Ostara Intro

The celebration of the Vernal Equinox, the border between winter and spring, is known by a variety of names; we chose “Ostara,” an easy-to-pronounce variant of the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess said to lie behind an ancient seasonal festival. Historian Ronald Hutton examines the evidence for such a festival in his 1996 book The Stations of the Sun. He notes that the 8th-century English monk known as the Venerable Bede was curious as to why Germanic-speaking areas of Europe did not derive their name for this celebration from the Passover, a Jewish holiday translated into Christian observance, as was common in most other areas. Bede speculated that the Germanic name (which derives from an Indo-European root meaning “dawn” and survives in the modern terms Ostern and Easter) came from a pagan goddess called Eostre who presided over this time of year. However, Bede admits that this is entirely his own idea and is not based on any real research. Hutton writes, “It is therefore quite possible to argue that Bede’s Eostre was a Germanic dawn-deity who was venerated, appropriately, at this season of opening and new beginnings. It is equally valid, however, to suggest that the Anglo-Saxon ‘Estor-monath’ simply meant ‘the month of opening’ or ‘the month of beginnings,’ and that Bede mistakenly connected it with a goddess who either never existed at all, or was never associated with a particular season but merely, like Eos and Aurora, with the dawn itself” (p. 180).

Regardless, the Vernal Equinox does mark a time of new beginnings as we step back into the light half of the year. In constructing my graphic of the Wheel of the Year, seen above, I searched for an appropriate dichotomy to mark this axis and settled on Hello/Goodbye. In this sense, “hello” encompasses not just a greeting between friendly folks but also a sense of emergence—new life, new growth, new ideas. We’re on that boundary between “cold” and “life” and can let ourselves be open to the feelings that come with the imminent blossoming of spring. “Hello” can serve as a theme for Ostara celebrations; as we get ready to shake off our winter blues and embrace the return of the green—to come out of our refuge, rejoin the wider community, and start a new day. It makes sense, then, to name our celebration after a personification of the dawn.

Ostara Ritual

Celebration for Ostara, the Vernal Equinox

Opening Poem

Suggested reading: “Persephone Returning” by Alison Stone

The Vernal Equinox and the Meaning of Ostara

Tonight we gather once again to honor the ever-turning wheel of the year. The cycles of the year, like the cycles of our lives, have neither beginning nor end. Their movement is constant, yet not repetitive. No year, no season, no day, no life is exactly like the one that came before or that will come after. Every season is unique, and every life is unique.

Like galaxies spiraling through the universe, the paths of our lives also spiral, forever moving us forward. Although the Earth circles the sun, the sun itself is circling the core of the galaxy, creating a spiral path for our planet. Everything in the galaxy follows a spiral path. Therefore, the Earth’s journey, though constant, also never repeats itself.

Twice a year, the Earth seems to pause in its journey around the sun, as it reaches the balance point between day and night. On these days, the equinoxes, we pause also, to celebrate the life-sustaining cycles of light and dark and reflect on the turning wheel of life and death. We celebrate with flame, whether the flicker of candlelight or the roar of a bonfire, to remind us of the energy of the sun and the creative spark of the cosmos beyond.

When the day and the night are of equal length, we are reminded of the equality of all living things—for they are all aspects of Gaea, our living world. From the smallest microbe to the largest redwood, we are all united in life and stand as equals on this planet. When we pause in this moment, we remember this truth, and renew our commitment to caring for the Earth, for each other, and for ourselves.

On this day, the vernal equinox, light and darkness are in balance. Behind us lies the long, cold winter; before us lies the promise of the spring. As the earth softens and the waters begin to flow, we welcome the return of the light. The winter’s long dark nights have given us the time and the space to turn inward, to reflect, and to renew ourselves. Now, the world around us stirs itself, and our senses rejoice at the fresh blossoms, green grasses, and all varieties of new life that appear around us.

The vernal equinox is a moment for us to pause and reflect upon that which we need to release and that which we need to pull closer. What hopes, fears, habits, beliefs, or relationships are we holding onto even though they no longer inspire our best selves? Can we let go of them in order to make space for new ideas, new people, and new endeavors?

As seeds are germinating all around us, we can ask what seeds have we sown in our own lives? How might our past accomplishments inspire us to seek out new goals and projects? In the coming summer, what do we want to learn, to create, to nurture? This is the wonder of Ostara, to honor all that we have made manifest in our lives, and to look forward to the productive days that are yet to come.

Candle Lighting

I light this candle in the name of the Ancestors, the Guardians, and all the holy ones who walk the world. May its light guide all the kindly spirits to bless this place.

