Today is International Trans Day of Visibility.
It’s more important than ever that everyone stands with trans and nonbinary people, as there’s a concerted campaign to erase us from existence.
Continue readingGeneral
Books I read in February 2022
As February is Black History Month in North America, I was very pleased to get hold of a copy of Black and British, which I had been wanting to read for ages. I also got Once upon a Wardrobe as I enjoyed the author’s previous book.
Continue readingResist the truckers
Thoughts on the trucker convoys and how things got to this.
Liberal democracy (such as it is) rests on the social contract: that the governed consent to be governed, and the government will do right by them and take care of their needs. It often fails in practice but that’s the ideal.
Continue readingBooks I read in January 2022
I decided to re-read The Lord of the Rings as it’s been about a decade since I last read it and it was Tolkien’s birthday. Then I read The Vanishing Half, which was amazing. And Labyrinth, which was enjoyable too.
Continue readingHeresy and haeresis
In Ancient Greece, a haeresis was one of many schools of thought. Christianity made heresy a bad thing, a deviation from the norm. In Paganism, having many schools of thought is a good thing.
On tradition
Tradition is a living, breathing, growing thing. It develops new practices in keeping with the spirit of the original. Trying to keep a tradition as an unchanging thing will cause it to stagnate and die.
Hail to the beans!
Today I pulled all the beanstalks off the climbing poles and put the poles in the shed. It’s snowing hard outside.
As I worked, I sang to the bean plants to thank them for their gifts of food, and promised to plant their seeds next year.
Books I read in October 2021
I’m currently also reading Rune Magic by Nigel Pennick and SPQR by Mary Beard, but I haven’t finished them yet. These are the books that I have read this month.
Continue readingPlace names
Indigenous people frequently and correctly point out that Indigenous place names in North America are based on geographical features or things that happened in that place, whereas settler place names in North America are either named after the first person to settle there, or a place in Britain or Europe. This is true.
What’s more, the place names in Britain and Europe are named after geographical features, things that happened there, Pagan deities, and previous inhabitants’ names for the place. So it makes no sense to transplant them to a place with different geographical features (though I assume people did it for nostalgic reasons).
Continue readingBooks I read in September 2021
Reading about hygge, which seems very akin to Pagan ideals of comfort and pleasure, and about the Indigenous sense of humour, gives me hope that one day all of humanity will again see the Earth as sacred. I also reread some Dion Fortune.
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Dowsing for Divinity 