Poetic Faiths are an emerging current within Spiritual Naturalism treating myth, ritual and religion as creative works of art. They are “metamodern folk religions”: consciously made systems of story, symbol, object and practice that recover the folk-religious power and mystique of ritual life without requiring naïve belief or institutional authority.
The term is an expansion of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s concept of poetic faith – the ability to engage meaningfully with stories and symbols while suspending disbelief. Within this reading, poiesis refers to the creative, imaginative faculty and faith refers to belief in significant, natural phenomena, including abstract principles.
Thus, Poetic Faiths are those new religions and ritual practices that tend to take naturalism and anti-authoritarianism for granted, then ask “now what?” and find their answers in mythopoetic meaning-making.
Historical Roots
The underlying premise that naturalistic, symbolic religion can be consciously created has appeared at various points in modern history.
One early example emerged during the aftermath of the French Revolution, when revolutionary leaders introduced the Cult of Reason. This short-lived, atheistic civic religion replaced traditional church rituals with elaborate festivals celebrating reason, liberty and the human spirit; the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was briefly reconsecrated as a Temple of Reason for this purpose. Although politically motivated, the Cult of Reason demonstrated an early attempt to deliberately construct a new symbolic religious culture grounded in secular ideals.
During the early twentieth century, several experimental cultural movements explored similar ideas. The famous poet, playwright and wit Oscar Wilde hypothesized about a “Confraternity of the Faithless”, wherein those like himself who could not believe in the supernatural would find solace and strength in self-devised religions. Another notable example was the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a progressive alternative to the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides founded by John Hargrave. The Kibbo Kift combined outdoor culture, handcrafted ritual regalia, DIY mythology and pageantry to create a symbolic tradition celebrating creativity, nature and social renewal.
During the 1960s and 1970s, some members of the countercultural neo-Pagan movement began to adopt explicitly nontheistic or symbolic interpretations of myth and ritual. In these contexts, seasonal festivals and other rites of passage were practiced as expressions of social and ecological awareness, artistic imagination and psychological exploration rather than literalistic belief in supernatural beings.
By the 1980s and ’90s, a number of artists and subcultural movements were consciously creating what critics sometimes called “art religions.” One influential example was Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, founded by musician and cultural theorist Genesis P-Orridge. Blending ritual, performance art, music and experimental spirituality, the Temple explored how symbolic practices could function as tools for personal transformation and cultural creativity. Another is to be found in the artistic ritual aspect of the Burning Man event in Nevada, such as the Temple structure, which serves as a container for grief and release.
Contemporary Poetic Faiths can be understood as part of this broader lineage; an ongoing exploration of how myth, immersive symbolic ritual and artistic imagination can enrich human life within a naturalistic worldview.
Practices
Practices associated with Poetic Faiths vary widely, but often include:
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collaborative myth-making and storytelling
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artistic ritual and performance
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symbolic shrines or installations
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seasonal or thematic gatherings
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philosophical reflection through poetry, music, and art
Selected Contemporary Examples
The CREATION Project by artist Deborah Kelly is an intentionally invented religion that uses art, music and ritual to explore social and ecological themes.
Aretéanism, founded by Colin Campbell, is a congregational nontheistic religion inspired by the ancient Greek philosophical principle of areté (excellence).
The Oscar Wilde Temple is an installation/immersive art environment by artists David McDermott & Peter McGough, inviting participants to experience an imaginary queer religion that might have been founded by Wilde himself, or his friends and supporters, following his release from prison in 1897.
Artist and scholar M. Dudeck’s RELIGIONVIRUS project investigates how new religions can be created through performance art and digital culture.
Poet John Constable’s Southwark Mysteries blend poetry, ritual drama and local history to create a living civic mythology centered on London’s Cross Bones burial ground.
Artist and teacher Tony Wolf’s ongoing Poetic Faith project, The Way Down, includes elements of personal ritual, pilgrimage and memorial inspired by the motto memento mori ergo carpe diem – “remember death and therefore seize the day”.
Other projects connected with Poetic Faith approaches include CultPunk, an experimental movement exploring invented rituals, DIY symbolic traditions and imaginative spiritual practice.
For many participants, Poetic Faiths offer a way to explore the symbolic and ritual dimensions of religion as living works of art – continuously evolving expressions of human imagination and wisdom within the natural world.