{"author":"John Halstead","author_id":"John+Halstead","total_quotes":17,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["gods","naturalism","paganism","polytheism"],"id":9806,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"An Atheopagan Prayer by Mark GreenPraise to the wide spinning world Unfolding each of all the destined tales compressed In the moment of your catastrophic birthWide to the fluid expanse, blowing outward Kindling in stars and galaxies, in bright poolsOf 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 bubbleGoing 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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["atheism","atheopagan","non-theistic","paganism","prayer"],"id":26924,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["gods","natives","pagans","polytheism","science"],"id":66359,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["god","goddess","nontheistic","pagan","worship"],"id":137723,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["gods","naturalistic","paganism","polytheism"],"id":157804,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["gods","naturalism","nontheistic","paganism","polytheism","transpersonal"],"id":173445,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["ecology","gods","nature","paganism","polytheism"],"id":182390,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["gods","naturalism","nature","nontheistic","paganism"],"id":246116,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"The multiplicity of human identity is not just a spiritual principle, it’s a biological fact—a basic ecological reality. ... Only 10% of the cells in your body belong to you. The rest are the cells of bacteria and microorganisms that call your body home, and without these symbionts living on and within your physical self, you would be unable to digest and process the nutrients necessary to keep you alive. Your physical body is teeming with a microscopic diversity of life that rivals a rainforest. The insight of the Gaia Theory—that “the Earth system behaves as a single self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components”—is as much a statement about our own physical bodies as it is about the planet. If we imagine the Earth as the body of a goddess, we can also imagine our own bodies as a sacred home to an ecologically complex and diverse array of microscopic life.' -- Alison Leigh Lilly, 'Naming the Water: Human and Deity Identity from an Earth-Centered Perspective.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["body","earth","gaia","gaia-theory","rainforest","symbiosis"],"id":264904,"author_id":"John+Halstead"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Halstead","tags":["gods","naturalism","nature","nontheistic","paganism"],"id":270147,"author_id":"John+Halstead"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":17,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}