Stones. September Pagan Challenge, day 8.
These photos of Stanton Drew stone circle are from a visit to the UK in September 2019. For those who don’t know, I moved from the UK to Canada in May 2018.
Stanton Drew is one of the largest stone circles in Britain. It’s made of red sandstone from the Mendip Hills nearby. I love it.
ancestors
The Book of Dreams
I have started created a new website for the esoteric writings of Mark Goddard: The Book of Dreams.
The Book of Dreams was an unfinished typewritten manuscript by Mark Goddard. He had wanted it to be published, and gave it to his friend, Art Quester, who gave a copy to me after Mark was tragically killed in a car accident in 1988.
The book was intended as a linked series of visualizations and (if I recall correctly) was partly inspired by Mark’s spirit guide.
I only met Mark a few times but he was a friend of two of my dearest friends, and I know that he loved Jack Scout Cove in Lancashire, which is where I did my first ever Pagan ritual.
I sent it to a publisher in the mid 1990s but they said it was not commercially viable. I have kept it ever since, wondering what to do with it.
Finally it occurred to me that if he was around now, he would have put it all up on the internet.
I hope that he would approve of his writings finally being available in this form.
Celtic festival names
Some time back I posted a video about cultural appropriation and Lora O’Brien pointed out that the modern Wiccan and Pagan usage of Sabbat names is appropriated from Irish culture and language.
Gerald Gardner and other early Wiccans did not use the Irish names for these festivals — that happened later. Wicca is not a Celtic religion.
It does seem wrong to lift these festivals out of context. There are other old names for these festivals in England and Wales (the Scots Gaelic has similar names to the Irish Gaelic, but pronounced differently).
Continue readingNotable and quotable 24: death and tea lights
I haven’t done a “notable and quotable” for a while. I’ve been a bit busy making YouTube videos and promoting the second editions of my books, Dark Mirror and The Night Journey. But I spotted some great posts and thought they were worth sharing in case you missed them.
Continue readingSamhain
I have written quite a lot of posts about Samhain over the last few years.
I thought I would collect them all into one post.
Continue readingHow to make an ancestor altar
Notable and quotable 23
I opened the WordPress app on my phone after a bit of a hiatus and found three top quality posts that I wanted to share. I hope you will appreciate them as much as I did.
Continue readingEleanor Bone (1910-2001)
This is an obituary for Eleanor Bone from 2001 that was archived on the Wayback Machine. I wanted to save it for posterity in case it disappears from there, so I am reposting it here. I do not know who the author is (or was). If anyone knows who it is by, please let me me know; it seems to be by the person who founded the Occulture festival.
BIPOC Pagan Reading List
A reading list of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) authors covering Paganism, the occult, astrology, Tarot, and Indigenous spirituality.
Note that the deities of African diaspora religions can only be contacted through those religions and not via other religions. And that Indigenous life ways and spiritual practices are specific to their cultures and should not be culturally appropriated.
I’ve put out a call on Twitter and Instagram for more books to add to this list, and I will post updates (as I do with the Queer Pagan Reading List).
Folklore Against Fascism
One of the highlights of my week is the Folklore Thursday hashtag on Twitter. I’ve not had time to look at it for a few weeks though, so it seems I missed the occasion when some völkisch fascists tried to hijack it, much to the horror of the regular participants.
One of them accordingly started a second hashtag, Folklore Against Fascism, and several participants tweeted about their opposition to fascism and commitment to inclusive folklore.
Dowsing for Divinity 