#atheopagan

[hwang-inhos-fish]

Me: "hey ancestors wtf should I do now"

The 4000 year old bronze age woman with my eyes who lives in my head: "eat a fruit"

Me: "thanks but I meant about" (waves at the state of everything)

Urmother: "perhaps set something on fire?"

Me: "now we're talking"

[tokky-paws]

lots of pictures of me 🎃🐾

ready for witchcraft, ready for adventure, ready for cosy time

[anakedpriestess]

I've used the term atheo pagan before...

I'm an exmormon. I'm atheist but I still think spirituality can be beneficial and enjoyable for humans. I read about deities, do alter work, celebrate the seasons, etc. I really enjoy paganism because it seems very accepting of different levels of belief and worship. Because of the religious trauma I have there is absolutely no interest in committing to or joining one specific religion. Am I wrong? Are atheo pagan beliefs harmful?

[stars-and-the-sublime]

venerate the body

eat delicious foods

dig into the profane

find the spark of pleasure in yourself

put down roots in the soil

live deep within your trembling flesh

fall in love with all of existence

[winged-thinged]

I've been learning a lot about atheopaganism & religious naturalism lately, and I think that mentally separating practice from belief is kinda helping to give me a framework to think about and recontextualize why I decided to leave Christianity.

I think I might never have started to question Christianity if I wasn't made to feel so unwelcome in that space—as a queer person, as a trans person, as an aromantic and acespec person, as a person in an afab body. As a person who thrives in the margins with the weird, the mad, and the outcasts. As a person who cares about justice. At a minimum, it would have taken me a lot longer to question it, I think, if I was better able to perform that normative Belonging that most Christian communities expect.

Not Belonging to the community gave me the distance to start to question the actual teachings that my community fostered. In time, I came to find better Christians, better communities—places where I could Belong—but I could not stomach the fact that these communities shared many of the same beliefs that my original community had taught that so hurt me. Softened, often—quieter, maybe, but at their core, just the same. And I had already come to find these beliefs harmful and not true.

And I know now that there are some Christians who disagree with those beliefs, who don't take the whole thing so literally, a lot who go to church just to Belong to their community, and nothing more. But that is not enough for me, because many members of the community do take those harmful beliefs so literally, and in a dominative, hierarchical, dogmatic context, those who do believe have a lot more say in what the community teaches and the way it treats people than those who don't believe. And because the dogma is so calcified and so sacrosanct, there is no openness to greater justice or to any other kind of change.

Even if I thought that there was a chance that the dogma would change, slowly and gradually over time, I don't fit into that community anymore, and wouldn't for a long long time. And trying to Belong in that space where I was not welcomed was hurting me deeply, whether I believed in the dogma or not.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting a spiritual practice that is personally meaningful, or with the very human desire to Belong. But I think that I will not be able to access those things without a space where people like me are truly welcomed, and where there is the flexibility needed to work towards greater justice and a willingness to change when necessary to make that happen.

[ricottareader]

Pagan pie 🌜⭐️

[driftwoodspirit]

I had a lot of things to do today, but do you know what I did instead?

I made a new junk journal devoted entirely to apples.

….I also took a nap.

[wanderingalonelypath]

anyone already planning for High Spring/March Equinox?? i'm brainstorming for my first as an atheopagan so i'd love to hear how y'all celebrate!!