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Welcome to the Church of the Starmother's online presence. We hope you find something here that will benefit you. Be sure to check back frequently, as additions are constantly being made. We will offer online courses when there is enough interest, but until then we have plenty of free content, such as online forums and music, for you to enjoy.
-last update, September 27, 2008-
We are the Children of the Starmother, exploring our Universe with hand, heart, and mind. We know that it is right and good to seek more knowledge about our Universe. We know that science and magic can be one and the same, both operating by laws that can be understood. We have the courage to think with discernment, sifting through the dross to find the bright gems of true knowledge.
You will not find massive lists of crystal correspondences here, nor will you find elaborate love spells. What you will find is honesty, truth, and a deep respect for All That Is. We strive here to provide something for every level, every person who wishes to learn. Though no-one with an honest question will be turned away, neither will we (or She) tolerate disrepsect or willful ignorance.
The Spiral Path is a path of constant learning and growth. It leads outward and upward at the same time as it reaches inward. It is a path of magic, but this magic has rules that we seek to understand. There is wonder here, the wonder of knowing that you too are starsfuff, that this world we inhabit is not the end, but only a beginning.
All of this said, who are we really?
We are a nature-based religion.
We respect all that is in nature, but we recognize that humanity is a part of nature too. A skyscraper is as much a part of nature as an ancient oak. A nebula is as much a part of nature as a wolf’s paw-print in the loam. We use mental and physical symbols to interact with our Universe, but we recognize that they are only symbols. We use ritual to connect with the Divine, but we know that ritual is not necessary to do this.
I went to a writer’s retreat once. The focus was on nature-writing. Robert Michael Pyle, a renowned naturalist, was teaching. Everybody called him Butterfly Bob. He is a person who truly loves nature in all its detail, and we had a discussion on what nature writing is. To do this, we had to talk about what nature is. What makes something natural? He started coming up with examples of “nature writing.” Among them was a story about New York City. He told us in loving detail about the rock formations, man-made though they may be, that formed the buildings. The minerals that were part of their construction. The wildlife, the pigeons and rats and millions of naked, upright apes who inhabited this jungle of stone and steel. The weather patterns among the buildings. The fact that all of this was Nature.
I can imagine that some who read this might recoil from this imagery. We, all of us, prefer to think of Nature as unspoiled wild lands where the animals and insects and birds live in the ways they have used since they evolved to that current position. We like to think of a hawk soaring on a thermal, a bear sleeping in a den, a salmon swimming up a river to the place where it was born. Just as these are natural, so too is the accountant, sitting and sweating in an office where the air-conditioner is broken, working on a spreadsheet program, surrounded by papers.
But Nature is not good or bad. Nature just IS. The conservation movement, while admirable, has set up an idea of nature and natural things being the best for us, of nature being good in and of itself. That is not the case! Far from it. The noble wolf, when on an island, will war against other packs until the population pressure is equalized. Male cats of all kinds kill another male’s young when they find a new territory. Without mercy, without worry. A glorious planetary nebula in the depths of space could have come at the cost of habitable worlds when the star went nova. Cowbird chicks routinely knock smaller, weaker birds from the nest when they hatch, their mother having laid them in a songbird’s home. This, all this, has been going on since the beginning, and it too is natural.
What is best is nature in balance. Cruelty and suffering still happen but it is balanced by comfort and joy. Bad things happen, and good things too, and all of it is natural. We, as humans with greater understanding, have a duty to try and reduce suffering where we can. To fight against the growing darkness is our place in the universe, to bring order to chaos, to right what wrongs we are able to. Balance is important in all things, yes, but we will worry about that when the darkness and the light are of equal measure.
What did I write about for my nature essay? Well, I wrote about space... and a lone explorer fixing a broken antenna array on a starship. But I used lots of detail about the surroundings, I described everything lovingly and vividly. It was regarded unanimously as fitting the requirements of the assignment.
So when I say we are a nature-based religion, I mean it in a very holistic sense. We show our reverence and respect for nature in our desire to understand it. We elevate our consciousness by meditating on the incredible complexity of All That Is. We include orbits and the rotation of the galaxy in our concept of the cycles of nature. We embrace the macrocosm and the microcosm. From subatomic particles to the largest galaxy cluster, this is what we believe, this is what we strive for, this is what we seek to know.
That path is our religion.
" Life is the quest, the journey, the test.
Rituals mark the seasons and the phases,
retreats provide room and time to think,
but in the end, there is no test but the everyday."
R. Shaw