So I was thinking about my wording in my post from the other day, about how my faith has helped me in difficult times: In my faith I’m well aware that the gods are not omnipotent, nor omniscient. (Omnipresent? maybe, but not in the way it’s usually meant when speaking of any particular deity, I …
Monthly Archives: August 2015
30 Days of Paganism: Places of spiritual significance
There are two types of “place” that I’m going to talk about here. One is a general type of place. The other is a specific spot in the world that I’d like to make pilgrimage to. General types of places Rivers Why: A few main reasons. Rivers are associated not only with Brighid and (tangentially) Manannan …
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30 Days of Paganism: The future of Paganism
I want there to be more for onion-hoers. I want there to be more polytheist/pagan community centres, where people of all pagan stripes can rent rooms for classes, hold weekly get togethers, do ritual, meet for coffee, drop their kids off for religious education…the list goes on. I want frameworks put together for general eclectic …
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30 Days of Paganism: One misconception about Paganism you’d like to clear up
IT’S NOT WICCA. Seriously, though, that is a BIG misconception out there — that “paganism” is just another word for “Wicca.” It’s really really not! Using the definition I’m most comfortable with, paganism is a big, umbrella term to refer to any religion that is not Abrahamic and self-identifies as pagan. The self-identity thing is …
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30 Days of Paganism: How your faith has helped you in difficult times
It helps about as much as anything else, I guess. Or maybe I’m not defining “difficult times” properly, here. See I tend to think of most of my life as “difficult times”, even when things are good, because I suffer from mental illness and spend much of my time locked in depression and anxiety. So …
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30 Days of Paganism: Any “secular” pastimes with religious significance, and why
I do have some secular pastimes that have, over time, acquired religious significance. Knitting/Crochet For the longest time it was just a way for me to carry on family traditions, and I loved doing it. At some point I got the lightbulb that it was Brighidine work, and it turned out I’m not the only …
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For Me, Internet Paganism IS Paganism (so maybe speak for yourself)
Sweet Dionysos I have had it with this fucking bullshit. John Halstead, self-described humanistic pagan, has written yet another blog post wherein he tries to be a gatekeeper of paganism, continuing on his awesome roll of hurting other pagans by acting like an asshole. (I’m not linking it. He doesn’t get traffic from me. You …
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30 Days of Paganism: Priest? Clergy? One or both? Neither?
I tend to differentiate between ‘priest’ and ‘clergy’. There’s a venn diagram where they overlap, but I do think they are different roles. Priest/ess For me a priest or priestess is either someone who has been called by the gods (or whatever) to serve Them/dedicated themselves to serving the gods in some capacity or has …
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30 Days of Paganism: Personal aesthetics with magic and ritual
I admit it. I’m a fan of camp. I’m a fan of the hollywood view of witches. I love the 90s Witch Boom and the sort of grunge-gothic look that went with it. (This is probably why I like Charmed so much, even with all its problems. It does capture the 90s Witch Boom feeling.) …
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30 Days of Paganism: Ethics
This is actually a kind of raw topic for me right now, so I’m going to try to be as brief as possible on it. I can sum up my ethics thusly: Be excellent to each other. Don’t be a dick. Consent matters; boundaries matter. Protect your own. These can contradict each other, and do …