Black Stone Sanctuary
Welcome to the online home of Black Stone Sanctuary, hosted by contemplative animists Danica Swanson and Trish Deneen.
Black Stone Sanctuary is a "node" in a global emergent network of polytheistic monastics who focus on contemplative practice and worship in the context of modern religions such as Germanic Paganism (Heathenry), Hellenism, and Druidry.
The Sanctuary is a dark monastic incubation space inspired by animist pre-Christian Nordic and Germanic religious and folk traditions. (That's a mouthful, we know, but it fits).
We honor darkness — literal and metaphorical — as a sacred and healing force. In our place-making work we call this a "goth nesting instinct," as it is expressed (online and offline) through design, mood, symbolism, style, and atmosphere, including curation of music and art.
Most of our religious spaces are privately owned and consecrated into service of the pre-Christian Holy Powers we venerate. Our worship and service work centers goddesses/dísir, including Skaði (and other Ásynjur) and Nótt.
Since 2011 the Sanctuary has been developing experimental guides for contemplative animist monastic aspirants, and publishing them online. We're excited to bring elements of this work onchain.
Ultimately we aspire to root the Sanctuary within a network of formally established IRL monasteries. But since monasticism in the polytheist revival is in its infancy, that's generational work that will continue far beyond our lifetimes.
We must start where we are. Therefore, we're working on open-source modular "building blocks" to be adapted and recombined by aspirants discerning a monastic calling in polytheistic contexts.
We work with allies in human and non-human realms (including the imaginal realm) to develop these monastic modules in ways that
1) respect the complexities of emergence, and
2) align with our monastic rule: "follow the ways of non-contrivance."
In pre-COVID days, we were able to host IRL monthly dark moon incubation retreats and open our library to visitors by appointment. We ended all IRL hospitality services in 2020, but we still receive inquiries from monastic aspirants and potential visitors.
We hope to find a suitable physical space to offer hospitality and retreat services again one day. With that in mind, we're exploring options for establishing a formal religious organization and church foundation to support the building of an IRL monastery in Portland or Eugene, OR. We're bringing some of our work onchain for public outreach, and for development of a sustainable long-term business model.
While we cater to polytheists and animists, we welcome sincere and respectful interest from all walks of life.
2011: Danica's project The Black Stone Hermitage launched its first outreach efforts with a WordPress blog, and began hosting incubation retreats in Portland, OR. She began meeting seasonally for worship with a Portland-based fellowship community founded by the publishers of Hex Magazine.
2012-2019: Danica maintained a blog for the Hermitage on WordPress and experimented with Patreon. Her public-facing hospitality and outreach work included:
Hosting visitors for monthly dark moon incubation retreats.
Serving as an admin for the Facebook Pagan & Polytheist Monasticism discussion group (founded in 2015 by Merri-Todd Webster).
Building a shrine room for Skaði at Many Gods West, a polytheist conference.
A pilgrimage to Sweden in 2017, where she met with council members of Samfundet Forn Sed Sverige (Forn Sed Sweden) to discuss building a monastic hermitage.
Offering a dark ambient music playlist consulting service for events, rituals, and yoga classes, including a ritual for Skaði by Ingrid Kincaid.
2019: Danica began collaborating with Roger Finney (Weeping Crow), and they changed The Black Stone Hermitage name to Black Stone Abbey. As co-founders, they launched the first public Polytheist Monastic web discussion forum, and hosted the first US Pacific Northwest IRL regional gathering for polytheistic monastics. Unfortunately, intractable and disabling health conditions ended their collaboration and forced the forum to shut down.
2020: Black Stone Abbey formally dissolved, and the web discussion forum went offline. (The archives are preserved at the Internet Archive, including the call for submissions for Janet Munin's Polytheistic Monasticism anthology, and the hibernation announcement).
Danica renamed the project Black Stone Sanctuary and resumed the project on a solo basis, starting the newsletter Of Hearth & Shadow: Notes From Black Stone Sanctuary on Substack. Hospitality work remained on hiatus indefinitely due to the pandemic, but documentation of the Sanctuary's vision continued.
2021: Danica began studying blockchain tech as often as possible, and worked as a senior copy editor for cryptoart and DeFi publications. Trish originally found the Sanctuary's blog through a search for Pagan altars. The two connected through social media and blog comments, and Trish began learning about web3.
2022: Collective Ink Books (formerly Moon Books) released the well-received print anthology Polytheistic Monasticism: Voices From Pagan Cloisters, for which Danica provided developmental editing work. Edited by Janet Munin, the book features Danica's personal essay "Of Hearth and Shadow: A Contemplative Norse Polytheist and a Fledgling Animist Sanctuary" and an interview she conducted with Patricia Christmas, a nun living at Harvest Home Hermitage. Friend of the Sanctuary Lannan launched The Cloister: A Polytheistic Monastic Community, where Danica contributed historical reference materials.
2023: With the goal of bringing her previously published writings onchain, Danica moved to Paragraph, shut down her Substack publications, and began sorting through the Sanctuary's early documentation to compile special collections of highlights.
Late 2023: Inspired by their similar backgrounds and growing obsession with Zorbs and the Zora Network, Danica and Trish joined forces to collaborate on Zorbish projects and develop a new instantiation of the Sanctuary. Zorbs are magic. As Trish aptly wrote, "Zorbs are a current unto themselves." "Free + Valuable: Why I'm Excited About Zora Protocol Rewards," published in September 2023, was their first collaborative work.
2024: Trish and Danica launched a new Paragraph publication (you're reading it!) and a Farcaster channel to build out the Sanctuary's online presence anew, bring it onchain, and integrate Zorbish elements. This action marks the closing of the Sanctuary's first phase (13 years) and the opening of the next.
Work is under way to compile onchain collectible editions of Black Stone Sanctuary writings from the first 13 years, including:
The Sacristan Guidebook (our guide to place-making for those with a goth nesting instinct)
Collected Devotionals
Liturgical Development Notes
In the meantime, archived Substack posts from our pre-onchain days can be found by searching the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive. See, for example, "On Religious Place-Making and the Sacristan Role."
Some of our earliest blogging history is preserved by way of archived WordPress writings from 2011 with the blackstonemonastery URL (some of which were published under pseudonyms).
Our online resources for polytheist-animist monastics page will eventually be moved to The Cloister, an online monastic community founded by Lannan. In the meantime, the archived version is here.
Our Scriptorium is also preparing to release a special collection of works from Danica's former newsletter Endarkenment: Contemplative Writing on Dark Ambient Music Appreciation, including a long-anticipated interview with Ulf Söderberg.
All previous work from Endarkenment has also been preserved through the Wayback Machine, including "A Beginner's Guide to Dark Ambient: Quick-Start Guide," the most popular of her Substack writings.
Email Black Stone Sanctuary: blackstonesanctuary at pm dot me or follow our channel on Farcaster.
