Recently in Nature Category

Paul Stamets gave a couple of mind-blowing talks at TED and Bioneers about mushrooms that suggest ways we might ultimately come to harmonize pur civilization with the natural world.  They are well worth the time it takes to watch.  In his TED  talk, Stamets covers "Six Ways Mushrooms can Save the World.  The Bioneers talk is shorter and its points are included in the TED presentation.

These talks have wonderful implications supporting a Pagan view of the world.  And so, of course, does the ingestion of sacred mushrooms - but these talks are not abut that

Magick?

This brings me to Pitch's second point, that in many ways really underlies his first.  Wild species are more magickally powerful than tame.  When you have a message from Spirit that your work should focus on native species, as I gather is the case with Pitch, that follows.  But what about those of us who have not received that particular message?

When I posted on Mabon,  I suggested we need to get in better touch with the energies and denizens of the places where we live.  Only then could we really honor the spirits of the earth.  I mentioned salmon, grapes, and apples as examples from Sonoma County.  Pitch, the source of many wise comments both there and elsewhere,  suggested that while salmon were certainly appropriate, grapes and apples, as interlopers from abroad, magickally less effective, and so were not. 

Some Fundamentalists think they have concocted a neat way of attacking evolution on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, lowering our national IQ below even the level to which it has currently sunk.  A young woman named Cristina takes them down, and does it wonderfully.   And bluntly.  I have no firm idea as to where her personal theology falls, nor does it matter.  She's done a wonderful job.  I also really like the ankh, and that we Wiccans get a kind of honorable mention. 

This final section is where I think the bigger picture of how a Pagan perspective helps the modern world better address its problems comes together.  Look below the fold if you like political theory...

Modern factory farms may soon be raising animals that are "pain free," and so not able to suffer physically from the abominable conditions under which they live.  So says a story in this week's New Scientist, my favorite science magazine....

After the God of Death, why not the Whale of Life?...

As we commemorate Apollo 11's successful trip to the moon and Neil Armstrong's first steps there, all done with the aid of less computing power than exists in my cell phone, I am reminded of how in one respect it...

When I read these two articles about how we are emptying our oceans  and exterminating sharks not even on purpose, but as thoughtless "bycatch" while we exterminate other things,  I was led into musing about the kind of world we...

I've just finished Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce's  new book, Wild Justice: the Moral Lives of Animals.  Theirs is a wonderful book that in less than 200 pages has deeply changed how I look at our other-than-human neighbors on our...

While visiting Walla Walla, Washington, where I had taught for some years at Whitman College, I took a side trip over to northeast Oregon, one of the most beautiful and least known parts of our country.  There I visited the...

Hello, this is T. Thorn Coyle, stepping in for Gus today.   One of the things I do in life is act as a spiritual director. Recently, one of my clients was talking about a struggle with the fact that...

Given the negativity that so easily can come to seem the defining feature of this society, it's good to be reminded of why so many of us push back against the forces of dark ignorance.  Drew Dellinger's poem is a...

Thomas Berry has died today.   He had been a central figure in helping Western Christians, those willing to look and learn anyway, re-establishing connectedness with the sacred immanence we Pagans find in nature. Other giants in ecological and spiritual thought...

When I first was made to know, in no uncertain terms, that the earth and everything in it was vastly more sentient than I had ever imagined, I looked long and hard for writings that could shed more light on...

Recent discoveries about bird intelligence after so many many years of people knowing we were the only tool users and making it a definition for being human are great evidence for how what we "know" blinds us to what is. ...

The recent plethora of books by militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is beginning to generate a good deal of return fire from people writing within the Christian tradition, either as sophisticated adherents or writers...

Alex, Snowball, Betty - recently birds have been transforming the world we live in - as we discover what had been in front of us for thousands of years. The transformation is in our perceptions and understanding.  ...

Saturday was Pagan pride Day in Berkeley.  Many dear friends of mine participated, and if someone sends me an account, I'll pass it along.  But after much dithering one way and the other, I did not go....

Earth Day celebrates the earth and our relation to this wonderful place.  But our society relates to our home the way a sociopath relates to others: only as a tool, and only valued when useful.  Modern science is invoked to...

Earth Day is approaching, and while I want to honor it, today I was sent a link to an article that suggests honoring Earth day would be a mistake.  The author, Bradley Doucet, repeats standard attacks from various kinds of...

Nature poetry is important in helping us reconnect with the living earth, an experience even some Pagans have not personally experienced (yet). National Poetry Month is a fine time to reflect on this, and share some poems.   Our society...

Tonight, at 8:30 in whatever time zone they live, millions of people will be turning out their lights in a symbolic action pressing for worldwide change on energy and our relations with the More Then Human World.Sponsored by the World...

Today I read "The Race to Save the Frogs" by Jennifer S. Holland in the April National Geographic.   Her article describes the horrendous impact the fungal disease chytrid  is having on the world's amphibians, killing off entire species.  Holland quotes...

I have just finished Linda Hogan's Dwellings.  Hers is not a new book.  It appeared in 1995, and I missed it then. I have been the poorer for my oversight.  I stumbled across it in a bookstore -and picked it...

While we are a small portion of America's population, on occasion we can be mighty.  Ten years ago the Headwaters Forest  in northern California was saved from the rape and pillage methods of logging by Texas financiers who took over...

I just discovered a good account  Gobekli Tepe on Stephen Schwarz's  often fascinating site.  Not only does it give a good account of the place and its discovery along with great pictures, it also discusses in greater detail than I...

I almost forgot!  Today, Feb 12, is Charles Darwin's birthday.  And an illustrious day it is.  Why should I, a committed believer in the Gods and the Sacred, support a guy who has been used by atheists to debunk the...

We are having a fearfully dry winter here in northern California.  Summers are all but rainless, with only the coastal fog keeping this region from total desiccation in the summer.  You can tell where the fog gets when you visit...