This week, Gods & Radicals published in two parts my essay “The Prison and the Key: Pagan Perspectives on Suicide.”
This is an essay that is personal and dear to my heart. I attended a Jesuit high school, and in one class I was assigned a paper to write about religious perspectives on a controversial issue, and to find a religious perspective for and against the issue. I chose suicide at the time, and had to look hard to find in Shinto a perspective that condoned suicide.
As an adult practicing in neopagan traditions, experiencing the suicide of a person in my life, that young me lifted up his head and wondered, “What do pagans think of this?” This essay is the result.
