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Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-theistic Pagans
Even in pagan antiquity, there were those who, while participating in the community’s religious life, did not believe in literal gods. In the centuries that followed the Christian domination of the West, the epithet “godless pagan” was leveled at a wide variety of people. In the 1960s, there emerged a community of people who sought to reclaim the name “pagan” from its history of opprobrium. These Neo-Pagans were interested in nature spirituality and polytheism, and identified with the misunderstood and persecuted pagans of antiquity. While many Pagans today believe in literal gods, there are a growing number of Pagans who are “godless.” Today, the diverse assemblage of spiritual paths known as Paganism includes atheist Pagans or Atheopagans, Humanistic and Naturalistic Pagans, Buddho-Pagans, animists, pantheists, Gaians, and other non-theistic Pagans. Here, their voices are gathered together to share what it means to be Pagan and godless.
420 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 5, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 2, 2016
Thoroughly enjoyed this book - well-written and an enjoyable read. It was set up as individual writings by assorted authors who viewed themselves as atheists, non-theists, animists, pantheists, secularist's, humanists, etc. and Pagans. Essentially, those who don't worship a literal deity but do view the earth as sacred and meant to be cherished. There are many reasons for each person's paths, and the book shows this with the assorted articles. It varied from actually commentary on how the individual felt to some lovely poetry, and non-deity based rituals making this book a pleasure to read (and re-read in the future). I truly hope there will be more books along this line for those of us who don't believe in a deity, but do enjoy the community and openness of the pagan paths.
January 13, 2025
Where I’m coming from in writing this review: I am an atheist (i.e. “godless”). I am not a pagan.
And yet! Sometimes when I see a holly tree all knobby and shagged with moss; when I feel the full-body tingle of wind shuffling through eucalyptus; when I hear a wave clap in the back of a cave’s throat; I want to change my life. (To what? How?)
Aren’t we all a little pagan? If you look close you can see the residue of it everywhere. Of course indigenous religions around the world, despite having developed independent of each other, share obvious likenesses: nature personified as gods, ancestor worship, animism, shamanism etc. But these likenesses aren’t so hard to spot in secular Western culture, either. In art, for instance, and literature, especially. These stories we readers can’t get enough of, images graven by human hands, when they succeed they come alive and help us see our lives more richly. In fiction’s sensuous pursuit of specificity I sense a likeness with the sacred materialism of paganism i.e. the places and things that are more sacred than abstractions—“show don’t tell” might be another way of expressing paganism’s “orthopraxy over orthodoxy.” And the open-ended metaphors of fiction and poetry echo the mysterious personification and allegory of myth, that invitation to suspend disbelief and inhabit a metaphor from both sides (e.g. how is a storm like an angry father? how is an angry father like storm?) Syncretism, i.e. the recognition of likenesses between gods and myths and the recombination of these into new traditions, is a living example of how art synthesizes the new from the old.
I’m not making any special case for paganism here. Maybe you noticed I wrote the word “likenesses” a bunch of times above—seems to me we’re just talking about humanity’s genius for pattern-recognition. Maybe “paganism” is just an example of humanity’s default mode of meaning-making, what we all might be doing more of if the top-down hegemonies of world religion and modern spectacle held less influence.
Am I sounding more pagan by the minute? I will admit to occasionally lighting a candle to retrieve the dead. I have, at times, treated with a rabbit like a small-g god. (Long story.)
This book contains a range of views on how to be pagan without believing anything supernatural. There were a number of smartly reasoned and intellectually playful essays. I was less excited by the ones who declared Spock-like ecstasy for organic chemistry and suchlike. I was not excited at all about the ones that were begobbled in purpledy-poetic god/goddess language. I mostly didn’t finish those.
A writer near the end of the book made an interesting proposal that if there was to be a meaningful future for paganism it would not be in reconstructionism i.e. propping up long-dead gods. (Cue the Weekend at Bernie’s montage with Thor’s hammer duct taped to his hand.) The idea of creating new gods, new holy places, new rituals, I’ll admit, appeals to me. Again, I might just call that art. The editor of this book, John Halstead, and I share a similar path. We left the same religion at the same time at about the same age and we both briefly considered becoming Quakers. But where Halstead went on to build something interesting, I took a seat right where I was and said “I prefer not to” to pretty much everything. Not gonna lie, I think he did it better.
And yet! Sometimes when I see a holly tree all knobby and shagged with moss; when I feel the full-body tingle of wind shuffling through eucalyptus; when I hear a wave clap in the back of a cave’s throat; I want to change my life. (To what? How?)