I light this candle in the name of learning. May its flame remind us to look towards the unknown with curiosity and an open mind.

I light this candle in the name of creativity. May its glow inspire us and give us the confidence to share our true selves with the world.

I light this candle in the name of friendship. May its light continue to bring us together, so that we might offer each other joy, comfort, and company.

I light this candle in the name of the sun. May its flame warm our spirit and stay with us in the months to come.

I light this candle in the name of the Earth. May it illuminate our path through the coming year and remind us to walk with peace and compassion for all Gaea’s children.

Closing Poem

Suggested reading: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth

Who Speaks for Earth?

Previously, I mentioned that I think the essence of Scientific Paganism is the idea that the scientist and the Pagan practitioner can be allies, rather than getting bogged down in the animosity and mutual disdain that is often seen in exchanges between certain fundamentalist religious sects and argumentative members of the scientific community. In the two essays I’ve examined so far, Neo-Pagan philosopher Oberon Zell has argued that the Planet Earth should be recognized as a unified living organism and that, as part of that organism, the human race must necessarily change its relationship with the environment in order to preserve our own existence as well as the health and well-being of the living planet. His appreciation for the effect NASA photos of the Earth have had on raising awareness of the planet as a unified whole has been echoed by celebrity scientist Carl Sagan. However, I’m glad to say that Sagan and Zell agree on much more fundamental principles.

In the thirteenth and final episode of Cosmos, entitled “Who Speaks for Earth?” and originally broadcast on December 21, 1980, Carl Sagan ruminates on humanity’s chances of avoiding self-inflicted extinction:

From an extraterrestrial perspective, our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task that it faces: preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet. But if we’re willing to live with the growing likelihood of nuclear war, shouldn’t we also be willing to explore vigorously every possible means to prevent nuclear war? Shouldn’t we consider in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things—a fundamental restructuring of economic, political, social, and religious institutions?

We’ve reached a point where there can be no more special interests or special cases. Nuclear arms threaten every person on the earth. Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labeled impractical or contrary to human nature—as if nuclear war were practical or as if there were only one human nature.

But fundamental changes can clearly be made. We’re surrounded by them. In the last two centuries, abject slavery, which was with us for thousands of years, has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring worldwide revolution. Women, systematically mistreated for millennia, are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied them. And some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations. The old appeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.

A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.

This clearly shows that Gaean Spirituality and scientific rationalism can find common ground. And unlike most religious traditions, Scientific Paganism actively seeks it.

Who on Earth is the Goddess?

Mother, not maker,
Born, and not made;
Though her children forsake her,
Allured or afraid,
Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for all that have prayed.

—Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1871

A couple decades after writing “Theagenesis: The Birth of the Goddess,” Oberon Zell and his life-partner, Morning Glory Zell, expanded on the concept of Gaean Spirituality in the essay “Who on Earth is the Goddess?” which combines academic discourse, poetry, and spiritual evangelism to make the case for a new ecofeminist religious movement distilled from the disparate elements of Neo-Paganism. The Zells open their essay by asserting the existence of a near-universal prehistoric religion dedicated to a single Great Goddess, an idea promoted by the Goddess Movement of the time. They locate this basic goddess worship in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, suggesting that it was an expression of an intrinsic human understanding of the nature of the cosmos. Like the Gaea character in Marvel Comics (discussed previously), this Great Goddess was known in many manifestations and by many names, such as Ishtar, Isis, Yemanja, Kwan Yin, and Changing Woman. They go further, indeed, to agree with the British occultist Dion Fortune that all the diverse goddesses of the world’s pantheons are but manifestations of a universal feminine deity that operates on a cosmic scale.

The Zells describe this über-goddess in a poetic digression as Great Mother Nature: “Her womb is the quasar, the white hole through which all energy pours into creation, and Her all-devouring mouth is the black hole itself through which all matter is consumed to be reborn once again as between Her thighs the universe is squeezed from spirit.” They then play with the similarities between the words matter, mater, and mother and create an image of the Milky Way in the night sky flowing from the “galactic breast” of the “Star Goddess Nuit” but quickly return to more earthbound musings. The Earth Mother, Gaea, (our living world, as described in “Theagenesis”) is the offspring of this universal Mother Nature and has, as the essay illustrates, been traditionally envisioned as having three interrelated aspects. Foremost among these is the fertility-themed trinity of Maiden, Mother, and Crone—which they suggest may be personified by the Greek goddesses Aphrodite, Demeter (as mother of Persephone), and Hecate. Another prominent triad is the three Fates (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) of Greek myth and their Norse counterparts, the three Norns (Urd, Skuld, and Verdanda), who were said to administer the destinies of mortals. The nine Muses (of Greek mythology and later the roller-skating musical fantasy film Xanadu) are included as a trio of trios. The Zells even posit that such a triplication of the divine feminine survives in Christian theology as the much-lauded virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

