Everyone’s getting ready for Beltane. In the face of climate change, the Anthropocene, mass extinction, and all the scary stuff, it feels important to celebrate Nature and all its diversity. That does not imply to me in any way that we should focus only on heterosexual fecundity. Nature is diverse, and that includes humans. All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals.
inclusive Wicca
Transgender Day of Visibility
Happy Transgender Day of Visibility to all transgender, nonbinary, genderfluid, and genderqueer people.
Art print of the trans pride flag by sadiesavesit on Redbubble
Notable and quotable 5
This week I have been mostly reading The Guardian with great sadness over the horrific murder of 50 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, and growing incredulity at the self-inflicted wound of Brexit. So I have not been keeping up with what’s going on in the blogosphere.
However, I just spotted this excellent post about queer magic by Julian Vayne.
Happy World Book Day
To celebrate, here are some photos of my esoteric book collection.
The inclusive Wicca symbol
How the inclusive Wicca logo happened.
I was making a poster for a LGBT+ ritual in 2014, and trying to think of a symbol that expresses LGBT+ Wicca. So I took the standard Wiccan triple Moon symbol and added a heart.
🌛🌝🌜 + ❤️
I didn’t really think about it — the symbol sort of came down my arm, bypassing my brain, and manifested on the paper.
The heart could be seen as an hommage to the Sufi winged heart or Tughra Inayati symbol (and there is a connection between Sufism and Wicca, via the friendship between Gardner and Idries Shah).
The Sufi winged heart image (public domain version)
The heart mainly represents the idea that love (in all its glorious diversity) is the central mystery of Wicca. Also that Love is love, or “All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals” — hence also the title of my 2014 book on inclusive Wicca.
If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy my books, Dark Mirror: the inner work of witchcraft and The Night Journey: witchcraft as transformation.
Dark Mirror: the inner work of witchcraft
The night journey: witchcraft as transformation
What is a witch?
A video in which I read an excerpt from my book, The Night Journey: Witchcraft as Transformation. I was particularly pleased with this chapter, as I think it’s very poetic and has some powerful imagery in it.
The Two Chalices Ritual
One of the rituals of inclusive Wicca is the two chalices ritual. This has evolved over a couple of decades to become something more than I originally envisaged, as is often the way with traditions, which are evolving and fluid. It started life as a ritual for women-loving-women, and evolved into a ritual for everyone, but retaining its original symbolism.
The Inner Work
A video in which I read an excerpt from my book Dark Mirror: the Inner Work of Witchcraft, all about the inner work and why I think it’s important.
Coming Out: An Act of Truth
In 1983, when I was in my teens, my best friend came out to me as gay. The world was very different back then: no same-sex marriage, no civil partnerships, no Internet, no mobile phones, no sat-nav, and obviously no social media either; not even digital cameras.
New Instagram account
I thought regular readers of Dowsing for Divinity might like to know that I now have a public Instagram account, @birdberrybooks, where I will be posting videos, talks, photos, book reviews, and news of upcoming events and workshops.
