The Pagan Words Challenge 2025 invites you to pick a word you’d like to explore the connotations of, and look at its use in poetry and prose, its etymology, its history, and/or what it means in your spiritual practice.
This challenge is a bit different from the previous ones (Changing Paths challenge 2023 and 2024), as it doesn’t have daily prompts. It can be exhausting producing a blogpost every day. I know I was happy when I was done at the end of the month.
So pick a blogging cadence that suits you (once a day, every three days, once a week, whatever works for you) and pick a word that interests you, and write about it. You don’t have to stick to the words on my list; you can pick a different word. The challenge officially starts on 1st March, but start when you feel like it.
You might want to have a look at my Reclaiming Pagan Words playlist on YouTube:
And be sure to get a copy of my book, Pagan Roots: Reclaiming Concepts of the Sacred, published by 1000Volt Press. It will be available from all online retailers from April 22, 2025.
Pagan Roots explores the themes and concepts of contemporary Paganism and their origins, and then reclaims a number of concepts that were originally part of Paganism but have since been co-opted and distorted by Christianity; it also explores concepts that are widely recognized as being part of Pagan culture. Each chapter is accompanied by a ritual which further explores the concepts covered in the chapter.
Word hoard for the challenge (feel free to add your own words to the list):
- Virtue
- Faith
- Wisdom
- Fertility
- Prayer
- Tradition
- Worship
- Religion
- Spirituality
- Power
- Holy
- Oath / vow
- Sovereignty
- Theology
- Polarity
- Worship
- Grace
- Heresy
- Belief
- Apotheosis
- Darkness
- Embodiment
- Eudaimonia
- Fertility
- Immanence
- Land
- Liminality
- Merry
- Myth
- Nature
- Pagan
- Polarity
- Reciprocity
- Sacred
- Sovereignty
- Spirituality
- Wild
- Wyrd
There will be a prize 🏆 for the best entries.
Dowsing for Divinity 