However, despite this multiplicity and diversity and despite enjoying global dominance for nearly 30,000 years, worship of the Great Goddess (whether in the form of the Earth Mother or her cosmic matron) was suppressed with the rise of patriarchal monotheism in the Iron Age, which survives to the present in the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This idea is not unique to Oberon and Morning Glory Zell but can be traced back to the early 20th-century writings of the British scholar Jane Ellen Harrison, who was in turn inspired by European intellectuals of the Romantic tradition throughout the previous century. Historian Ronald Hutton traces this philosophical lineage in his book Pagan Britain, where he suggests it arose as a reaction against the Industrial Revolution. Actual archaeological evidence for such a global Neolithic matriarchal monotheism, he points out, is lacking. However, Hutton does not seek to discredit the Goddess Movement as a modern religion, only to show that their interpretation of the evidence for Neolithic practices is one of many possible readings. Therefore, while the academic / scientific underpinnings of the Zells’ justification for Gaean Spirituality are debatable, their call for a more feminist and ecological conceptualization of the divine remains compelling.

The Zells then turn their attention to re-stating many of the basic concepts regarding the Earth as a single living organism first presented in “Theagenesis,” connecting them with Native American animist beliefs and similar ideas in the work of 19th-century economic historian Arnold Toynbee, who warned of the threat to the environment resulting from the tendency to view the riches of the earth as “natural resources” to be exploited by mankind—a view unfortunately supported by the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Toynbee specifically cites the rise of patriarchal monotheism as the driving force behind the “recklessly extravagant consumption of nature’s irreplaceable treasures” and the pollution that results from their industrialized extraction. The Zells then attempt to describe the process by which patriarchal monotheism supplanted worship of the Great Goddess (matriarchal monotheism) by causing it to break down into polytheism. These individualized—and therefore weakened—goddesses could then be “married off” to gods and thereby be relegated to a subordinate position. They cite the case of the Hindu “Great Mother” Mahadevi, who they say was subdivided into the triple-goddess figures of Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Kali in order to be made the consorts of the dominant male deities Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, respectively. Also Rhea, goddess of Crete, was eventually split into various goddesses of the Greek pantheon. In this way, the Zells argue, the formerly revered figure of the Great Goddess came to be associated with the second-class status women were afforded in the rigidly patriarchal societies that arose in the Bronze Age, and the human race has drifted further from the sustainable way of the Earth Mother ever since.

This is of vital importance to Gaean Spirituality, the Zells explain, as Gaea is an immanent divinity in the pantheistic tradition and not a transcendent divinity as is the god of patriarchal monotheism. Whereas “God” is held to exist above or apart from the created universe (the very definition of “supernatural”), Gaea has a physical, temporal existence as the Planet Earth. “She is not an atavistic abstraction,” the authors make clear, “not a mystical metaphor, not a construct of consciousness.” Rather, she is a living being, of which we are a part—as our blood cells, rushing about with their daily chores oblivious to the greater whole, are a part of our human bodies. As such, Gaea is neither omnipotent nor indestructible but vulnerable to the ravages of environmental degradation. Should all life on Earth become extinct—say, if a runaway greenhouse effect creates conditions analogous to those on the planet Venus—then Gaea, too, will die. In the face of myriad environmental crises and the fierce resistance to taking effective measures to remedy them, the Zells see humanity’s only hope in a “total and electrifying change in consciousness,” which, they admit, would “take a miracle.” Nevertheless, they believe that the Neo-Pagan movement offers a path out of the darkness.

The Zells take a moment to express their frustration that this trail is not more well-blazed, despite the efforts since the 1960s of a variety of Pagan communities (by which they mean essentially any modern nature religion), including their own Heinlein-inspired Church of All Worlds. These groups seem to languish in obscurity, they complain, even though various feminist academics, such as Marija Gimbutas, Merlin Stone, Mary Daly, Riane Eisler, and Elizabeth Gould Davis—and even noted male authors such as Joseph Campbell, James Lovelock, and René Dubos—continually clamor for a new approach to religion and/or spirituality. They are heartened, at least, by the rise in popularity of Wicca, which they equate with European Shamanism, as a feminist alternative to mainstream religion. The Zells see an opportunity for a conjunction of Neo-Paganism, Goddess Spirituality, and the Deep Ecology movement to develop into something greater than the sum of its parts. They write, “What is struggling to be born from this blending of pathways is a truly planetary religious metaphor that will transcend all the tradition-specific patterns in the same way the idea of Neo-Paganism absorbed and united a multiplicity of wildly differing but basically polytheistic religious groups in the 1970s. Perhaps what we are looking for could be called Gaean religion.”

