An extra essay for paid subscribers

As I mentioned in a recent dispatch here, I will be offering to my substack paid subscribers the same early access that I offer Patreon supporters to my long-read/in-depth essays that are published on Another World.

This is one of my recently published essays, an excerpt from a manuscript-in-progress called Being Pagan.

Empires rise and fall; however, this kind of rural, “uncivilized” relationship to the land—a relationship called variously pagan, heathen, primitive, savage (4), and many other names in many other cultures—persists. If anything, it does not only persist, it seems to be the human default, with the sprawling urban centers of modern industrial capitalist society to be the aberration.

To be pagan, then, is to be connected to the land in a way that stands outside of—and often in opposition to—the concerns of the urban and of Empire. Even though the official histories of humanity always focus on them, empires and the cities they form are mere temporary interruptions to a more organic and mostly unwritten history of human life.

It is a history of relationship to land, of connection to it, of life lived in relative harmony with the nature of which humans are but one small part. It is not just a history, however, but a still-living reality for much of the world, and one we can still connect to and become part of.

Reconnecting to the land first of all requires reconnecting to a pagan sense of time, as was discussed in a previous essay. The reason we start there is because it is the time of the land itself, the rhythms by which the land breathes, grows, dies back, and comes alive again. The seasons determine the cycles of trees, plants, and animals, just as the moon tugs on the oceans and the water within our own bodies.

This sense of time, the time of the land, is not the time of Empire nor of the political and cultural reach of the cities.

The essay can be read online at this link, or downloaded as a pdf directly at this link.

The previous essay (Being Pagan—Connecting to Pagan Time) is available publicly here.

Thank you for financially supporting my writing. It’s deeply appreciated and deeply helpful.