What cannot be said will be wept

I feel as if I’ve spent an entire week crying; weeping out my anguish first for the betrayal of the mothers who once welcomed me, and today for the physical manifestation of that self-same hate. In the early hours of Sunday morning, a shooter tore up Pulse nightclub in Orlando, killing 50 and injuring at …

I Grew Up in the Goddess Movement, but it is no longer home

I talk sometimes about how I was raised pagan; sometimes about how I was raised Buddhist. Both are true. My mother is Buddhist and taught me about Tara, played the 21 Praises of Tara and Wind Horses in the car for me, taught me the Om Mani Padme Om meditation with my very own mala…but …

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: 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: Community

I have reached a stage in my life where I am incredibly interested and concerned in/with building community. I’m getting married in a few months (terrifying); we’ll be having kids in a few years (even scarier); we’re settling down (whaaaat). What keeps coming to mind is the phrase “It takes a village” in reference to …

Jumping on the Deily Bandwagon

So I just joined the site Deily. It’s an offshoot of Patheos, which I have my issues with, but Deily isn’t really a blogging platform. It’s sort of a social and education network where people can talk about their different religious beliefs and traditions. They’ve got a lot of different sections for different religions. There’s …

Putting the ‘mundane’ back in ‘mystic’

I’ve been thinking for a little bit about something said elseweb, about how we get this idea that religion has to be big and lifechanging and amazing all the time and that we need to have patron gods and Very Close Relationships with Them in order to be Proper Pagans because…well, that’s what gets talked …

When Words Aren’t Enough

So much of religion or faith is ineffable, or experiential, that when people ask me to explain something, or when I feel like I want to write a post about something, my explanation just turns into a lot of vague hand-waving and sentences peppered with “um” and “you know.” Well, no, obviously they don’t know …

Beltane’s Battle Plan

I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. May Day is a day of political upheaval; of revolution; of fighting against oppression. No wonder the Morrigan was so clear with me that it be Her holiday. The epiphany clarified how I was going to celebrate this year’s Beltane. By getting my shit together.

I am not your dancing monkey

Another pagan has written something that’s pissed me off. Again. Are we surprised? No. Yet another screed against pop-culture pagans! Yet another pagan saying “Stop being so WEIRD, otherpagans, you’re making us look bad.” Yet another pagan saying that ALL pagans follow some form of Witchcraft; that we all follow the works of Starhawk, Selena …