In closing, the Zells attribute the emergence of this Gaean awareness in part to the release of photographs of the Earth from space in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly NASA’s famous 1972 Blue Marble image of our planet nearly fully illuminated by the sun’s light. Through such images, they suggest, “we have been impelled towards planetary identification,” a necessary first step to understanding that all life on Earth comprises a single organism and thus to despoil the environment is to destroy ourselves. The culmination of this outer-space consciousness-raising is perhaps the 1990 Pale Blue Dot photo taken from the Voyager 1 space probe as it headed into the outskirts of the solar system. The image shows the Earth as a tiny speck suspended in a sunbeam against the empty blackness of deep space. Carl Sagan, who pushed for the photograph to be taken (as it had little scientific value), later observed, “To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” Sagan’s comments show that the scientist and the Pagan practitioner can be allies at the very least, which is the essence of what I think of as Scientific Paganism. And just as Sagan was noted for popularizing his love of science through the television series Cosmos, the novel Contact, and various non-fiction writings, the Zells assert that the success of their Gaean movement is dependent on communication and education rather than the secrecy often associated with nature-based folk religions and the mystery cults of the ancient world. And so, despite the relatively small, unheralded, and disorganized nature of the Neo-Pagan movement in general and their Gaean Spirituality in particular, Oberon and Morning Glory Zell look to the coming millennium with optimism.

Now, a couple decades into the 21st century, the journey continues.


A version of the Zells’ essay can be found on the Church of All Worlds website.

Gods and Goddesses

In his 1971 essay “Theagenesis: The Birth of the Goddess,” in which he lays out his belief that the Planet Earth is a unified living organism that is evolving into a divine being he calls Gaea, Neo-Pagan philosopher Oberon Zell quotes Alley Oop, the Stone-Age protagonist of V.T. Hamlin’s popular newspaper comic strip. Attributed to the wisecracking caveman is the observation “Gods are only as strong as those who believe in them think they are.” This idea was echoed about a decade later in another comic, Marvel’s The Mighty Thor, by Mark Gruenwald, a writer and editor at that company throughout the 1980s who was interested in exploring, developing, and quantifying the more cosmic aspects of the Marvel Universe. With his writing partner, Ralph Macchio, Gruenwald finally introduced Thor’s birth mother, the primeval earth goddess Gaea (known in Norse mythology by the name Jord) as part of the storyline for the milestone 300th issue. In Thor #301 (November 1980), Gaea tells her son, “Gods are manifestations of a world’s spiritual life-force, given shape and sustenance by the collective consciousness of its highest physical life-form. A god’s power stems from the ethereal energy of the human mind.”

Ever since Thor first fought Hercules in the summer of 1965, Marvel had maintained that the various pantheons of world mythology had some kind of physical existence in their comic book universe. Egyptian, Babylonian, Celtic, and other gods would eventually follow—along with numerous invented deities and mystical entities—before Gruenwald decided to address the issue directly. Furthermore, not wanting to offend readers’ religious sensibilities, Marvel’s editors discouraged their writers from treating the Judeo-Christian tradition in the same manner. In fact, in the mid-1970s, editor Jim Shooter shut down an attempt to make Jesus Christ a supporting character in the series Ghost Rider. The effect of all this was to give the Marvel Universe a distinctly Pagan sensibility. Perhaps influenced by the Goddess Movement of the time, which promoted the idea of a near-universal prehistoric worship of a single Great Goddess, Gruenwald asserted in Thor #301 that Marvel’s Gaea character, who had previously made a few shadowy appearances, was in fact such a pantheistic figure. She explains to Thor, “I have been called many things over the eons of my existence… every pantheon of gods that has ever lived has had its own name for me: Gaea… Nertha… Aditi… Coatlique… Rangi… All these forms I have assumed… and more. Most know me simply as Mother Earth, the nature-spirit of all life on this fertile sphere.”

