Rediscover Your Pagan Nature
- Thread starter Sarita
- Start date
Hey Pagan Pretties! A slow weekend for our little corner of Aw.
Did anyone get a chance to read the article? Really interesting stuff.
Did anyone get a chance to read the article? Really interesting stuff.
It is an interesting article, thanks for posting it.
I don't feel removed from nature exactly. It's more that my experience of nature seems to be so at odds with what's universally accepted as the norm. For example, my daughter has a Webkins (overpriced computer-animated pet-thing), and her Webkins has a yard attached to his little computer house. The ground was white, and we figured you must have to do something to change it to green. No...it turned green when the website people decided it was time. Apparently, that white stuff was snow. Who knew? I haven't seen snow in years; our azaleas have been blooming for a couple of weeks and I'm nagging Mr. Mac to cut the grass.
And in June, when everybody's supposed to have flowers blooming and birds singing, I have the AC on and am planning hurricane supplies, and wondering how much of a sacrifice would be prudent this year.
It gets very...surreal/frustrating/OLD, even while I'm kind of used to it.
OTOH, there's nature of a six-or-eight-legged sort trying to get in my house every time the door opens, and in my opinion, it's asking for assisted suicide.
I don't feel removed from nature exactly. It's more that my experience of nature seems to be so at odds with what's universally accepted as the norm. For example, my daughter has a Webkins (overpriced computer-animated pet-thing), and her Webkins has a yard attached to his little computer house. The ground was white, and we figured you must have to do something to change it to green. No...it turned green when the website people decided it was time. Apparently, that white stuff was snow. Who knew? I haven't seen snow in years; our azaleas have been blooming for a couple of weeks and I'm nagging Mr. Mac to cut the grass.
And in June, when everybody's supposed to have flowers blooming and birds singing, I have the AC on and am planning hurricane supplies, and wondering how much of a sacrifice would be prudent this year.
It gets very...surreal/frustrating/OLD, even while I'm kind of used to it.
OTOH, there's nature of a six-or-eight-legged sort trying to get in my house every time the door opens, and in my opinion, it's asking for assisted suicide.
I'm trying to make peace with the season, cold cold winter. It's tough, but looking at the snow isn't so bad. And I'm trying not to kill all the spiders that cross my threshhold. It's rough. But when Finn tells me not to squosh it, I have to listen.
*shivers* I hate spiders. They're not really nature anyway, are they?
*shivers* I hate spiders. They're not really nature anyway, are they?
Spiders are wonderful. Not only do they eat nastier things that I don't want around me and mine, but there's some thought that they may be the totem animal for creative writing.
As for connecting back to nature, I just have to step into my kitchen and look out the windows at the view of mountains or go out into the backyard and watch the beagles chase bunnies and chipmunks (they're beagles--they only sound when they find something, they don't hurt them) or my neighbor's lush traditional English garden. I've got four trees in my yard that are all at least 50 years old. And we customarily do spring/summer rite for the land and house wights just because we try to be good neighbors.
FWIW, my religion (Asatru) doesn't involve nature all that much. It's more based in our lives and how we're living. At least, not as I've come to understand it in the ten or so years I've been doing it.
As for connecting back to nature, I just have to step into my kitchen and look out the windows at the view of mountains or go out into the backyard and watch the beagles chase bunnies and chipmunks (they're beagles--they only sound when they find something, they don't hurt them) or my neighbor's lush traditional English garden. I've got four trees in my yard that are all at least 50 years old. And we customarily do spring/summer rite for the land and house wights just because we try to be good neighbors.
FWIW, my religion (Asatru) doesn't involve nature all that much. It's more based in our lives and how we're living. At least, not as I've come to understand it in the ten or so years I've been doing it.
I think eventually you get to a point where the cycles of the season become, literally, second nature to you. I get into this rhythm, and can pretty much tell on any given day what the moon phase is, how soon it is till I get to plant stuff, etc. This time of year is hard, because we're cooped up inside, and we sort of lose that connection to nature that we have the rest of the time, but I've managed to make an effort anyway -- the other night I sat outside and watched the clouds roll by, looking up at the moon and the stars, and I just felt that link.
I think eventually it becomes part of how you live, rather than something you consciously think about embracing.
I think eventually it becomes part of how you live, rather than something you consciously think about embracing.
I think that's it. Mr. Mac is amazed that I know the moon signs by looking at the sky, or can tell time by the daylight. And he's mightily amused by my irritation with the Daylight/Eastern time switch. OTOH, he works obscene numbers of hours under fluorescent light, so it's a wonder he can even recognize daylight at all. Probably he's more what they had in mind, in the article. Except that he's not Pagan, so it's flavored a little differently, for him.
I haven't had a chance to read the article, but I have it on the docket for this weekend. After this week...and the one before that, and the one before that, I can really use a dose of some yummy paganness!
A good friend of mine is doing her thesis work on "going tribal" in modern society. I couldn't help but think of that when I was reading this article. She supposes that piercings, tattoos, stores like Wild Oats and Wegmans, all are just a leaning of modern society trying to recapture a bit of tribal culture where none exists in our modernized world. I read it through for her in the first few stages. I'm dying to get my hands on the finished product, it's really good stuff.