Ideas for practice?

[u/Amythbeanz]

I identify as a Naturalistic Pagan. I’m Atheist, so I don’t believe in any gods and think there is a scientific reasoning behind the world. If I had to put my belief into a sentence, it would go something like this: “Nature is sacred simply because it exist, not because it was made by god.” It’s what I usually use to explain my beliefs to people. I don’t follow the wheel of year or spell work/witchcraft.

My current practices:
I celebrate the seasons and important events in nature. I try to grow most of the veggies I eat myself and am working towards raising and processing my own meats as well. I try to show respect to and honor the animals that I eat. I also like to create altars to represent the season or whatever I’m celebrating. I do my best to reduce my negative impact on the nature around me and help animals when I can. Or I bring the season into my home with decor and natural air fresheners like simmer pots. I try to make things out of natural materials or cook from scratch.

Things I’ve seen other Atheistic Pagans talk about:
I’ve seen those with similar views as me using gods as personifications of things they are worshiping/celebrating instead of working with the god itself as an actual supernatural deity. (Like using Persephone to represent spring but not actually believing in Persephone as being a deity.) -> The issue I have with this is I try my best to separate my practice from any deities/supernatural forces. I don’t think that pathway works for me.

I practice what I do as a way of respecting and showing honor to nature. I am an animal in nature, and I am on this planet because of it. I’ve looked into like the “Mother Earth” stuff, but I still think that’s honoring a deity and not nature itself.

Anyways, I’m trying to look for more to do than what I already do. I feel like most practices I look into are very focused on being directed at a deity of some kind and want any tips on things I can do or look into to expand my practice that don’t involve gods/goddesses. Or things I can take inspiration from to help further my practice. I feel like I’m getting stuck in place and can’t find much that fits my beliefs as I don’t think my belief is particularly common.

Also please let me know if this isn’t a good server to ask in or if this goes against the rules. I understand that a lot of people don’t believe you can be an Atheistic Pagan and I understand that. It’s just what I’ve found to describe myself.

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[u/sidhe_elfakyn]

You should also post in r/NonTheisticPaganism if you haven't already.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/sidhe_elfakyn]

I do plan to make one there as well. Thanks!

[u/SonOfDyeus]

My outlook is similar to yours, although I do refer to Mother Earth as a deity.  

Some ideas I've used:

Incorporate the lunar cycle into your practice:

Fasting on or about the New Moon.    Fasting or feasting during a Full Moon.

Clearing my kitchen of expired food every New Moon as in the Deipnon of Hekate.

Using solstices and equinoxes for resolutions. The same way people make new years resolutions, you can set major goals every three months.

I've also incorporated astronomy into my practice. Like, "I intend to keep this-or-that habit until Jupiter enters Leo."

Facing East for a few minutes each sunrise and practicing gratitude. Facing the sunrise is just as important as lights-out at night for synchronizing your sleep cycle with the seasons.  Intentional gratitude is a well-established mental health technique.

A good meditation technique is to imagine the cycles of your breath and heartbeat as analogous to the cycles of the day and year and month.  The inhale is like the rising sun, waxing moon, and lengthening days from midwinter to midsummer.  The exhale is like the setting sun, waning moon, and shortening days from midsummer to midwinter.  Life grows fuller half the year, and withers for the other half.  And then Earth breathes again.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/SonOfDyeus]

I really like some of these ideas, thank you :D

[u/Obsidian_Dragon]

Volunteer nature conservation work? Can't get more respectful to nature than that and it's spiritual if you want it to be. I do it in service of deities and nature spirits but that's hardly mandatory.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/Obsidian_Dragon]

There aren’t many programs like that in my area, but I’ll see what I can find!

[u/SeaNutria]

I think this sounds a lot like pantheism ( dont be scared off by the ‘ theism’). The foundational belief is that the divine and nature /the universe are one and the same. There is no creator god nor any supernatural beings of any kind, only the processes and interconnectedness of the natural world. That’s my simplified explanation.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/SeaNutria]

I did look into that some, and I plan to look further into it. Thanks for the recommendation!!!

[u/MNdruids]

Based on what you've indicated of your practice and what you're seeking, my suggestion might not be the greatest match, but it was established as a gray area that is open to interpretation.

