Godless Paganism Quotes

“For the natural polytheist who finds her gods in the rivers and mountains, in the deep-rooted giants looming above the canopy and in the tiny creatures that move beneath them, ecology gives us a glimpse into a kind of living anatomy of the divine, a theology of physical as well as spiritual life. - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Anatomy of a God”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“My gods are not tame. They do not always come when they are called.
This is not a failure of ritual or a weakness of belief. It is the nature of my gods. I would no more expect a god to “show up” in my ritual space than I would expect to be able to call a mountain into my living room. That is simply not the nature of mountains. If I want to meet a mountain, I am the one who must move." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Gods Like Mountains, Gods Like Mist”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding. I sing to you of the god of the dust that flies off the ice-burned comet, and the god of the spaces in between. I sing to you of the god that twists like a serpent at the center of every sun and is found again coiled within every electron, shared by both and worshiped by each in its own way. I sing to you of the god that collects asteroids together in mockeries of his sister’s solar systems, jealous of his elder sibling’s power. I sing to you of all these, and many, many more." - Lupa, "The Forgotten Gods of Nature”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“Salt Marsh Goddess by Michelle Joers
"You may need
a super-human
super-hero
super-natural god/dess,
hammer or harp in hand,
horse-bodied or jackal-headed,
Lady of the Lake or Lord of the Seas.*
But I have the deep, deep ocean
and strong winds driving waves upon the shore
driving me to my knees for absolution
driving me to oblivion;
I have a sun that warms tender shoots,
crooning them from the loamy body of a Living Earth;
The caress of the Willow branch as I lie beneath her roots,
book in hand, and squirmy child in lap.
The Salt Marsh Goddess speaks to me in ringing tones,
as clear as any god of myth does for you
& she speaks in a thousand tongues—
Spartina, Juniperus, Myrica, Sesarma,
Uca, Littorina, Malaclemys, Ardea, Alligator
…just to name a few.
I have prayed at her temple as the tide pours into my boots
And divined my future with her bones
I have bled for her | I have tasted her flesh
And drank of her blood | And given her mine
While you argue
over how to resurrect
gods of long passed cultures,
I’ll be the one covered in mud and dancing with the rushes,
celebrating a goddess born of glaciers.”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“…stand at the foot of a mountain and you may be impressed by how much greater it is than you in degree, how alien it is from you in kind. Climb that mountain and confront limits of endurance beyond which you thought yourself incapable, feel the relation between yourself and the mountain’s flora and fauna as part of one interdependent ecosystem, and discover how the experience of the mountain becomes part of you and changes who you are—then you may draw close to something like transcendence.” - B. T. Newberg”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“An Atheopagan Prayer by Mark Green
Praise to the wide spinning world
Unfolding each of all the destined tales compressed
In the moment of your catastrophic birth
Wide to the fluid expanse, blowing outward
Kindling in stars and galaxies, in bright pools
Of Christmas-colored gas; cohering in marbles hot
And cold, ringed, round, gray and red and gold and dun
And blue
Pure blue, the eye of a child, spinning in a veil of air,
Warm island, home to us, kind beyond measure: the stones
And trees, the round river flowing sky to deepest chasm, salt
And sweet.
Praise to Time, enormous and precious,
And we with so little, seeing our world go as it will
Ruing, cheering, the treasured fading, precious arriving,
Fear and wonder,
Fear and wonder always.
Praise O black expanse of mostly nothing
Though you do not hear, you have no ear nor mind to hear
Praise O inevitable, O mysterious, praise
Praise and thanks be a wave
Expanding from this tiny temporary mouth this tiny dot
Of world a bubble
Going out forever meeting everything as it goes
All the great and infinitesimal
Gracious and terrible
All the works of blessed Being.
May it be so.
May it be so.
May our hearts sing to say it is so.”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“It is the distinction between transpersonal and interpersonal relationships with deities which sets naturalistic polytheism apart from neopolytheism. Interpersonal relationships are between two or more persons and are focused upon individual perspectives. A transpersonal relationship extends beyond the individual perspective, transcending the distinctions of ego and personality. For example:
A neopolytheist has a close personal relationship with a modernized personification of Thor, to whom she prays to daily.
A naturalistic polytheist practices breathing as a sacrament which allows her to focus on life’s connection to the atmosphere, altering her perception of separateness, resulting in viewing the at-mosphere as a deity." - Glen Gordon, "Naturalism and the Gods”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“So yes, I worship nature. I worship a blind Goddess. For me, she is the only worthy object of worship. She will never care that I worship her. She will never answer a single prayer. But she is always with me… shaping me as I shape her. I will struggle with her to the last gasp of my life. And in the end, in my final act of devotion, I will yield to her. - John Halstead, "I Worship the Blind Goddess”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“he was so astounded by the beauty and complexity of the universe itself, that he saw no need to go seeking gods or goddesses to explain it. His philosophy was that no concept of a creator or overseer could possibly match the awe-inspiring grandeur of nature itself. This is the way the Pagan atheist views the world, and the universe at large. It’s not some dry, clinical and bitter philosophy. It’s a vibrant, dynamic view of life and the environment that births and sustains it. In fact, many Pagans view the universe as a sort of living organism—either metaphorically or in actual terms. The parallels are, indeed, fascinating. And, in fact, many Pagans believe that the distinction between natural and supernatural is a false one—that nature is the totality of all there is, and that it’s meaningless to speak of anything being somehow outside of nature.”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-theistic Pagans

