I planned to read more witchy books this year and I have done that. I also read a lot of SF, which I enjoy.
Continue readingMonth: December 2020
Meditation with snow
This is actually an illustration of how terrible I am at meditation. But I had fun trying. I’m sharing this for all the other people out there who struggle with meditation. I can recommend washing your face with snow though — it’s very invigorating.
Continue readingQueer Witchcraft & Magic (video)
Books I read in December 2020
Pagan festivals
Pagan festivals (and traditional, Indigenous, Earth-based festivals around the world) are mostly about the cycles of the year. If you were a pastoralist, you had times when the sheep went up to the high pasture and times when they came down again. If you were a grower of crops, your cycle of festivals revolved around when you planted the crops and harvested them. There were times of plenty and times of hunger. Festivals marked the end of one phase and the beginning of another.
Continue readingBlogging and privacy
People are often confused that I’m a blogger but I really value privacy. They seem to think that having any sort of internet presence is incompatible with privacy. In this post, I will attempt to explain why that is not the case, why privacy matters to me, why it should matter to you, and what that has to do with Pagan stuff.
Continue readingThe arts in Paganism
Pagan traditions like to celebrate the arts, whether it’s in the eisteddfod of Druid ritual, or the skaldic arts of Heathenry, or making things for use in ritual and around the home. If you look at any list of Pagan values, you will not find false modesty, self-deprecation, or other similar traits on the list. Humility is on many lists, but not modesty (in any sense of the word). Boasting and bragging are fine, and letting it all hang out is fine. False modesty about one’s artistic endeavours is not a Pagan virtue.
Continue readingInglenook
By granny’s fire
Burning driftwood.
The dancing flames
Were green and blue.
Fire in the hearth:
The flaming heart
Of an old house,
Place of magic.
A rare fine thing
Seen in old pubs,
Often taken,
Cosy, enclosed,
Liminal place,
Shadowy space,
The inglenook.
A quadrille on the theme of the inglenook, suggested by DVerse. Hat-tip to The Skeptic’s Kaddish.
Featured image: Fireplace by José Claudio Guima on Pixabay (public domain).
If you enjoyed this post, you might like my books.
New book project: spiritual wobbles
Have you had a “wobble” in your Pagan path where you joined another religion, either temporarily or permanently? What caused it, and what other religion did you choose? Did it help you resolve the issue? Did you return to Paganism, or did you stay with the other religion? What did you gain or lose by your exploration of the other path?
Continue readingIt’s only a model
I frequently see the skeptical crowd on Twitter pointing out that the Myers-Briggs test is “astrology for business people”, or dismissing astrology as hokum. I suppose this was inevitable, given that there are people who won’t get out of bed when Mercury is retrograde (despite the fact that the apparent retrograde motion is an illusion caused by our geocentric perception that the Earth is the centre of the solar system and not the Sun (whereas everyone knows that Galileo was right — with the possible exception of flat-earthers).
Continue reading
Dowsing for Divinity 