Posts that got my attention this week. A reminder that humans are animals and a part of nature; fatphobia; the birth of Witch Lit; the power of stories.
Nature
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An absolute Beltane belter from Julian Vayne, and an enticing invitation to meditate differently from Nimue Brown.
Resolutions for Earth Day
On Sunday, I checked my carbon footprint (it was not good) and resolved to go carbon neutral by planting trees.
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Some wonderful articles that I’ve spotted this week:
- Magic: what is it, where does it come from? By Ryan Cronin
- The Goddess Kālī swallows Jordan Peterson whole. By Josh Schrei
- My Grandmother’s Tree by Sīv Watson
- Shattered vessels and scattered sparks by Lorna Smithers
The quest for the authentic self
Many Pagans are on a quest for the authentic Self. This is often visualized as something we already possess; we just have to clear away the accretions caused by so-called civilization. In this model, the true Self can be found by getting in touch with Nature.
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Inspired by Ryan Cronin’s Friday Foraging, I decided to create a roundup of posts that I found interesting, inspiring, or important over the last week.
Photography, embodiment, and memory
It’s a curious thing, but when you’re behind a camera, especially one where you have to put your eye close to the viewfinder to see the field of view, you sometimes forget to really look at things and take them in properly. It starts to feel like the camera will do the remembering for you.
Plants of Mexico
Today we went on a Hidden Mexico tour to El Tuito, taking in a botanical garden, a village, a wood turning workshop, a bakery with an adobe oven, an artists’ cooperative, a graveyard, some ancient petroglyphs, and lunch in a stream.
Books I’ve read in 2018
I’ve read a lot of books in 2018, so this will be a list of the ones I can remember, or that I listed as having read on Goodreads. I got the idea for this post from a post by James at A Tolkienist’s Perspective. The links in this post go to my reviews of the books listed.
What shape is your spirituality?
The other day, I had an interesting discussion with Brenton Dickieson about the shape of the spiritual life.
I said, if I was to attribute a shape to my spirituality, it would be a tree, connecting spirit and matter, the heavens and the Earth, the human and the divine. If you think about the shape of a tree, its roots mirror its branches.
