The Zen Pagan

25/12/2023

From the vaults: "In our common cultural mythology, around this time every year we think about a chubby guy going around handing out gifts from a big sack. As it happens Buddhism has a chubby guy with a sack too — Hotei, the fellow often mistaken in the West for a fat Buddha, whose very name means “Cloth Sack”. According to legend his bag was full of sweets, and he would wander around giving them out to children."

We forget that the things we do are special, because they are ordinary to us.

25/12/2023

From the vaults: "But, just as I see a sort of “Christmas Spirit” in human experience and sometimes find it useful to hang the image of Old Saint Nick on that, so I know the mystical experience, and find it useful to hang the image of Pan or Dainichi Buddha or Aphrodite or Shiva or Eris (All hail Discordia!), or even once in a while that poor old carpenter Jeshua ben Joseph, on it. The gods and goddesses live not in some heavenly realm, but in our hearts and minds, in every aspect of human experience."

Sure, there wasn't a magic guy with a flying sleigh, etcetera, but there was an aspect of the human experience, a generosity, that we could sensibly personify as the chubby fellow in red. Santa didn't live at North Pole, but in the human heart. Yes, Santa was our parents - humans incarnating a mytho...

24/12/2023

Happy Festivus!

"Religious humor is a form of 'deep play' that works to renegotiate ideas about tradition, space, identity, community, and the body, and uses paradox to further one’s progress toward enlightenment." So in that context, I'd like to consider Festivus, a satirical or parody holiday celebrated on Dece...

21/12/2023

The archetypal Magician is the keeper of hidden knowledge, the master of special skills and powers. He is the yin/yang compliment of the King. Where the King is a widely known public figure, the Magician is isolated in his tower, intent on his chosen field of study and artistry.

20/12/2023

We are in the realm of symbolic magic dealing with the dead, and should tread with care. There is tremendous power in the graves of the war dead. Surely it would be best to direct that power intelligently, rather than leave it to flow randomly.

20/12/2023

I am generally of the opinion that monuments to the anti-American pro-slavery terrorist movement that called itself the “Confederate States of America” should be melted down and recycled into toilet seats.

But I am also generally of the opinion that it’s a bad idea to disturb anything in a graveyard, that the dead should be permitted to lie under the patina of history, with new context accumulating on top but without digging up the bones (literal or figurative) of the past. Cemeteries are liminal places loaded with magical energy, and should be treated carefully.

We are in the realm of symbolic magic dealing with the dead, and should tread with care. There is tremendous power in the graves of the war dead. Surely it would be best to direct that power intelligently, rather than leave it to flow randomly.

07/12/2023

Mom always said -- and quite likely your mom said it too -- that two wrongs don't make a right.

07/12/2023

Mom always said — and quite likely your mom said it too — that two wrongs don’t make a right.

These days, such a thought is considered dangerous, liable to get you accused of “bothsidesing” or “whataboutism”. Whether the two sides in question are the Republicians and Democrats, or Russia and Ukrine, or Israel and Hamas, you are expected to take a side, ignore its sins, and call for the destruction of the other side.

But it is a deep pathology to be unable to say that both sides in a dispute — whether it is a dysfunctional personal relationship, a political rivalry, or a war — are engaged in wrongdoing.

Mom always said -- and quite likely your mom said it too -- that two wrongs don't make a right.

22/11/2023

Time for a repost. "So the Pilgrim’s “First Thanksgiving” at Plymouth was not the first. Nor was it ancestral to our annual celebration."

The 1621 celebration was not identified by anyone as the "First Thanksgiving" until 1841, when Rev. Alexander Young did so in his book Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers. By then the New England Thanksgiving had developed a substantial tradition that had little to do with the Pilgrims, so the claim w...

28/09/2023

It's an old cliche that "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear", but it's more accurate to say that when the student is ready, the teaching will become visible.

28/09/2023

"It’s an old cliche that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”, but it’s more accurate to say that when the student is ready, the teaching will become visible."

It's an old cliche that "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear", but it's more accurate to say that when the student is ready, the teaching will become visible.

21/09/2023

I will be doing a class on self-acupressure next Wednesday. It'll be available on Zoom:

Acupressure for the Autumn: Sep 27, 7pm. Learn self-acupressue techniques with a focus on the autumn season, focusing on the Lung and Large Intestine meridians and the Metal phase of the Five Phases.

21/09/2023

Autumn is the season of metal, associated with grieving and letting go. It is also the element of harvesting, setting boundaries, communication, the breath, and the present moment.

Autumn is the season of metal, associated with grieving and letting go. It is also the element of harvesting, setting boundaries, communication, the breath, and the present moment. We enter the summer, the year's height of activity, the season of fire, with plans made during the spring, the season o...

10/07/2023

And that means that for the best results, the magician must be clear about what they wish. Expressing your intention in words, symbols, or art is an excellent way to bring clarity.

15/06/2023

Kaczynski was not just any violent revolutionary, overconfident in the rightness of his solutions to the world’s problems. He was a victim of the CIA’s MKULTRA mind control experiments.

31/05/2023

The only way to precisely engineer a wood fire is to pelletize the wood, to crush and grind and homogenize it. Short of that, each piece of wood is unique, and building and maintaining a fire from those pieces takes at least as much art as engineering.

10/02/2023

How do we eulogize people who were difficult to others and to themselves? And how do we, as Pagan folk, perform death rites, especially for those of ambiguous spirituality and for an interfaith gathering?