Gruenwald also introduces his own sort of pre-human mythology, meant to underlie all the pantheons of Earth, which serves as Gaea’s origin story. (Because you can’t very well have a comic book character without an origin story.) Gaea reveals, “I am the last of the Elder Gods whose existence predates that of all other gods and men. My kind was the first of all life forms spawned by the potent spiritual force of this planet. It was we who shaped the very face of the world. When my kinsmen were driven from this plane as if demons, I remained behind, my essence infused in all living things.” Perhaps inevitably, Gruenwald elaborated on these ideas in the 1982 Thor Annual issue, for which he developed the story with scriptwriter Alan Zelenetz and supervised as the book’s editor. A five-page introductory sequence depicts this origin story, showing the emergence of Earth’s first intelligent being, the Demiurge, “the sentient life-force of Earth’s biosphere,” and its creation of Gaea’s generation of “Elder Gods.” In addition to Gaea herself, we see Chthon and Set, two demonic villain characters familiar to Marvel’s readers at that time. Gaea then watches in horror as her kinsmen overrun the planet and threaten the evolving lifeforms in the oceans with their constant warfare. She then mates with the Demiurge to produce the first second-generation god, Atum, who becomes the original superhero, very much in the mold of Marvel’s headline characters. To battle evil and save the world, Atum must assume a monstrous form, not unlike the Hulk or the Thing. When the threat is at last ended, Atum resumes his original identity, “seeding the heavens with godstuff,” and flies off into the sunset (or, in this case, into the sun itself).

At this point, Zelenetz reiterates Gruenwald’s idea that the gods were created in humanity’s image: “Eons passed, and Earth’s highest physical life form—man—came into being. Touched with the spirit of divinity itself, man beheld the wonders of the sky with awe and mystery… His nascent consciousness tapped the godstuff bequeathed the world by Atum and behold, new gods were born in man’s image. And thus came to be all the gods of earthly legend—great pantheons of diverse divinity given substance by the Demiurge, given form by the mind of man.” It bears repeating that the Demiurge represents not some universal monotheistic deity, but itself arose out of the Planet Earth. Gruenwald went on to develop and refine these ideas over the next few years as the head writer and editor responsible for The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, an encyclopedic reference guide for Marvel’s writers, artists, and fans. It is interesting to see him (along with his head researcher and co-writer Peter Sanderson) grapple with explaining the difference between “evil gods” and “demons,” as well as differentiating Gaea from a character such as Ego, the Living Planet.

So, the “god” characters in Marvel Comics, drawn from real-life polytheistic traditions, were defined in the 1980s as manifestations of the Earth’s spiritual energies. They could all be traced back to a common source—a creative consciousness that emerged from the planet itself and seeded the world with its own divinity, which in turn infused itself into all living things, giving rise (eventually) to the human race with its sense of wonder about the divine. The Demiurge, Gaea, Thor, and humanity—all part of the same closed system with no need for the intervention of extraterrestrial entities or cosmic deities. It is a self-contained, self-perpetuating, reciprocal, even circulatory system for a living, unified planetary organism that is its own deity—exactly the sort of organism that Oberon Zell calls Gaea.

The gods and goddesses of the world’s ancient polytheistic traditions are not limited to use as comic book characters, of course, but can appear in the rituals with which Pagans celebrate the progress of the year. Scientific Paganism does not view such figures as superior beings to be served or placated but as a means to conceptualize the nature of human experience within the universe. Invoking them does not presuppose that they have any sort of physical or quasi-physical existence; it is a way to make abstractions a bit more tangible and therefore easier to relate to. Thus, one should feel free to choose any that seem to resonate with one’s mood or situation or that have any personal significance—they are all aspects of Gaea, our living world.

Theagenesis: The Birth of the Goddess

Originally published in the Neo-Pagan magazine Green Egg #40 (July 1971), Oberon Zell’s essay “Theagenesis: The Birth of the Goddess” makes a straightforward argument in favor of Scientific Paganism in general and Gaean Spirituality, which he refers to elsewhere as “a truly planetary religious metaphor,” in particular. Zell, co-founder of the Church of All Worlds, a Neo-Pagan community inspired by Robert Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land, asserts that “the discovery that the entire biosphere of the Earth comprises a single living organism” is the most profound revelation yet in the annals of human thought and suggests that it finally reveals the true “meaning of life” for the human race.

Zell opens his essay by addressing the basic question of how to privilege any one religious viewpoint (such as his own Neo-Paganism) over all the others, given the problem of determining objective truth in the subjective reality experienced by human beings. All things being equal, he admits, all sincerely held religious convictions are “true” to their adherents, as human consciousness constructs the subjective reality that we exist within, and therefore conflicting conceptualizations of divinity are not easily dismissed. However, he notes, these beliefs do not necessarily describe consensus reality beyond a particular individual or tribe (let alone the objective nature of the universe) any more than the hallucinations of a drug addict or the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic, which seem “true” to the person experiencing them. Therefore, different belief systems can be evaluated by taking an approach based on the scientific method, and he suggests using the following four criteria:

1. To what extent does the religion favor blind faith over a scientific understanding of the nature of things?
2. To what extent does the religion favor deference to tradition and hierarchical authority over freedom of thought, creative insight, and intellectual honesty?
3. To what extent is the religion willing to incorporate scientific discoveries (from a variety of academic disciplines) into its myths and teachings?
4. To what extent do advances in scientific knowledge substantiate or refute the religion’s myths and teachings?

