Essays
Survey: Pagan Podcasts
I have been thinking about Pagan podcasts lately after discovering my old Catnip Brew episodes. For some unknown but wondrous reason, the Pagan podcasting community is a vibrant and bustling place and I am constantly finding new Pagan podcasts cropping up on the net like mushrooms. In the chance I feel compelled to start one [...]
From Witch to Magician
I have been thinking about the spiritual changes I have undergone in 2008, but admittedly, I am in a frame of mind too close to the subject to adequately transform incoherent experiences (stories) into a coherent narrative. This past year, I have felt suspended in an uncertain state between peace and confusion, and often find [...]
Short-Lived Magic
A serious source of disillusionment among magicians and witches, certainly in my experience, is when too few of their more experienced counterparts talk about their failures. One can quickly gain the (very false) impression that other magicians and witches came to their path only through divine intervention (e.g. when Isis tapped them on the shoulder [...]
Initiation
The saying that “the teacher will come when the student is ready” is a frustrating one for someone awaiting their teacher. It is almost always difficult to accept that you are not ready when you hold the unwavering conviction that you are. I thought I was ready. I was 16 (which sounds old enough when [...]
Disillusionment
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
One example of a popular stereotype held about witches is of a crooked crone stirring a cauldron bubbling to the brim of eyes of newt and toes of frog, cackling fiendishly to herself [...]
A Definition of Paganism
Modern day paganism, or Neo-Paganism, is a set of religions among which include Ásatrú, Druidry and Reconstructionist traditions such as Hellenismos, Kemeticism and Religio Romana, just to name a few. The largest and perhaps best-known Neo-Pagan religion is Wicca, a revivalist religion that recognises Goddesses as well as Gods, honours nature as sacred, and encompasses [...]
The Role of the God
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”
William Shakespeare
In the great darkness of Midwinter, the Goddess gives birth to a son, the God. He is the sun and his [...]