Aren’t we all a little pagan? If you look close you can see the residue of it everywhere. Of course indigenous religions around the world, despite having developed independent of each other, share obvious likenesses: nature personified as gods, ancestor worship, animism, shamanism etc. But these likenesses aren’t so hard to spot in secular Western culture, either. In art, for instance, and literature, especially. These stories we readers can’t get enough of, images graven by human hands, when they succeed they come alive and help us see our lives more richly. In fiction’s sensuous pursuit of specificity I sense a likeness with the sacred materialism of paganism i.e. the places and things that are more sacred than abstractions—“show don’t tell” might be another way of expressing paganism’s “orthopraxy over orthodoxy.” And the open-ended metaphors of fiction and poetry echo the mysterious personification and allegory of myth, that invitation to suspend disbelief and inhabit a metaphor from both sides (e.g. how is a storm like an angry father? how is an angry father like storm?) Syncretism, i.e. the recognition of likenesses between gods and myths and the recombination of these into new traditions, is a living example of how art synthesizes the new from the old.
I’m not making any special case for paganism here. Maybe you noticed I wrote the word “likenesses” a bunch of times above—seems to me we’re just talking about humanity’s genius for pattern-recognition. Maybe “paganism” is just an example of humanity’s default mode of meaning-making, what we all might be doing more of if the top-down hegemonies of world religion and modern spectacle held less influence.
Am I sounding more pagan by the minute? I will admit to occasionally lighting a candle to retrieve the dead. I have, at times, treated with a rabbit like a small-g god. (Long story.)
This book contains a range of views on how to be pagan without believing anything supernatural. There were a number of smartly reasoned and intellectually playful essays. I was less excited by the ones who declared Spock-like ecstasy for organic chemistry and suchlike. I was not excited at all about the ones that were begobbled in purpledy-poetic god/goddess language. I mostly didn’t finish those.
A writer near the end of the book made an interesting proposal that if there was to be a meaningful future for paganism it would not be in reconstructionism i.e. propping up long-dead gods. (Cue the Weekend at Bernie’s montage with Thor’s hammer duct taped to his hand.) The idea of creating new gods, new holy places, new rituals, I’ll admit, appeals to me. Again, I might just call that art. The editor of this book, John Halstead, and I share a similar path. We left the same religion at the same time at about the same age and we both briefly considered becoming Quakers. But where Halstead went on to build something interesting, I took a seat right where I was and said “I prefer not to” to pretty much everything. Not gonna lie, I think he did it better.
January 26, 2018
This book was definitely a bit of a slog. While the individual articles were well written, it didn't feel particularly curated, more like someone collected all the non-theistic pagan writing they could find and crammed it into a book. It was also very focussed on explaining what each writer believed, and while it did an excellent job of showcasing the sheer diversity of non-theistic thought, I think it could have benefited from a larger section on actual practices.
August 27, 2018
While I probably qualify as "Atheopagan," I don't identify as such.
That being said, I was really excited about this book. And I became even more excited as I read through the first section.
However, as I progressed through it, I found this book to be tediously repetitive. This work isn't really an overview of Atheopaganism so much as it is a fairly large collection of essays and short writings from various Neopagan and Neopagan-ish authors on their beliefs and practice. It includes quite an array of viewpoints.
I'm glad I read the entire thing because there were a handful of chapters, scattered throughout, which really resonated with me and I would have missed them if I'd quit the first time I started dozing off.
That being said, by the end of the second section, I was thinking, "Haven't I already read, like, three or four chapters about this already?"
The only person I'd recommend this to would be someone who teaches about Paganism and could read through and select a subset of these writings for discussion.
That being said, I was really excited about this book. And I became even more excited as I read through the first section.
However, as I progressed through it, I found this book to be tediously repetitive. This work isn't really an overview of Atheopaganism so much as it is a fairly large collection of essays and short writings from various Neopagan and Neopagan-ish authors on their beliefs and practice. It includes quite an array of viewpoints.
I'm glad I read the entire thing because there were a handful of chapters, scattered throughout, which really resonated with me and I would have missed them if I'd quit the first time I started dozing off.
That being said, by the end of the second section, I was thinking, "Haven't I already read, like, three or four chapters about this already?"
The only person I'd recommend this to would be someone who teaches about Paganism and could read through and select a subset of these writings for discussion.
