Pagan Spirituality – Gus diZerega

Michael Warren Davis’s “King of the Wild:” Getting everything wrong about Wicca is hard, but not impossible

Posted on September 6, 2022September 8, 2022 by Gus

Academically, I am a Political Scientist and a Gardnerian Witch, in both cases for about 40 years. I encountered the Craft soon after gaining my Ph.D. at Berkeley. I cut my ideological teeth as a young conservative in high school … Read more

Women and Men: Unique Disadvantages

Posted on March 16, 2021March 16, 2021 by Gus

Some years back I was dealing with the woke claim that a transwoman is a woman, PERIOD, and trying to find a way to get through the mindless chant and reach the intelligence it suppressed. One of the things this … Read more

People of the Earth

Posted on February 18, 2021February 18, 2021 by Gus

One of the most important research projects for me personally, perhaps the most important, is better understanding perceptions about “place” within many indigenous peoples’ cultures. Over and over we hear traditional indigenous peoples say they and the place wherein they … Read more

NeoPaganism, Divine Immanence, and the Sacred Feminine

Posted on August 10, 2020December 16, 2022 by Gus

Introduction

This essay analyzes hotly contested issues within the contemporary American Pagan community. The arguments creating such discord rely on holding two contradictory positions at the same time. First, gender is socially, not biologically, defined. The second is there are … Read more

Seeing and Feeling Energy Fields

Posted on May 29, 2020May 29, 2020 by Gus

Some otherwise sympathetic readers will suspect my description of Sacred amounts to wishful thinking. The world really is meaningless. Ultimately everything is simply an object in relation to other objects. So it seems to many minds thoroughly socialized by the … Read more

Samhain and Day of the Dead, 2019

Posted on October 14, 2019April 7, 2020 by Gus

With Samhain just around the corner, its relation with Day of the Dead is an issue of some importance to many Pagans. Taos, where I now live, is famous for the ubiquitous presence of decorated Day of the Dead skulls … Read more

Two Sexes, Many Genders and the Perils of Thinking in Dichotomies

Posted on January 30, 2019April 13, 2019 by Gus

The NeoPagan community has been divided over issues of gender and sexuality, particularly the appropriate relations between natal and trans-women. While this controversy deals with important issues, its vehemence is due to mistaken ways of thinking about it, ways rooted in … Read more

Looking Deeper: Kavanaugh, Women, the Culture War, and Us.

Posted on October 17, 2018October 17, 2018 by Gus

The controversy over appointing a ruthless political operative, perjurer, and probable sexual predator to the Supreme Court has led many people to put the blame on old White males and their culture of privilege. While there is some truth to … Read more

Transforming the Cultural Appropriation Debate: Pagan and magickal insights.

Posted on September 2, 2017April 28, 2023 by Gus

The common academic issue of whether or not one engages in ‘cultural appropriation’ has divided the Pagan community. I have been very explicit in my dislike of the idea, but in working out just why I dislike the concept I … Read more

Circles and Lines in “The Wolf at Twilight”

Posted on September 29, 2016June 23, 2017 by Gus

I was started along this line of thought while reading Kent Nerburn’s powerful, moving, painful and hauntingly beautiful The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder’s Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows. There are many levels to this … Read more