04/02/2023

But right now I'm tempted to consider whether putting unglamorous photos of dead alcoholics up on liquor store walls might help restrain excess. I wish that I could flash those minutes into the brains of those struggling with sobriety, for motivation, a "Don't Let This Happen To You" public service announcement.

But right now I'm tempted to consider whether putting unglamorous photos of dead alcoholics up on liquor store walls might help restrain excess. I wish that I could flash those minutes into the brains of those struggling with sobriety, for motivation, a "Don't Let This Happen To You" public service....

02/01/2023

American society is dis-integrating, becoming disconnected. That's killing people. It's urgent that we find ways to "assemble", in the sense of "come together".

24/12/2022

A thread of old holiday blog posts from The Zen Pagan. Sometimes looking back at what past-me wrote gives present-me some inspiration and comfort; perhaps it will do so for you.

1. In rough times? Some advice for Crappy Holidays.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thezenpagan/2020/12/crappy-holidays/

More posts in the comments. (If you're seeing this shared, click on the post's time/date to see it on The Zen Pagan's page and get the comments. Facebook just can't make it easy...)

This Yuletide season is looking bleak. So what can we do when things suck?

23/12/2022

Happy Festivus!

"Religious humor is a form of 'deep play' that works to renegotiate ideas about tradition, space, identity, community, and the body, and uses paradox to further one’s progress toward enlightenment." So in that context, I'd like to consider Festivus, a satirical or parody holiday celebrated on Dece...

20/12/2022

It's useless to judge a candle that gets blown out in the wind; my job is to relight it.

And perhaps practicing that on the night of the Solstice will help me take that attitude into other parts of my life.

It's useless to judge a candle that gets blown out in the wind; my job is to relight it. And perhaps practicing that on the night of the Solstice will help me take that attitude into other parts of my life.

17/12/2022

Are you ready for a more magical year in 2023? Make it happen with Punk Magick! Learn how to strip the art of magick down to its absolute bare essentials, and go forward confidently with a "do it yourself" spirit to engage directly with it using a simple five part structure for any magickal working.

PUNK MAGICK a DIY guide to creating your own magickal system Learn how to strip the art of magick down to its absolute bare essentials, and go forward confidently with a ‘do it yourself’ spirit to engage directly with it, using a five part structure for any magickal working: 1.Decide what you wa...

18/11/2022

My "Punk Magick" talk from Autumn Fires.

28/10/2022

I am fairly certain that, should my life ever be judged by the gods, these questions will be a hell of a lot more important than my take on how elves in a TV series should look. So, please: let's not extend our culture war into the afterlife.

19/09/2022

Parental Death, Ancestor Work, And The Search For Love.

My father is five years dead, and his death was a great blow at a time when I was already weakened. But I recovered from the blow, and the experience transformed my relationship with him and with all of my ancestors, maybe setting my life on a whole new path.

16/09/2022

My father is five years dead, and his death was a great blow. But I recovered from that, and the experience transformed my relationship with all of my ancestors, maybe setting my life on a whole new path.

07/09/2022

Netflix's adaption of Neil Gaiman's Sandman is...okay. Good, but not as excellent as it might have been. There are some A+ elements, but there are some things that should have been better, flaws ranging from the aggravating to the disappointing. It averages out to perhaps a B+

23/06/2022

"It's what we owe the past. What we owe those who invented speech, writing, mathematics, music, democracy; our debt to the discoverers of coffee, tea, beer, wine, the lever, electricity. We can't pay them royalties on their discoveries, so we pay them forward, our user's fee for civilization."

28/04/2022

Be wild. Disrespect convention. Steal ideas, steal fire from the gods, steal the gods themselves. Because the miraculous thing about these sort of "thefts" is that they don't take anything anyway from anyone.

Excerpt Be wild. Disrespect convention. Steal ideas, steal fire from the gods, steal the gods themselves.Because the miraculous thing about these sort of "thefts" is that they don't take anything anyway from anyone.

22/02/2022

I think the first time I encountered the word "techno-pagan" was in the late 1990s, in Nancy Lebovitz's calligraphic button catalog. But when I saw that, immediately, I was like, "hey -- that's me!" And it's not just me. Any gathering of Pagan folk is likely to have a disproportionate percentage of STEM folks.

I think the first time I encountered the word "techno-pagan" was in the late 1990s, in Nancy Lebovitz's calligraphic button catalog. But when I saw that, immediately, I was like, "hey -- that's me!" And it's not just me. Any gathering of Pagan folk is likely to have a disproportionate percentage of....

08/01/2022

As I was thinking about the new year, the word that came to mind is "shifting". It's a word with several meanings useful to the time: to move; to manage to get along or succeed by one's self; to get along by indirect, expedient, or evasive means; to change; to put something aside and replace it.

23/12/2021

Now available in paperback and ebook (epub format)! https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/tom-swiss/punk-magick/paperback/product-mv74nr.html?page=1&pageSize=4

PUNK MAGICK a DIY guide to creating your own magickal system Learn how to strip the art of magick down to its absolute bare essentials, and go forward confidently with a ‘do it yourself’ spirit to engage directly with it, using a five part structure for any magickal working: 1.Decide what you wa...

18/12/2021

Perhaps when we wish each other "Happy Holidays" in recognition of the number of festivals which occur around the Winter Solstice (remember, axial tilt is the reason for the season!), we should include Thirteenth Amendment Day in that list.

Perhaps when we wish each other "Happy Holidays" in recognition of the festivals which occur around the Winter Solstice ,we should include Thirteenth Amendment Day in that list.