My books are about inclusive Wicca and witchcraft; how to include LGBTQIA people, disabled people, and BIPOC people in ritual and witchcraft; embodied spirituality; and the inner work of ritual. My latest book, Changing Paths, is a companion guide for people changing from one religion to another.
Changing Paths challenge day 31 — where I am now
Nowadays I am fairly and squarely a Pagan and an inclusive polytheist Wiccan, but one who has been enriched by my wobble.
Changing Paths challenge day 30 — reflections.
The most amazing autobiography I have ever read was Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Gustav Jung.
It discusses how he arrived at his psychoanalytical theory — but the bits I found most fascinating were about his childhood and his occult experiences.
Looking up at the stars makes you realize the sheer size of the universe, and how magnificent it is in its own right — and much larger than most fundamentalists could possibly imagine. This reminds me of the awesome quote from Douglas Adams: “You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Changing Paths challenge day 28 — the crossroads
“Only one heart had to find its true position and travel on from there and all the rest would follow, for no matter how isolated the one felt itself to be, in the deeps of all life all were united and no one could move accurately without all ultimately moving with it…”
—Laurens van der Post, A Far-Off Place, p 304
Changing Paths challenge day 27: change
My favourite times of year are the transitional seasons of spring and autumn, when everything is changing rapidly. In spring there are new blossoms and new leaves emerging, and the days lengthen rapidly. In autumn, the leaves turn red and yellow and orange and are blown away in the wind. The smell of bonfires is in the air, symbolising the transformation of decay into the bright energy of fire.
Changing Paths challenge day 26 — wobbling
Spiritual wobbles can happen when your spiritual path becomes out of synch with your religious community. They can be dry spells, when it feels as if the source of your spiritual life has dried up, or the wobble can propel you out of your old path and into a new one. It depends how severe the wobble is.
Her eyes are flowers
That turn towards the sun
Her hair is tangling vines that run
Over your carefully manicured lawn
After the rain. She wakes at dawn
Hungry for the kiss of sunlight.
She is the shadows of leaves
The sound of roots pushing into the earth
She is the silent ancient mirth
Of ivy gnawing at buildings
Of the conquest of bindweed. She never
Yields an inch of ground.
She is the smell of wet earth,
Compost and leaf mould and worm-cast,
Her love may be slow but it is vast.
Her hour is always now and never past,
She will endure. She scatters her seeds
Over the whole earth, an endless dance.
Her speech is the pollen carried
From flower to blossom to flower
Whispering her vast design across the land.
Her songs and sighs are carried by the wind
Into your carefully sealed houses,
Into your dreams.
©️ Yvonne Aburrow
25 May 2023, 12:50 pm
Changing Paths challenge day 25 — wandering
Wandering, like wavering and wondering, is a good thing. There is a whole genre of songs in German called Wanderliede, about hiking.
And as JRR Tolkien wisely remarked, not all those who wander are lost.
Changing Paths challenge day 24 — wondering.
There’s wondering in the sense of asking questions about the nature of things, and then there’s wonder in the sense of amazement.
Dowsing for Divinity 