April 24, 2016
I am giving Godless Paganism 2 stars because I am a theist, Pagan theist, and have to be honest, it was difficult to read a lot of the time - so 2 stars is entirely based on my personal bias. Nonetheless, I recognise its tremendous value for non-theistic Pagans, I can see it is a great book for those it is aimed at and I definitely recommend it for non-theistic Pagans and old and new Pagans who have trouble connecting with the idea of literal deity.
Full Review on my blog
Full Review on my blog
November 25, 2025
I certainly skimmed over a few essays in this collection in order to finish it. I'm giving this a lower rating simply because I ordered it with expectations that were different from what the book actually was. While I anticipated more introspection into how non-theistic pagans make/feel about the world, it more stood as a testament that, yes, godless pagans do exist.
January 17, 2019
An incredibly far-ranging collection of essays, reflections, and practices from a wide array of nontheistic Pagans. It was of course impossible to agree with every piece in it, because we're all coming from such vastly different perspectives and drawing such vastly different conclusions. But even the pieces I disagreed with gave me a lot of food for thought about why I disagreed and what that disagreement might teach me about my own life and practice.
I also couldn't help but wish that Halstead had employed a better copy editor. Or any copy editor at all. I understand that he wanted these essays to stand as-is, without editorial intervention. But there's a big difference between substantive content that might mar the author's original intention, and copy editing that makes the actual mechanics of the writing less jarring.
Ultimately, as with other collections I've read recently, what matters most is that this collection exists. This anthology might not convince devotional polytheists that what nontheistic Pagans do is "acceptable," but it very neatly lays to rest the tired old argument that "it can't exist."
I also couldn't help but wish that Halstead had employed a better copy editor. Or any copy editor at all. I understand that he wanted these essays to stand as-is, without editorial intervention. But there's a big difference between substantive content that might mar the author's original intention, and copy editing that makes the actual mechanics of the writing less jarring.
Ultimately, as with other collections I've read recently, what matters most is that this collection exists. This anthology might not convince devotional polytheists that what nontheistic Pagans do is "acceptable," but it very neatly lays to rest the tired old argument that "it can't exist."
November 9, 2020
It takes me forever to get time to commit to read a book and I carried this book literally everywhere with me for months just to get a page or two in at a time, at soccer practice, the laundry mat, to any appt. for one of my 4 teens that I thought I'd get 5-10 min to squeeze a chapter in. Excellent book! It's a well written anthology of many very different perspectives from a fairly large group of people who identify under the umbrella of paganism. It's not anything I expected. It also gave me a new boost to my own beliefs which is why I picked this book to read so I encourage anyone who is bordering on Atheism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Polytheism, Nature based foundations, humanist, animist beliefs, even cosmo or universe based, science based etc. give this a read. You won't feel so alone.
June 27, 2018
I appreciate the non-theistic essays in this book. It speaks to me on a deeply personal level.
June 25, 2016
I really enjoyed this anthology! It includes a very broad range of non-theist Pagan perspectives, some of which spoke to me more than others, but all of which gave me a great deal to ruminate over, in terms of my own beliefs and how I carry them out in the world. I haven't considered myself a non-theist before, but this book is really making me think that label might be a better fit for me than I thought it was. I certainly love any book that gives me as much to think about as this one has!
November 14, 2022
The information discussed was invaluable. However, it was often a slog, with the number of contributors, there was a near constant rehashing of ideas, phrased only slightly differently. Retreading on the same old roads, over and over and over. I don’t know how that could be avoided, with the number of cooks in the kitchen, but important nonetheless for such a package.
And yet those ideas have been life-changing, for me and where I am at in my life.
For that, I feel compelled to give it a big hesitant thumbs up.
And yet those ideas have been life-changing, for me and where I am at in my life.
For that, I feel compelled to give it a big hesitant thumbs up.
November 7, 2019
This book should have been titled "Well, if you thought Paganism was hard to explain to non pagans, well..read this and you really will be in a pickle." :)
This is a great book, and a wonderful book to have in your Library if you are a theological student, Minister, pagan author, journalist, or a Librarian looking to put a good book that breaks down the differences in Paganism for Pagans and Non Pagans alike.
This is a great book, and a wonderful book to have in your Library if you are a theological student, Minister, pagan author, journalist, or a Librarian looking to put a good book that breaks down the differences in Paganism for Pagans and Non Pagans alike.
