“Pandemic Thinking” and “Being Pagan: Those Who Came Before”

Hi there!

I wanted to let you know that there are two things I’ve done that were just released and are available to supporters.

Empires Crumble 26: Pandemic Thinking

The first is the latest episode of Empires Crumble, the monthly podcast that I do along with Alley Valkyrie. This episode, called “Pandemic Thinking,” releases to the public 9 August, but you can listen to it in advance at this link. Usually there is also a video with these, but there was a recording problem, so only the audio is available this time.

All previous episodes (25 of them) are available for listening here.

Being Pagan: Those Who Came Before

A fifth condensed chapter from my manuscript, Being Pagan, is now available. This one is about ancestors and tradition, and also touches slightly on the insanity of race thinking.

Here is an excerpt from the section called “The Democracy of the Dead” (taken from a G.K. Chesterton quote) where I introduce the pagan/animist understanding of tradition.

As young children, all of our worldview, our language, our way of thinking, and even our sense of our selves is first shaped by the adults who care for us. Our mothers, especially, because of their constant care taking of us as infants, become our first teachers about the world.

Yet, who was the first teacher of our mother? Her mother, of course, which is to say our grandmother. So, while we learned directly from our mother, we are also learning from our grandmother, because is was she who first shaped our mother’s understanding of the world and even shaped our mother’s idea of what mothering is. Our grandmother, by mothering our mother, taught her how to mother us. And she, in turn, was taught by her mother, our great grandmother.

In this simple chain of mothering is the key to the pagan and animist understanding of what ancestors are and what tradition means. Though we might never have met our great-great grandparents, because they shaped the worldview of our grand parents who in turned shaped the worldview of our parents, we are also being parented by them, not just by our mother and father.

This kind of transmission of worldview itself is what we call tradition, and it cannot be accounted for by genetic or physical inheritance. It isn’t something we are born with, but something passed along to us, a body of knowledge and wisdom comprised of many generations of people we never could have met.

This essay is available to you in advance of its public release at this link.

Thanks as always for supporting my work here. It’s deeply appreciated.