Clearly, certain fundamentalist Christian sects that publicly dispute scientific theories and set themselves in opposition to the entire enterprise of science would fall on one extreme of this spectrum. But even the most progressive Protestant denominations would still come off as hidebound, if not anti-science, in this light. In contrast, Zell positions the Neo-Pagan movement of the 20th century as having embraced science and in doing so found validation for many of the beliefs of the ancient nature-religions, especially their supposed veneration of a primordial Earth-Mother goddess.

From there, Zell explicates his theory that the Planet Earth is, in fact, a single unified living organism and all its varied lifeforms are analogous to cells, tissues, or organs in a body. To illustrate this, he outlines the basic process of cell division, noting how a single “mother” cell divides itself in two, then continues subdividing, passing the original protoplasm through each successive generation. No matter how many trillions of cells result from this process or how much the cells specialize into distinct organs or tissues, we still consider them collectively to make up one organism. Many cells, he notes, can continue to live independently after leaving the body, such as blood cells in a hospital or tissue cultures in a laboratory (a topic explored in depth in Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). And by extension, children, in carrying on the protoplasmic legacy of their parents, can be considered to be a continuation of the life of that originating cell. Thus, by tracing the process of evolution back to its beginnings, Zell shows that all life on Earth, descended from a single-celled common ancestor, forms one continuously existing lifeform—the only lifeform (that we know of) to live in this solar system.

Zell identifies this living organism as “Gaea,” named for the primordial Earth-Mother goddess of Greek mythology, probably the most well-documented of the ancient mythological systems. Each individual plant and animal on Earth therefore acts as a single cell in the body of Gaea—coming into existence, serving its purpose, then dying off to be replaced by the next generation, just like the blood cells in your circulatory system. While individual blood cells may exist for a limited time, blood itself is ever-present. In the same way, individual plants and animals (existing temporarily) form larger, continuous systems, making the planet’s various biomes analogous to the organs in a body. And rather than existing “on” the Earth, like lichen clinging to a rock, life is but one integral component of Gaea’s total biology. The layers of rock surrounding its hot iron core serve as a foundation much as our skeletons do for us. The planet’s atmosphere and the waters of its oceans, lakes, and rivers are likewise vital parts of Gaea’s body. The totality of the planet is the living organism, not just the parts that are “alive.” Zell also posits that this organism’s food—its external source of energy—is, of course, sunlight. Through photosynthesis and related processes, the materials of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere are converted for use in sustaining the biosphere.

What follows from this revelation, Zell makes clear, is the imperative to avoid major disruptions to the world’s ecosphere, something that the human race has spectacularly failed to do for at least 70,000 years. Hunting animals to extinction, introducing invasive species with no natural predators, and widespread deforestation are all just as dangerous and foolhardy as trying to rearrange your internal organs. Thus, Gaean Spirituality aligns naturally with the environmentalist movement.

Zell then speculates on what the true purpose of Homo sapiens might be, given our destructive tendencies. Do we serve some positive function in Gaea’s lifecycle or are we merely a cancer best eradicated? His solution is to position the human race as the active component of the planet’s reproductive system, seeing us rather like sperm cells that leave the body, find a suitable receptacle, and create offspring—not human offspring in this case but Gaean offspring by terraforming other worlds, where life can then continue after the Earth dies of old age. This does seem to make sense, as we’ve already done what no other animal has ever managed to do: leave the planet and travel elsewhere. Granted, astronauts have only made it as far as the moon, but plans are currently being made for human exploration of Mars in the near future. Since it’s only been a little over a century since we mastered powered flight, I don’t think this is a bad rate of progress. And this idea goes a long way to explain the human race’s characteristic wanderlust.

