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 readingembodied spirituality
Romjul and intercalation
The business of calculating years and dates is complicated, since calendars need to reconcile solar and lunar cycles. Different calendrical systems use different methods of reconciling the two cycles, inserting a day (February 29th in the Gregorian calendar), a week, or even a month in some calendars. This practice is called intercalation. It has also been suggested that the time between Yule and New Year is an intercalation.
Continue readingBridge of Light
A rainbow of candles, each one representing an aspect of consciousness, kindled in the liminal time between the end of the one year and the beginning of the next. A space for the celebration of queer spirituality, queer lives, and queer joy. That is the celebration known as Bridge of Light.
Continue readingAnarchic Yule
Yule is a distinct festival, often overshadowed by its younger sibling, Christmas. If you’re a Pagan or have Pagan leanings, the chances are that everything you love about Christmas is actually because it’s a Yule thing. If you love the tree, the holly, the greenery being brought into the house, the feasting, and the reciprocity of thoughtful gift giving (as opposed to obligatory gift giving dictated by social norms), then you love Yule. Yule is not “Christmas with the serial numbers filed off”, and Christmas isn’t “Yule with added Baby Jesus”, Yule is far more exciting and wild and numinous than that.
Continue readingPeople who menstruate
“People who menstruate” includes cis women, trans men and nonbinary people who menstruate.
It also correctly excludes post-menopausal people, and trans women, neither of whom menstruate.
Continue readingSeasonal markers
Crow at @marget.inglis_witchcraft asks, what are the markers of the turning of the seasons for you. Not public holidays or specific festivals, high days & holy days, but those moments when you notice a change every year.
Here are mine for our house and garden in southern Ontario:
Continue readingGood night, Moon
Inspired by the title, and the quasi-animism, of Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, which I only found out existed today, as it was featured on CBC.
Continue readingBooks I read in June 2022
Revisiting an old book friend, reading the latest in a trilogy, and a new book by a friend.
Continue readingReview of Chaos Monk by Steve Dee
Steve Dee (2022), Chaos Monk: Bringing Magical Creativity to the New Monastic Path.
Norwich: The Universe Machine.
An exhilarating journey through chaos monasticism, a mystical practice informed by chaos magic. Accessible, clearly written, and witty, yet informed by a deep knowledge of the history of spiritual movements in both East and West, decades of magical practice, psychotherapy and art, this is a book for anyone with mystical leanings who wants to put them into practice.
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
Dowsing for Divinity 