June 15, 2025
This book compiles a wonderful array of different beliefs. As a pagan I have definitely learned a lot from these authors and they have helped me further my spiritual journey; I know that anyone could find some bit of information they relate to or that makes them change the way they think about the world and life. I would recommend this book to anyone, especially those interested in paganism or any nature centered spirituality!
May 31, 2025
This book, "Godless Paganism," by John Halstead, is a lot more than I had anticipated. I had originally thought it might be shallow and repetitious, but it certainly is not. I also have to admit I was somewhat resistant when I read some of the middle essays concerning the use of “god talk,” but after due consideration, I realized the essays are intended to challenge readers to consider new ways of thinking and/or talking about subjects that normally would be resisted if taken literally, but are more evocative when understood in more metaphorical ways.
I have discovered a new world and a new love. I am in love with The Goddess, Gaia, Earth, Mother Nature, the primordial principle of the feminine, the fertile creativity of life itself. While we humans may be the so-called smartest animals on the planet (maybe), the best part about this is that we are, indeed, an integral part of the natural world, the vast, interconnected, self-regulating system of planetary life (Gaia). We need to find our proper place and remember who we are—we should be the most responsible, caring species on the planet.
I Celebrate the Sacredness of Life and Creation Itself. The pagan deities—the old gods
and goddesses—are symbolic personifications of the natural elements and forces of Nature, the Earth and the Cosmos: The Earth (Gaia), sky (Uranus), Sun (Helios), Moon (Luna), stars (Angels) and planets. Night and day, darkness and light; the Four Seasons and the four stations of the Sun. The Sea, water, roaring waves and tsunamis; the rivers, lakes and floods. The Storm, wind, rain, lightening, thunder, and snow; hurricanes, tornados and blizzards. The Land, mountains, valleys, and plateaus; volcanos and earthquakes. Fire, heat and light; air to breathe, water to drink. Life, death, fertility and new birth; the Circle of Life and the Tree of Life. The Great Goddess, the Earth, Gaia, Mother Nature and all the creative processes of life. The Horned One, God of all animals; The Green One, God of plants, forests, jungles, plains, desserts and glaciers. All of these are interconnected elements of the living Earth and its cosmic neighbors.
Not only are we part of the planet, we are part of the cosmos—we and everything in the world are made of stardust, the products of supernova stars that exploded billions of years ago and seeded the universe with all the heavy elements necessary for life (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, etc.). The whole universe is interconnected, as is our planet, and we are all part of this beautiful, vast, infinite expanse of everything that exists and everything that is alive. It is a great time to be alive and human. This is an absolutely fabulous book and I’m glad I found it. It has now become one of my favorites.
I have discovered a new world and a new love. I am in love with The Goddess, Gaia, Earth, Mother Nature, the primordial principle of the feminine, the fertile creativity of life itself. While we humans may be the so-called smartest animals on the planet (maybe), the best part about this is that we are, indeed, an integral part of the natural world, the vast, interconnected, self-regulating system of planetary life (Gaia). We need to find our proper place and remember who we are—we should be the most responsible, caring species on the planet.
I Celebrate the Sacredness of Life and Creation Itself. The pagan deities—the old gods
and goddesses—are symbolic personifications of the natural elements and forces of Nature, the Earth and the Cosmos: The Earth (Gaia), sky (Uranus), Sun (Helios), Moon (Luna), stars (Angels) and planets. Night and day, darkness and light; the Four Seasons and the four stations of the Sun. The Sea, water, roaring waves and tsunamis; the rivers, lakes and floods. The Storm, wind, rain, lightening, thunder, and snow; hurricanes, tornados and blizzards. The Land, mountains, valleys, and plateaus; volcanos and earthquakes. Fire, heat and light; air to breathe, water to drink. Life, death, fertility and new birth; the Circle of Life and the Tree of Life. The Great Goddess, the Earth, Gaia, Mother Nature and all the creative processes of life. The Horned One, God of all animals; The Green One, God of plants, forests, jungles, plains, desserts and glaciers. All of these are interconnected elements of the living Earth and its cosmic neighbors.
Not only are we part of the planet, we are part of the cosmos—we and everything in the world are made of stardust, the products of supernova stars that exploded billions of years ago and seeded the universe with all the heavy elements necessary for life (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, etc.). The whole universe is interconnected, as is our planet, and we are all part of this beautiful, vast, infinite expanse of everything that exists and everything that is alive. It is a great time to be alive and human. This is an absolutely fabulous book and I’m glad I found it. It has now become one of my favorites.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews