I wanted to let you know I have just published a public essay at A Beautiful Resistance. It’s called “Being Pagan: On Connection to Pagan Time.”
This essay is an excerpt from a manuscript in progress, called Being Pagan. That book will be published through Gods&Radicals Press / Ritona in November of this year, and it is also part of the text from a course of the same name that I am currently teaching and will be offering again in early October.
The thrust of Being Pagan is to provide a framework for people to understand the pagan and animist worldview and to embody that in their lives now. Unlike the mass-produced drivel you’ll find on paganism and witchcraft, it’s not about summoning spirits and doing prosperity magic or wearing costumes. And it’s not about specific neopagan traditions and reconstructions.
Instead, it’s about the kind of “raw,” unpoliticized existence of the peoples outside the reach of the polis and civitas, whether those are ancient cultures or currently-living peoples.
There are currently three chapter excerpts posted. The first was just made public. It’s on the pagan understanding of time, the “natural” rhythms of the world and of humans outside of the machine logic of clocks and factories.
Here’s an excerpt.
Rather than some mere astronomical oddity or mere backdrop in the sky, the moon for humans has always been an ancient and ever-present guide to our lives. This is not an esoteric statement, though the moon also has been associated with occult and spiritual knowledge in many cultures as well. The moon has been our light, our lamp in the darkness. It has also been our calendar, our clock, the primary way by which we measured the passing of time and the cycles of nature long before we divided our days into hours and used numbers to date our lives and activities.
Now the moon means little to us. The people of industrial cities no longer use the moon to see by, and we consult tide tables and menstrual charts to predict the patterns the moon dictates. Few of us—except in the non-industrial world—gather food along the shores when the tide rushes out, nor do we sit patiently in forests or fields waiting for the moon-illuminating silhouettes of animals that might feed us. We buy our sustenance in hyper-lit supermarkets, walk through city streets flooded with garish lights, and have become so far removed from the moon’s patterns that we often see it as mere symbol, if we even see it at all.
People who know the moon know certain things about it that, to us, may seem like magical or occult knowledge, impossible to access now without special training or supernatural senses. Read most popular witchcraft books and you’ll find no end of rituals to help you “draw down the moon” or use the moon in spell work. Many now recommend you download popular apps for your phone which will tell you when the next full and new moon is, apps which will “alert” you when these phases are about to occur.
If you know the moon, however, you need none of this. It’s humorous—and a little tragic—to imagine a modern witch going back in time to explain the amazing technological advances industrial capitalism has given us, showing a common person 400 years ago how to know what phase the moon will be in on any given day.
One imagines that person shrugging, shaking their head, and merely pointing up. Such a person would not only intuitively know which phase the moon was in, but also where the moon was about to rise that night, and how soon it will do so.
You can read the whole essay here (and it is downloadable in .pdf format as well).
An extra benefit for substack subscribers:
I committed at the beginning to making the essays I write for From The Forests of Arduinna always free, and I will continue to do so. However, so many of you have also become paying subscribers (thank you!) that I’d like to offer you something in return.
There are two other essays excerpted from chapters that have been published. These are currently only available for supporters of my Patreon or of Another World. However, I will begin offering the same benefit of early and exclusive access to long-form essays like these—as well as my druid video series—to substack subscribers as well.
So, you’ll soon start seeing “paid supporter” dispatches in your inbox and on this site. These will be links to these essays and druid journal videos. If you’re not a paid supporter, please know you’re not missing out on an essay from my substack with these.
And if you are a paid subscriber, I’m sure you’ll enjoy these. The druid journals are videos where I reflect on many of these same ideas, but without the intermediary of static words to get in the way. They’re a lot of fun to make.1
And the long-form essays I write at Another World are really my favorite sort of writing. They are still “political,” but much less directed at the current turmoil of the world and instead grounded in the hope of creating a better framework for us all outside of relentlessly mediated political life.
So, those of you who have become paid subscribers will also get these now, too. And if you would like to become a paid subscriber in order to also get these, you can upgrade your subscription below.
Thanks to all of you who have subscribed, and also to those who have subscribed with financial gifts as well. Your constant feedback and appreciation has been profound.
Love to you all!
—Rhyd
And are sometimes shirtless.