Censing vs smudging
Related topics
Non-occult books that inform magical practice
My magical practice has definitely been influenced by books other than specifically occult ones.
Continue readingBook review: Queer Qabala
Queer Qabala by Enfys J Book
Incredibly clear, beautifully written explanation of the Hermetic Qabala and its inherent queerness, expressed in the idea that there are three pillars (force, balance, and form), and that the Divine includes all genders and sexualities.
The book is written with style and wit by an expert in the subject. There are pathworkings to help you fully experience all aspects of the Qabala, and journal exercises to deepen your understanding of the worlds, spheres, and pathways of the Tree of Life.
All the aspects of the Tree are related to queer experiences and life events like coming out to yourself and others, and finding queer community. It explores both the wonderful and the scary aspects of being queer, including queer joy and sorrow.
This exploration of the many aspects of the Tree is grounded in a deep knowledge of the Qabala, and the overlapping Pagan and queer communities. This is a vision of Qabala that understands the importance of cyclicity: growth and decay, death and rebirth, darkness and light, immanence and transcendence, the manifest and the unmanifest.
It offers magical workings based on queer Qabala which relate to each sphere of the Tree of life and everyday experiences like getting a job or finishing a project. It is pragmatic and fun, accessible and inclusive.
This book will be valuable to everyone from beginners, who will find the subject thoroughly explored and explained, to people who are already working with Qabala, who will gain a fresh perspective on it. Sure to be a contemporary classic!
Place 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 readingDrag
By Yvonne Aburrow
July 16th was International Drag Day, so it seems like a good time to look at the history of drag.
Drag is a subversive art-form that holds a distorting mirror up to societally-imposed gender norms. It is not the same as being transgender, and has a different history. The key difference between drag and being transgender is that drag is an impersonation of another gender for dramatic effect; being transgender is to genuinely experience being a different gender than the one that was assigned at birth.
Please note that, when talking about the LGBTQIA community in historical periods before the current terminology was devised, I have used more clinical terms or ones that reflected the understanding of same-sex love and gender-variance at the time, whilst avoiding slurs, obviously.
Continue readingThe Northumbrian Futhark
I have always liked the Northumbrian Futhark more than the Elder Futhark or the Anglo-Saxon Futhark. The extra runes in the Northumbrian Futhark cover some important concepts that are not dealt with in earlier futharks. My own rune set is this futhark.
Continue readingQueer Pagan Books List 2021
An update on my 2020 post, my 2018 post and my 2015 post. Please add your recommendations in the comments.
I have organized the list by author and added topic tags; if you prefer a list by topic, have a look at my 2018 post. This year I have added twenty new books to the list (some are classics that were not on the list before, but most are recently published books).
And I made a YouTube video about some of the Queer Pagan books in my collection.
Blogging 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 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 readingWe all rise together
On solidarity with other people, small acts of kindness, self-care, and activism.
Continue reading
Dowsing for Divinity 