I had the delight this past weekend of attending yet another lecture by one of my favorite bloggers and authors, John Beckett. Every time I sit through one of his classes, I come away with some snippet that will find its way into my own teachings. This particular presentation was at the 2018 Pantheacon gathering in San Jose, California…
The Last Closet Opens I read Moira Greyland’s book The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon (Castalia House, December 2017). Every. Painful. Word. I also read countless blog posts and comments about the revelations contained therein. It is quite a time-consuming and heartbreaking rabbit hole to dive into, as anyone who makes even a cursory exploration will find. I have…
On Samhain (October 31) each year, a practice our group adds to our ritual is that we go into the dark earth labyrinth where a large mirror is propped on a table. In candlelight, we look into the Mirror of Truth and then pull a Tarot card from the table where they are spread in front of the mirror….
For most of my life, I was the baby in any crowd. It did not help that for a lot of those years, I looked younger than I was. I come from a family of “good skin” and I eat pretty well, so I was often mistaken for being younger than I was. That being the case, it was…
If we are lucky, at some point in our Pagan lifetime, we will be invited to visit someone else’s ritual/grove/coven/circle/event to share in their practice. This could be at a public place such as a park or an event center or it can be at a private home or covenstead. In either instance, there are certain protocols of basic…
Someone once pointed out that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in heels. Some who are not as old as paint like I am may not know who either of those people are, so here is video evidence of what they did. Things don’t really get nuts in the clip until around 3:00 minutes in….
(Reposted from Patheos.com) Out there in the world, especially in, but not limited to, the global Pagan internet community, there is a stream of viciousness that is sometimes hard to endure. There are those who thrive on it. They love to get in there all suited up in their battle gear and ready to defend the sacred honor of…
With offerings such as Kim Davis and Mitch McConnell, I am courting the idea of inventing a new life story where instead of hailing from my beloved home state of Kentucky, I was instead born to gypsies who raised me in an RV, moving all over the United States and stocking my mental larders with exciting adventures.
This week, several articles on Josh Duggar popped up on my Patheos feed as news of his marital unfaithfulness spread across the interwebs. Not on Patheos Pagan, mind you, but throughout the other religious channels. Pagans are not much talking about him since he is not one of us and it is hard to see any relevance to us. He…
Essential disclaimer: Some Pagans do not actively work magic, so this particular blog references those who do. My assessment of common mistakes energy-wielding Pagans make is not an attack on people who practice magic differently than I do. Goddess bless ya if it works for you. I openly and immediately concede that some of you may have had different experiences. This…
Within the past two weeks, I have seen several articles by Pagan columnists whose work I enjoy expressing surprise and dismay at how other Pagans speak to one another in online message boards. Honestly, I can only look stunned whenever I hear this. Like this: O_O
Emotion is what fuels magical practice because spell work begins with what you want to have happen. If you cannot feel, then you cannot want and feeling is emotion. All intense emotion is high energy and you can, with rational thought and careful planning, direct all the intensity of that energy toward your goal. Passion will spike energy right off…
“An it harm none do what ye will.” We cling to these words, among other reasons, because they are our battle cry to legitimize us to other faiths. “Oh, no… We aren’t bad people. We even have a law that says ‘harm none.’” I saw this again with recent comments an ill-informed Florida sheriff made attributing ritualistic murders to “Witchcraft” when of the many…
A while back, I did a post on my own favorite Witchy movies and in doing so, I found myself craving the inclusion of several TV shows and mini-series, so now I offer a list of my own favorite submissions in that category. As before, these are my favorites and I do not expect them to agree with anyone…
We spend a lot of time talking and thinking about why bad stuff happens, especially to people who we consider “good” and undeserving of strife and particularly when it comes in what feels like a disproportionate avalanche. We become deeply angry and philosophical when we try to understand why bad things happen to innocents like children and animals. Often,…
If you are unconvinced that everyone has an agenda, you desperately need a Facebook account. We all have agendas which we kindly refer to as “life goals.” Sure, we can parrot platitudes such as “all we want is to be treated with tolerance” and “if I don’t get a cast iron cauldron at a good price at this swap meet, I…
Welcome to the list of my own 10 Favorite Witchy Movies. Are they predictable? Absolutely. They are at once predictable and cliche. There glaring omissions that will cause readers to say, “But what about…?” and “YOU LEFT OUT..!” This is not a list of ALL Witchy movies or the BEST Witchy movies, but my own favorite Witchy movies. Because it would be…
It can happen to all of us, although thankfully, not usually to the degree we see in the graphic above. Rituals fail. It is easy to raise one knowing eyebrow and say that it failed because it was intended to fail and all things are exactly as they should be and blah, blah, blah, but there is a huge…
Several of my co-bloggers here at Patheos Pagan have stepped in with their rebuttals the post written by another Patheos blogger, Father Longenecker, called “Twelve Reasons Why You Can’t Call God, ‘Mother,‘” and after reading their wonderful write-ups, I felt inclined to include my own. Please also read the other Patheos Pagan opinions on this issue as they are quite informed…
One of the primary premises not only of magic but also of spirituality itself is words are power. In Catholicism, for instance, the words of a priest have the power to condemn or to provide absolution for confessed sins. In Craft, we learn that our words, spoken, written, or in thought, create form. Our words can thrust us forward into a…