“when people ask me what I believe now, I don’t want to weigh them down with “I’m a Unitarian Universalist Neo-Pagan scientific pantheist humanist who practices Buddhist insight meditation (Vipassana),” even though that’s the truth. Sometimes, however, I have the personal need to privately unpack these labels which usually blend seamlessly in my daily life in order to get a better sense of who I am and where I’m going on this spiritual journey.”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-theistic Pagans

“the resurgence of the elder gods breaks down the wall of separation between religion and science that has partitioned Western thought since the Enlightenment. The rise of science has taught us things about the Earth, Sun, and Storm that the ancients would have marveled to know. We are in the enviable, irresistible, position of being able to learn, through science, about the very gods themselves." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“While the ethnic paganisms have important things to teach us concerning the necessity of cultural authenticity, at their worst they become purist ghettos of nostalgia-driven re-enactors. We must never forget our Received Tradition or fail to learn from it; without it, we have no solid basis by which to evaluate our own experience. But ultimately the ways of our ancestors cannot teach us what we most need to know: how to be honestly pagan for our own time and place. That understand-ing can come only from our own encounter with the very sources that inspired these ethnic traditions in the first place. We must drink from the original wellspring itself." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“Above all, we new pagans must learn to know and honor the Many as they manifest in our own time and place. While the ways of the ancestors—the Received Tradition—must always inform our thought and action, we are truest to our heritage when we think and act as natives of here and now. Our mandate is to be the pagans for our own time, our own place, our own post-modern, science-driven Western culture. This is the only kind of pagan that we can honestly be; anything else is pretense." - Steven Posch, "Lost Gods of the Witches: A User’s Guide to Post-Ragnarok Paganism”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“The heron must be used to people, and yet it never lets you get too close. Draw parallel to it with the width of one of the marsh’s holding ponds between you, and it will duck its head, eyeing you with suspicion, then fly. I cannot approach the heron, certainly could never touch it; I can only look for it, entranced.
This is how I understand the divine, and why I continue to seek it in the resolutely non-human world, with which we nonetheless recognize a numinous kinship. Sometimes, it will turn and lock eyes with you, lifting you out of yourself, changing everything. Other times, it will give you the side-eye and swoop away, leaving you longing for retreating beauty. You might not see it every single time you go looking, or where you expect to find it. No matter how common the experience, every time you stumble across mystery, or independent wild being, it is a surprise and a miracle. And every day, you can look." - Sara Amis, "A Daily Heron”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“I sing to you of the deities of the Dictyostelidal slime molds, sexless and strange, at once a thousand voices and one song united. I sing to you of hard times when the wood has rotted away and the sun bakes the earth, and while as individuals we die, together we thrive. The divinities ask for sacrifice, the thousand voices demand it. Those who die to give life to the others, who raise up the new generation so that they may spread far and wide—these become a part of that sacred host, their voices immortalized not in cells but in spirit." - Lupa, "The Forgotten Gods of Nature”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“My gods are not always like human beings. Sometimes my gods are like mountains, sometimes they are like mist. Sometimes I seek my gods in the forests, sometimes in ritual space or the beat of the drum. Some-times my gods are inscrutable or apophatic, and my relationship with them is one of longing and seeking rather than invocation and offering. And sometimes it is the mountains themselves who are gods, and the rivers and trees who speak." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Gods Like Mountains, Gods Like Mist”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“Natural polytheism embraces the science of ecology as a basic metaphor for theological inquiry. In other words, natural polytheism seeks to understand our relationship with the gods as an aspect of interrelated systems of being, consciousness and meaning. Its focus is, first and foremost, on the wildernesses that defy our carefully mapped boundary lines, that penetrate even the most civilized cultural centers and underlie our most cherished notions of what it means to be human." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Natural Theology: Polytheism Beyond the Pale”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“We can name this river, here and now—but we cannot name the water itself. We can name our gods and we can name ourselves, but we cannot name the essence of sacred identity that flows through both, that connects us and sanctifies us." - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Naming the Water: Human and Deity Identity from an Earth-Centered Perspective”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans

“I see the gods—the names, images, stories—as the poetic encapsulation of our human experience, our relationship with the ineffable forces that shape human life. While this makes the gods no thing, it does not make them nothing. I see the gods as representing very real, powerful, even dangerous forces. I believe the gods are real. It doesn’t matter what we call them or don’t call them. They are real and dangerous, and we will contend with them. This for me is the message of the Bacchae. - M. J. Lee, "Being Human When Surrounded by Greek Gods”
― John Halstead, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans