Month: November 2018
Review: Guelph Art Gallery
There are currently three amazing exhibitions on at the Art Gallery of Guelph (until 16 December): epistemologies of the moon, 1745, and Critical Mass. It is hard to say which of these exhibitions I was the most excited about, as they all address things I care about.
Review: the Father Christmas Letters
I just re-read Letters from Father Christmas by JRR Tolkien. I read it and enjoyed it as a child. Imagine how thrilling it must have been for Tolkien’s children to receive these letters once a year – and to have to wait a year for the next instalment.
The inclusive Wicca symbol
How the inclusive Wicca logo happened.
I was making a poster for a LGBT+ ritual in 2014, and trying to think of a symbol that expresses LGBT+ Wicca. So I took the standard Wiccan triple Moon symbol and added a heart.
🌛🌝🌜 + ❤️
I didn’t really think about it — the symbol sort of came down my arm, bypassing my brain, and manifested on the paper.
The heart could be seen as an hommage to the Sufi winged heart or Tughra Inayati symbol (and there is a connection between Sufism and Wicca, via the friendship between Gardner and Idries Shah).
The Sufi winged heart image (public domain version)
The heart mainly represents the idea that love (in all its glorious diversity) is the central mystery of Wicca. Also that Love is love, or “All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals” — hence also the title of my 2014 book on inclusive Wicca.
If you enjoyed this post, you might like my books.
2019 inclusive Wicca calendar
The 2019 inclusive Wicca calendar
is now available from the Zazzle store.
All profits will be donated to the
First Nations Child & Family Caring Society.
Be sure to use your local version of Zazzle to get the best deal on postage.
The Night Journey [video]
Me reading part of the chapter on the night journey, from The Night Journey: Witchcraft as Transformation.
2020 Update: the book is being republished in October by The Doreen Valiente Foundation in association with the Centre for Pagan Studies.
The article by Sabina Magliocco that I referenced is Who was Aradia?
If you enjoyed this post, you might like my books.
The folklore of the Wild Hunt
The Wild Hunt is a very widespread motif in Indo-European folklore and mythology, appearing in Indian, Greek, Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, German, Italian, Spanish, English, and Welsh legends. The deity who leads it varies from one culture to another, and it has different names in different places, but enough shared characteristics to be fairly certain that it is the same folklore motif. It even has its own classification number, ATU E501.
What is a witch?
A video in which I read an excerpt from my book, The Night Journey: Witchcraft as Transformation. I was particularly pleased with this chapter, as I think it’s very poetic and has some powerful imagery in it.
If you enjoyed this post, you might like my books.
The Two Chalices Ritual
One of the rituals of inclusive Wicca is the two chalices ritual. This has evolved over a couple of decades to become something more than I originally envisaged, as is often the way with traditions, which are evolving and fluid. It started life as a ritual for women-loving-women, and evolved into a ritual for everyone, but retaining its original symbolism.
Dowsing for Divinity 