To conclude his essay, Zell gives his thoughts on the nature of divinity as a concept, briefly outlining an evolution of religion in the process. Zell defines divinity as the ultimate form of self-actualization for any living being, and as human beings came to live in larger and larger groups, he argues, they developed a “collective divinity” that became personified as a tribal god or goddess. The characteristics of this divine figure reflected the values of the tribe, thus a patriarchal culture would adopt a masculine god that operated within some kind of hierarchical structure, whereas a matriarchal culture would choose a goddess instead and perhaps stress more communal concepts. Over time, as weaker tribes were assimilated by more dominant ones, the various gods and goddesses fell into a sort of cosmic pecking order. Sometimes an assimilated goddess would be married off to the conqueror’s god, taking a subordinate position in a newly imagined pantheon. Sometimes the weaker tribe’s gods would be suppressed, allowing for the eventual development of monotheism. But, Zell asserts, no matter how exalted any such deity might become (such as the widely worshiped Yahweh), it will never transcend its origins as a tribal god representing the values of its creators. Gaea, on the other hand, emerges as a divinity of a different order of magnitude.

Zell theorizes that Gaea, the living organism, is developing a consciousness as she matures. Eventually, she will “awaken” and then operate on a whole new level as an “emergent deity” through her own process of self-actualization. He takes the development of manned spaceflight as a sign that this maturity is rapidly approaching, since achieving reproductive capability is a sign of maturity among other living organisms. This planetary consciousness, he believes, is currently “slumbering” but can be sensed intuitively by human beings (and perhaps other sentient creatures), leading us to correctly conceptualize her even in ancient times as “Mother Earth” or “Mother Nature.”


A revised version of Zell’s essay can be found on the Church of All Worlds website.

A Brief Description of Paganism

In the fifth chapter of his 2013 book Pagan Britain, Ronald Hutton gives this concise description of paganism in the time of the Roman Empire. I’ve found it particularly evocative.

This was a form of religion which embodied no divine revelation and depended on no books, dogmas, or orthodoxy, resting instead entirely on prescribed ceremonies. It had no specific founder or leader, no concept of conversion, made no demands on foreigners, and was centered on the community and not on the individual. It left ethics to society to prescribe, freed worshippers to decide how to venerate their own deities, and aimed for earthly well-being, not salvation in the next life. It had no concept of sin, though a very active one of blasphemy and impiety. Every citizen could act as a priest, and every public act was a religious one. Though there were specialist priests and priestesses who offered their skills for hire or as a social duty, they did not act as mediators or theologians and had no personal sanctity; indeed, they usually had mundane daily occupations (p. 234).

Archaeology vs. Paganism?

In his 2013 book Pagan Britain, the erudite English historian Ronald Hutton often mentions the typically fraught relationship between scientists and modern-day Pagans. Archaeologists, in particular, are noted as traditionally being averse to the highly speculative reconstructions of pre-Christian religious rites by people seeking a new spiritual path, as these religious practices may either reinterpret or ignore the findings of the scientists. The Neo-Pagans, similarly, object to any interpretations of the archeological record that seem to undermine their religious beliefs. However, Hutton insists that such conflict is neither necessary nor inevitable, given the nature of the material evidence.

Hutton addresses the issue directly in this passage from his third chapter:

What is very much a live issue is the potential set of relationships between professional archaeology and those members of the public who are drawn to the ancient past by feelings of religious and moral kinship: the very people among whom a literal belief in earth energies remains one possible subset of ideology. For much of the twentieth century relations between the two were adversarial, and especially between experts in British prehistory and modern people who had taken the name and identity of Druid. Since the 1990s it has been feasible to propose a mutual understanding between them, based on the more or less undoubted fact, strongly argued in the present book, that it is impossible to determine with any precision the nature of the religious beliefs and rites of the prehistoric British. It may fairly be argued, therefore, that present-day groups have a perfect right to recreate their own representations of those, and enact them as a personal religious practice—of the sort now generally given the name Pagan—providing that they remain within the rather broad limits of the material evidence (or, if they choose not to remain there, honestly to acknowledge the fact). If there are many plausible ways in which prehistoric attitudes to the divine and supernatural may be imagined, then the reconstructions made by modern Pagans can represent viable, and even valuable, conjectures. If treated as such, by both parties, then there is no necessary reason for conflict between Pagans and archaeologists. Indeed there is much potential for a creative and benevolent partnership, if the former—while not able to claim any inherent wisdom or knowledge that automatically renders them superior to other members of their society—prove their worth by making exciting, creative and inspiring use of the data steadily generated by the latter (pp. 142–143).

A cooperative approach would certainly seem to be beneficial, rather than either side claiming a special authority that precludes the work of the other. This attitude can only lead to an unhealthy entrenchment. Mainstream Christianity has become moribund fighting against centuries of scientific discovery, and modern Paganism need not fall into the same trap. Ultimately, the scientist and the Pagan practitioner have different objectives and should look to each other for inspiration rather than validation. And, of course, honesty and open-mindedness is key, on both sides.

