It’s the time of year for Wassailing in the apple-growing regions of England (Herefordshire, Somerset, Worcestershire, etc), and places where the weather is warm enough that fruit trees can blossom. (In Ontario, Canada, we wait until February to do the Wassailing.)
Continue readingPraxis
The Kalends of January
Happy New Year and Kalends of January. The Kalends of January are associated with three deities in Roman lore:
Continue readingMōdraniht
This year, for the second year running, we will celebrate Mōdraniht, the Night of the Mothers.
This is a quieter and simpler practice than Yule, which is all about feasting and the drama of the light’s returning and liminality.
Continue readingThe Duty of the Witch
A great post from The Less Hidden Path about what it means to be a witch and why it means we should help people get access to reproductive health care.
“Witch”. A loaded term that people have died just through having been suggested to have been associated with. A word with immense cultural baggage …
The Duty Of The Witch
And another great post from the same blog about why witches and Pagans should definitely get involved in politics.
The time to dispense with the modern conceit that “politics and magic don’t mix” is many years overdue. It has never been true, but it gets more harmful the longer we leave it.
Politics and witchcraft
And a great post from a polytheist perspective exploring the Ancient Greek view on when the soul enters the body.
What about *my* religious beliefs? — and a passage from Iamblichus
Personally, I do not believe that the soul can enter the body until birth — which, in my belief system, requires the fetus to be viable without the use of the modern contraptions that keep the extreme premature alive until they are physically self-viable. It has life, yes, but not personhood. A woman who wants an abortion should be able to have one.
— Kalliste
Censing vs smudging
Nature, tradition, and ancestors
I am very keen on rejecting, resisting, and repudiating the infiltration and co-opting of Paganism by the far right, and so I found Amy Hale’s article on The Pagan and Occult Fascist Connection and How to Fix It a very useful resource, particularly the questions at the end. I would encourage you to read the article, and use these questions as journaling prompts.
So here are my answers to those questions for initiatory Wicca (in some cases, I have previously written blogposts on these topics, so I will link to those).
Continue readingMoon water
I had never heard of moon water until very recently. It seems to be a piece of North American folk magic. It also seems to have gained in popularity very rapidly, especially on Instagram (and possibly on Tiktok too, but I’m not on there). So I wondered where it came from.
Continue readingWitchy aesthetics
There’s a lot of talk about Halloween being “the season of the witch” and it is true that what sets us apart from many other paths and traditions is an enthusiastic embrace of both darkness and light. But that is not the full extent of witchy aesthetics.
There should also be winter witches and springtime witches and summer witches. We are a religion for all seasons!
Continue readingSpiritual bypassing
Recently there has been a pattern on social media of BIPOC people expressing their completely valid pain and anger and sadness over the continuing murder of Black people by police, and getting pushback from “spiritual” people claiming that their anger is too much, or somehow misplaced. I have also experienced this phenomenon. I used to call it “spiritualler-than-thou” syndrome, until I discovered that it already had a name, spiritual bypassing.
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Dowsing for Divinity 