Resources and Links

-

 

🌿 Resources for Dionysian Naturalism, Religious Naturalism, and Skeptical Paganism

This living page gathers books, websites, videos, podcasts, and communities that illuminate Religious Naturalism, naturalistic Paganism, skeptical witchcraft, and Dionysian spirituality. New work appears constantly—if I’m missing a gem, please share it and I’ll add it!

🎒 Quick Start: Beginner’s Starter Kit

  • The Sacred Depths of Nature — Ursula Goodenough. A lyrical, science-grounded doorway into religious naturalism.
  • Atheopaganism — Mark Green. Practical, non-theistic ritual and community-building.
  • Braiding Sweetgrass — Robin Wall Kimmerer. Reciprocity, wonder, and Indigenous knowledge.
  • Cosmos — Carl Sagan (book/series). Awe as a spiritual discipline.
  • Podcast: The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism — Accessible episodes on practice and ethics.

📚 Top Recommended Books (with brief notes)

  • Ursula Goodenough – The Sacred Depths of Nature (classic RN; devotion through biology and wonder).
  • Jerome A. Stone – Religious Naturalism Today (map of the tradition’s roots and varieties).
  • Donald A. Crosby – A Religion of Nature (ethics and meaning without theism).
  • Michael Hogue – The Promise of Religious Naturalism (public theology, ecological justice).
  • Bron Taylor – Dark Green Religion (global eco-spiritualities; nature as sacred).
  • Demian Wheeler – Religion Within the Limits of History Alone (pragmatic historicism; theology post-supernaturalism).
  • Robert Corrington – Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (philosophical depth on nature, value, and ultimacy).
  • Lisa Sideris – Consecrating Science (cautions on scientism; keeps RN honest).
  • Carol Wayne White – Black Lives and Sacred Humanity (race, dignity, and sacred nature).
  • Brian Swimme & Mary Evelyn Tucker – Journey of the Universe (cosmic narrative for meaning and care).
  • Thomas Berry – The Great Work (cultural transformation for an ecological age).
  • John Halstead (ed.) – Godless Paganism (voices from non-theistic Pagan practice).
  • Mark Green – Atheopaganism (ritual craft, values, and holidays for naturalists).
  • Sasha Sagan – For Small Creatures Such as We (rituals of meaning in a secular cosmos).
  • Starhawk – The Spiral Dance (foundational ecofeminist ritual; read naturalistically if you like).
  • Joanna Macy – Coming Back to Life (The Work That Reconnects; group practices for resilience).

🌍 International & Emerging Voices

  • Graham Harvey – Animism: Respecting the Living World (UK; contemporary animism as practice).
  • Val Plumwood – Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Australia; ecofeminist critique and ethics).
  • Robin Wall Kimmerer – Braiding Sweetgrass (Indigenous science and reciprocity).
  • Sarah Pike – For the Wild (ritual, activism, and belonging among eco-activists).

🌱 More Books & Academic Texts

  • Loyal Rue – Nature Is Enough (ethics grounded in naturalism).
  • Donald Crosby – Living with Ambiguity; More Than Discourse.
  • David Ray Griffin – Religion and Scientific Naturalism.
  • Mikael Stenmark – Naturalism and Religion.
  • Ursula Goodenough – Sacred Nature (2023; RN’s environmental potential).
  • Stone, Crosby, Hogue (eds.) – The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism.
  • Carl Sagan – Cosmos; Neil deGrasse Tyson – Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (scientific awe).

🎥 Videos & Talks

  • Ursula Goodenough — “Exploring a Religious Naturalist Orientation.”
  • Robert Wright & Wesley Wildman — “What’s Religious About Religious Naturalism?”
  • Michael Dowd — “Sacred Naturalism.”
  • Joanna Macy — “The Work That Reconnects.”
  • Starhawk — ecofeminism & earth-based ritual (numerous lectures online).

🎧 Podcasts

📺 YouTube Channels

📰 For Deeper Study (Articles & Journals)

  • Jerome A. Stone — “The Birth of Religious Naturalism” (Zygon).
  • Mikael Leidenhag — “Religious Naturalism: The Current Debate” (Philosophy Compass).
  • B. T. Newberg — Saving the Marriage of Science and Myth (essays on naturalistic myth and ritual).
  • Wayne Martin Mellinger — “Steps Toward a Dionysian Naturalism.”
  • Journals: Zygon; Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture.

🌐 Websites & Blogs

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Communities & How to Start One

🛠️ Apps & Tools (Seasons, Sky, Ritual)

☁️ Visual Inspiration

✨ How We Practice

  • Celebrate the Wheel of the Year and seasonal cycles.
  • Use ritual, meditation, and mythic storytelling as symbolic, transformative acts.
  • Cultivate ecstatic experience, embodiment, and creative celebration in the Dionysian spirit.
  • Live responsibly in this world: cherish this body, this life, this Earth.
  • Engage in social and ecological justice as sacred practice.

Know a resource that belongs here? Email me and I’ll happily add it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Paradox of Epistemic Accumulation When Plausible Ideas Accumulate into Implausible Theories by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.

-
Image
  The Paradox of Epistemic Accumulation When Plausible Ideas Accumulate into Implausible Theories Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. The discussion of Richard Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, Keiron Le Grice, and archetypal astrology reveals a broader theoretical problem closely parallel to the P aradox of Rational Accumulation . Individually reasonable intellectual propositions can be assembled into theoretical systems whose cumulative conclusions are substantially less warranted than any of their constituent propositions. The problem is not necessarily that any particular thinker, concept, or body of research is worthless. The problem arises in the inferential relations created as otherwise plausible ideas are accumulated. This can be called the Paradox of Epistemic Accumulation : The accumulation of individually plausible propositions does not necessarily produce an increasingly plausible theoretical system. Under some conditions, each additional proposition introduces new inferential relatio...
Read more

The Ancient Dionysian Rites by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.

-
Image
THE ANCIENT DIONYSIAN RITES By Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. The ancient Dionysian rites, central to the cult of Dionysus in classical Greece, were highly sensory and transformative rituals aimed at dissolving boundaries between the individual and the divine, the mortal and the immortal, and the human and the natural. These rites celebrated Dionysus as the god of wine, fertility, ecstasy, and theater, embodying themes of death, rebirth, and transcendence. Dionysian rites typically took place in secluded natural settings—forests, mountains, or caves—spaces considered sacred to Dionysus. These locations emphasized connection to wildness and the untamed forces of nature. Participants often gathered at night, under the light of the moon, reinforcing the liminality and mystery of the rituals. The air would be thick with the scent of burning herbs and the earthy aroma of trampled foliage, while torches cast flickering shadows on the landscape. The rites were often led by a priest or priestes...
Read more

Radical Faeries as Nature Religion by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.

-
Image
                                         Radical Faeries as Nature Religion:   The Sixteenth Essay for   The New American Religions of Nature Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.   Abstract This essay argues that the Radical Faerie movement constitutes a distinctive and theologically innovative form of contemporary nature religion. Emerging from the 1979 Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies in the Sonoran Desert and shaped by figures such as Harry Hay, Arthur Evans, and later interpreters of “gay spirit,” the Faeries integrate queer liberation, ecological reverence, and ritual experimentation into a lived spiritual practice. Drawing on genealogical threads from Walt Whitman and Edward Carpenter to late twentieth-century pagan and animist revivals, the movement situates same-sex desire and gender fluidity within a cosmology of sacred immanence. Through the development of r...
Read more