In another lengthy passage, this one from the seventh chapter, Hutton takes pains to make clear that modern Paganism need not be dependent on the work of archaeologists or historians for validation as a legitimate religious expression:

Only one British formation that has been interpreted as a labyrinth has been systematically investigated by archaeology, and it was never recognized as one until the mid twentieth century and never firmly accepted as such by either historians or archaeologists. It is also now the most famous among British and American pagans and New Agers: the spiral labyrinth on the dramatic conical hill in Somerset known as Glastonbury Tor. It was the great novelist and ritual magician Violet Firth, who wrote under the name Dion Fortune, who first drew attention to the terraces on the Tor, which had hitherto been presumed to have been medieval field systems. In the 1930s, she had a vision in which they became a sacred processional way made by refugees from Atlantis. This was brought down to earth by a former colonial from Ceylon called Geoffrey Russell. In 1969 he suggested that the terraces were a giant labyrinth, which he first thought was medieval, but later believed were more likely to have been prehistoric. Geoffrey Ashe, the eminent writer on Glastonbury, accepted the terraces as a huge, and hitherto unsuspected, ancient monument, and Philip Rahtz, a distinguished archaeologist, put on record that he thought this possible. The Tor was promptly adopted as one of the main sacred monuments of the rapidly growing community of people who had moved into the town dedicated to the practice of ‘alternative’ forms of spirituality. Archaeologists in general ignored it, as there was no known prehistoric structure which resembled it in the whole of Europe, though the excavations at Silbury Hill, undertaken in the 2000s, threw up the idea that Silbury might have been built with a spiral walkway ascending it. No examination was therefore made to test the reality of the Tor labyrinth until 2004, when the National Trust, which has custody of the hill, needed to renew the paths and gateways upon it, and invited Glastonbury’s resident archaeologists, Nancy and Charles Hollinrake, to make a proper survey of the terraces. They found that these were indeed human-made but had until recent times been discontinuous, not one circuit of them having linked up to make a pathway. They seem instead to have been medieval field systems, as had traditionally been supposed, similar to others surviving in that part of Somerset and probably made during the thirteenth century, when a rapidly expanding population was creating acute land hunger, and Glastonbury Abbey was engaged in ambitious building and drainage projects. No proper excavation was undertaken to confirm this date, but fragments of medieval pottery were found in one terrace. The labyrinth on the Tor does not, therefore, seem to be an ancient sacred structure, but it is certainly now a modern one, converted into a huge open-air temple in the late twentieth century and consecrated by the feet of thousands of devotees. As such it performs a religious function extremely well, and deserves the respect that is accorded to any site of which that is true, old or not (pp. 353–354).

Hutton’s work, in Pagan Britain and elsewhere, gives ample evidence of similar evolutions of religious practice. Regardless of the history of a rite or ritual, each generation either makes it their own or leaves it behind. What ancient peoples may or may not have done is immaterial if a devotional act has meaning in a modern context. Thus, an over-reliance on tradition to justify religious practices is as objectionable as using scholarly work to denigrate the innovative practices of Neo-Pagans. Scientific Paganism is focused on the future, not bound to the past.

Introduction

The Open Hearth blog is an archive of the rituals that our family developed between 2013 and 2018 to celebrate the eight festivals in the system known as the Wheel of the Year, as well as a journal of my own explorations of a spiritual practice I’ve come to call Scientific Paganism. I’m writing this blog primarily for my child, who was the reason our family set out on this particular spiral path, but I thought I’d make it available to anyone who might find it useful.

Defining Scientific Paganism is essentially what this blog is all about. I don’t have it all figured out, so it’s somewhat of an eclectic mix of rituals, stories, ruminations, and explications of religious themes seen in the light of scientific rationalism. It has long been a goal of certain members of the Neo-Pagan movement to build a bridge between science and religion, and that appeals to me. My starting point is a desire to celebrate the wonders of the universe while rejecting the concept of the “supernatural”—that is, the idea that anything can exist beyond, above, or outside of nature. Certainly there are aspects of the universe little understood by humans—“dark matter” and “dark energy” defy description, and our cosmological models are subject to revision—but they are still part of the natural order. We use tools to grapple with such mysteries, like metaphor and personification. And we seek to celebrate forces greater than ourselves. I prefer the term “celebrate” to “worship,” as I also reject a hierarchical view of the universe. So Scientific Paganism is meant to provide a language and a framework for expression of these spiritual urges. It is not a “mystery religion” that shrouds itself in secrecy. There are no arcane rites of initiation or Masonic-style hierarchies here. There is only a recognition of the Earth as a living being, of which the human race is an integral part, and that forms the basis of our rituals and celebrations. We call this being Gaea, but her true nature remains mysterious.