over 10 years of posts from Morag Spinner
I completely dropped the ball on doing fire festival advents this year. In the wave of grief following the death of my friend and the death of my mentor, it seems very important to me that I actually follow through with Samhain advent. Despite living in a house that is spiritually blocking me, in which …
Continue reading “Joy & Grief: figuring out my Samhain Advent”
When I first started First Nations Studies, I knew Elders would be in the classroom. I don’t know exactly what I expected, but I didn’t expect Uncle Ray. Instead of solemn, he was mirthful; he told jokes, and he laughed and smiled, and he lead us in joyful songs and prayer to start the day. …
Following up on a successful, if belated, Loafmass, this year I wanted to have a good Samhain celebration. I tried to get to it by October 31st, but that didn’t happen — work ate my face last month and I was supremely busy. That’s okay, I thought. Samhain season lasts until Remembrance Day for me …
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 …
Note: this post is written from the perspective of someone living in the Northern Hemisphere on the West Coast of North America. Also it is full of my headcanon about the gods. You shouldn’t take anything here as necessarily backed up by the lore or even other polytheists. Since deciding on the four fire festivals …
Continue reading “The Sacred Triad and the Wheel of the Year”
I don’t know. There was a big post I wanted to do about my Oma and my mom and my aunt and how suicide/suicidal ideation/suicide attempts runs in our family, at least on the female/FAAB side, and how Oma would have appreciated that her birthday is also World Suicide Prevention Day, and how Mom and …
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 …
Continue reading “30 Days of Paganism: Places of spiritual significance”
This post’s topic can really be parsed down into “How do your religion and major life events intersect?” Which is a fair question; most mainstream religions have things in place for major life events. In many pagan religions there’s a lot of bootstrapping, of figuring out your own path, of deciding what major life events …
Continue reading “30 Days of Paganism: Paganism and major life events”
There’s this idea in neo-Pagan or polytheist circles that the gods choose us, we don’t choose them. Sometimes that’s correct — sometimes, yes, the gods do search us out without us needing to reach out first. In that case, They chose us; we didn’t choose Them. But we still can. When I first met the …
Continue reading “The Morrigan Chose Me…and I chose Her right back”
From the perspective of the faith I’ve been building I haven’t actually given this part a lot of thought — I think I’ve just sort of grafted my personal ideas onto it. Which makes sense, as the faith I’m building is being built out of my nebulous thoughts and ideas about the world and the …
Continue reading “30 Days of Paganism: Beliefs – Birth, death and rebirth”