The tradition of Reformed Druidry was created with the intention that people of any existing belief or lack thereof could find affinity as a Reformed Druid. What they created was intended to have the flexibility to be as literal or as metaphorical as the individual needed, in particular because some of the founding members were agnostic.

You mentioned taking issue with Mother Earth being seen as a deity. That can be the case in Reformed Druidry, but right in the core tenets of belief (of which there are only two) there's an instant caveat that declares that the Earth-Mother simply is nature. There were members that didn't want to deify the Earth, so as a rule they set it up to be a metaphor instead of a matron theology.

They also left the Two Basic Tenets up to interpretation and subject to variation.
1: The object of the search for spiritual truth, which is a universal and a never ending search, may be found through the Earth-Mother, which is nature, but this is one way among many.
2: And great is the spiritual importance of nature, which is the Earth-Mother, and with it we do live, even as we struggle through life do we come face-to-face with it.

Reductionist variations have boiled down the Two Basic Tenets to both mean "Nature is Good," but it leaves out a bit of nuance that it isn't always that.

The atheist and agnostic variation sums it up very well for people who describe Reformed Druidry as a "rational religion" when they word the Two Basic Tenets as:
1: Philosophical fulfillment can be found and expressed in nature.
2: Nature, despite its perils, is profoundly important to our fulfillment.

In most of the Rituals of Reformed Druidry, the Earth-Mother is mentioned, but again, it is intended to be a metaphor for nature itself, not a deity. However, some members of the movement like to think of Nature as a deity, and they are welcome to that interpretation. Neopagans were actually latecomers to the Reformed Druidry movement, which was first populated by Christians, Agnostics, and other mainstream beliefs, who all needed the Earth-Mother to be a metaphor.

Anyone can practice Reformed Druidry without needing any rituals. For many, their own personal interpretation or variation of the Two Basic Tenets is all they need, and they are part of the spiritual body of Reformed Druidism. Some people, even the atheists and agnostics in my own Grove of Reformed Druids, like the rituals with all the colorful metaphors, but we mostly celebrate the shifting seasons and the endless progression of time. The organization has also been described as non-Celtic Druidism. Some people are purely in it for the environmental aspects, and not even the rituals, rites of passage, or metaphors.

It's a quirky organization, but a lot of people like the quirkiness, or the Meditations, or the camaraderie despite coming together with possibly quite different ways of interpreting what is sacred or special to them. Could be worth looking into deeper. Sorry about so many paragraphs; I tried to keep it concise.

[u/DeepUndine]

You don't have to practice any differently from other pagans, because it doesn't really matter of you consider the gods to be mythological characters in a fairytale, it matters that you understand what they symbolise and why their stories are valued.

[u/GreenRavenUK]

Perhaps look into an animistic starting point with ‘spirit’ being a word for ‘life’ and ‘lifeforce’. Lifeforce can be credited to inorganic forms, places, day-to-day objects, bodies of water etc. in an expanded bionetwork and ongoing process of change, without needing to promote any of them to deities.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/GreenRavenUK]

Could you expand on that a little bit more if you don’t mind? It seems interesting, I’ll look into it some in my free time :D

[u/GreenRavenUK → u/Amythbeanz]

Animism begins with the simple belief that all things have spirit and that spirit is linked. Or as Gordon Maclellan ('Creeping Toad') says, "If it exists, it lives". As well as animals, plants and fungi, inanimate things - places, rocks, hills, waterways, armchairs and tables - are also considered to have ‘ish-ness’ or personhood. A quality that responds, that gratitude can be shown to. A lifeforce. The linkage means that as part of this great 'all', we can meaningfully reach out and commune with this quality, as part of it.

Professor Graham Harvey, the animist academic, has said that he finds it difficult to see the spirit in a plastic bag. However, plastic items, as well as concrete buildings, were all once millions of tiny creatures swimming in long dried up oceans. The life force is still with them.

It points to a relationship with all things, a sense of their having rights and deserving respect. Not to be just mined, extruded, used and tossed away. The Jains cover their cups with muslin cloth to prevent any insects getting accidentally swallowed. How might our Earth look if we lived simply, not demanding too much of ‘our’ resources and places? Treading lightly on the land, in honourable relationship with all things? We don’t have to call them ‘gods’ but at the very least, we can treat them as equals.

