The Importance of Hearth-Keeping

Cleaning is not made for those of us who were built for grand gestures. It is a war of attrition against the dust; little things over and over and over again, never ending. A lesson in entropy. When you live for the flash, for the romance of it all, it’s hard to find that in …

Church, and other notes

It’s been a while since I posted. I kept meaning to write another post for October, but then it kept not happening. So here are some brief updates on various things. Church. I am going to church now. Specifically the Anglican church about 5 minutes from my home. Why? Well, I’d heard nice things about …

Welcome, 2016

2015 was a kind of crazy year for me. WordPress was kind enough to do the 2015 blogging report for this blog, because I have Jetpack enabled, and I found it reminded me to actually post something here. If you want to see Everyday Magic’s blogging year in review, you can do so here. What …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.) …