witch.

This blog is a personal collection of things that inspire me. It is not for discourse. There will be politics occasionally, but only in so far as they are a reflection of my everyday life and my values. If I am not talking about an issue on this blog, that does not mean that I don't know or care about it.

I'm autistic and trans.

I block liberally, especially transphobes and terfs.

This blog is a sideblog; I cannot follow you from it. My main is a-chilleus.

update Oct 2025: I will never knowingly share AI art. Please tell me if you see AI-generated content here so that I can take it down.

soulofthedeep

Sound on to hear the water running through pebbles

#q

minotauri

ocean sounds for those of you who need it

fictionalgod

Orfayo

my altar is gathering dust. i just about manage to recite the druid's prayer in my head as i wash my face (getting distracted before i reach the end, or saying the whole thing but not paying attention)... and that's it. i was so in touch with it all and now it's gone.

#because my mental health has gone down the drain #:/#mine #delete later

Hi there I'm Sofie! :D I saw you reaction to someone else's post about being a naturalist pagan and finding resources/references! I'm fairly new to paganism and am finding it somewhat difficult to find good resources that don't revolve around gods/deities and was wondering if you had any good recommendations for material that you know of.

I myself am dutch and thus am looking into dutch/germanic paganism. However, as of right now I'm looking for general knowledge and wisdow on the topic so anything would be appreciated! No pressure to respond at all!! :) have a nice day!

hi! hope you're ok with my posting this publicly!

first off, i've been collecting links to resources on my neocities, which might be helpful... (i also ramble a lot about my own naturalistic paganism over there, no idea if any of that will be helpful though)

in particular, i'd guess the following could be helpful:

naturalisticpaganism.org

the spiritual naturalist society

the book godless paganism edited by john halstead - it's a collection of essays written by naturalistic/athiest pagans, very very helpful!

this blog post about soft animism by sam woolfe, and/or the video essay about the concept (based on the essay) by sarah e. best

the book the sacred depths of nature, by ursula goodenough - each chapter has a description of an aspect of our world from a scientific point of view, then some reflections, using ideas from different religions, poetry, etc

the cultpunk manifesto is pretty motivating

i've been influenced a lot by timothy morton's book ecology without nature - it's not about paganism at all, it's a philosophy text - i know of morton primarily as a scholar of romanticism and originally bought the book for his analysis of percy shelley and samuel taylor coleridge, but his ideas about nature and “the mesh” are really helpful to me. it’s a weird book, he’s got quite a particular writing style, so especially if english isn't your first language it might be tricky to get your head around at first? it took me a couple of reads to get the full picture (though i read it for the first time as a teenager, so maybe i'd find it much easier now, idk)

hope that helps!! always happy to chat about naturalistic paganism, so feel free to message with any questions/conversation starters :)

#naturalistic pagan #naturalistic paganism #mine #paganism #pagan

geopsych

“It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: all nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined.” —Gilbert White. 18th century English naturalist

Posting this because it points out that a lot of us may think we have far fewer kinds of birds or plants or animals around us than we actually do.

I always think of this when I see something about the incredible diversity of nature in Central Park in NYC. Central Park certainly isn't any more diverse than the forests upstate. It's just that Central Park is being observed by many many people all the time. Wherever you live there's probably way more life around you than you realize, whether or not the old saying is true that you're always within seven feet of a spider. ;-)

ungodlydandelion

Your mind is your body. You are literally your body. Your emotions are physical and so is your mind. And this is a good thing! You're alive! All of you is you!

lonelywoodland

Badger Dingle in Shifnal, Shropshire England. Taken by me on 26th July 2025.

happy may day!

a couple of months ago i was determined that i would do something for may day this year, but then a bunch of things got in the way (stressful life things, term starting, then a new hyperfixation hitting me like a train, AND this afternoon i'm travelling to go to a friend's kid's christening) and what's actually happened is that i journalled in the orchard, went for a little walk, and persuaded myself to listen to my may day playlist (see under the cut) for a bit instead of the band i'm hyperfixated on. all of which was nice! but wow it's hot outside already, and i'm so so tired (slept 2:30am-8am, oops)...

#may day #mine #naturalistic pagan #naturalistic paganism #pagan #paganism

faustiandesire-deactivated20260

I think the deepest gift that honest history offers practitioners is not the destruction of their religion but its liberation from a kind of false dependency. If your practice only works because you believe it descends unbroken from ancient Mesopotamia or medieval Italy or pre-Christian Britain, then it is, in a certain sense, held hostage by a claim that can be falsified. And that is a fragile foundation. But if you can learn to say, “this practice is powerful and meaningful to me, and it was assembled from various sources in the twentieth century, and those things are not in contradiction,” then you have something far more resilient. You have a practice grounded in honest experience rather than mythologised history.

This is not the same as saying history does not matter. It matters enormously. Understanding where your practices actually come from, who shaped them and why, what was borrowed and what was invented: this knowledge enriches practice rather than diminishing it. But it requires a willingness to tolerate the vertigo, to sit in the gap between what you were told and what the evidence shows, and to discover that the ground is still there even when the map turns out to be wrong.

Your Tradition is Fake. Now What? On cognitive dissonance, practitioner identity, and the strange gift of honest history by Angela Puca