I feel that to be a Pagan place.

[u/Arboreal_Web]

Just fyi - it is fully possible to believe in deity and still respect/embrace science. Pagan cultures were the originators of science and logic, after all. Higher maths, astronomy, chemistry, biology, engineering and architecture, etc…all of these started in pagan cultures. (And were associated with specific deities.) The myths were never intended to be taken at all literally, b/c myths are humanity’s attempts to explain things which could be observed but not explained in other ways at the time. (There are still many things our science cannot explain.) Science explains the “what” and “how”, while myth and mysticism attempt to address the “why”. They’re complimentary, not mutually exclusive.

Tbc - I’m not trying to sway you to change your beliefs, just want to encourage you to scrub that false dichotomy from your thinking. The tendency that some modern pagans have to ignore science and go all superstitious-woo instead…that attitude is a hold-over from monotheism, (where independent thinking is disallowed), and is generally discouraged in most serious pagan groups.

Also - It’s usually a good idea to read a sub’s wiki before posting to the sub, instead of just making assumptions based on the sub’s name. The questions you’ve raised here are pretty thoroughly addressed on this sub’s wiki. Two minutes’ due diligence there is all it will take to ease your anxieties, show you that you are not alone in your view, and point you in useful directions.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/Arboreal_Web]

I don’t think Pagans scrub all science from their beliefs, I’ve been pagan for a few years now.

My statements were based off of what I’ve gathered talking to theistic pagans before. Which many of were very heavy on deity work and fully worshiped certain gods as real supernatural beings, even to the extent as their gods being the explanation to everyday things.

And while I know it’s possible to believe in deities and respect nature, I simply don’t believe in them myself. Not even in a “representation but not actually real” kinda way. That’s why I try to stray from they so much. It just doesn’t fit me that well.

Also, I very much have looked into many communities theistic or not. Most of what I’ve seen has been based around the wheel of the year or using deities as representation. I’ve talked to other pagans irl and online, and either have been that unlucky in finding atheists, or haven’t been able to find anyone with a similar view that doesn’t just base most of their path on the wheel of the year.

Sorry if some of my writing is repeating or scrambled, my blood sugar is low while I’m writing this.

[u/Arboreal_Web → u/Amythbeanz]

That first sentence…that’s not at all what I said. I rather clearly said “some” pagans.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/Arboreal_Web]

I was just speaking generally, and based off my experiences in the past talking to other Pagans.

The point of my first sentence is that I’m not particularly new to the community, I know there’s many different paths and everyone thinks I little differently. Most of my statements are very generally speaking.

[u/Arboreal_Web → u/Amythbeanz]

Yes, you will encounter pagans who hold to all possible levels of mythic literalism.

Life Pro-tip: “Some people do it that way” does not ever equal “I must do it that way”. It’s your spiritual practice, you get to decide how you understand and approach things.

ie - The Wheel of the Year, at core, is simply the natural rhythm of the four temperate-zone seasons. Working with that doesn’t have to involve deity at all, in any way, unless you wish to. (That’s why theists include deity in that observance…b/c they’re theists, and they wish to.) You can still observe and honor the passing of seasons in a huge variety of ways…and in doing so, you’ll effectively be working with the Wheel.

What you can do - what most of us do - is take the bits of belief or practice that resonate with you, and syncretize them into your own views and practices. If the metaphor/allegory of mythic divinity doesn’t help you, then ignore those bits. (But really I’d recommend learning to properly understand myth rather than ignore it, even if you never embrace it, b/c that’s where the wisdom is found in pagan wisdom traditions.)

I think you could really help yourself out here by just not being so pedantic, literal, and hyperbolic about what you encounter in other people’s practices. B/c really, what you’re describing as your view is not unique, much more widespread than you may be thinking at present. So. Probably also extend your scope of research beyond word-of-mouth and into the realm of reputable authors on the topic.

[u/Amythbeanz → u/Arboreal_Web]

The way you’ve been answering me seems rather condescending. I have no interest in “properly understanding” myths, and I’m well aware of some of your points. My post is looking for other peoples ideas or things they do themselves they think might fit what I follow. A few of those “huge variety of ways” is more helpful to me.

Much of what I’ve mentioned about other peoples practice was simple comparison to help get some of my points across.