30 Days of Paganism: Beliefs – Patronage and other deeper relationships

I suppose I’m odd in that I don’t consider patronage a particularly “deep” relationship. I mean, I did used to, when I first started out in paganism/polytheism and everyone else kept calling the Main Attraction in your pantheon your “patron” (or “matron”, which is even more wrong). Which, ok, whatever floats your boat, I guess, …

30 Days of Paganism: Beliefs – The power of prayer/reciprocity

Prayer has always been a tricky thing for me but lately it seems to be getting easier. I’m getting over the blocks in my head that had prevented me from really praying to the gods. Prayer is not a coin you put into a god to get the result you want. It’s a form of …

Motivation (or, How I Need to Trick Myself to Get Shit Done)

I’m trying to find ways to motivate myself right now. It’s not easy. I’ve been stuck in a depressive funk for a while and I’m not sure why. Even on days when my mood is stable/okay, I’m still unmotivated to do anything. I keep thinking I should really reorganize and clean the pantry, I should …

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 …

30 Days of Paganism: Beliefs – Magic, spellcraft, mysticism etc

Ok, it feels a bit weird for me to be tackling this right now. I haven’t done much magic lately, but I always seem to be steeped in mysticism so maybe it’ll work out. So. Magic and spellcraft. To me the practice of magic is entirely mundane. I mean, I’m doing the same stuff I …

Embodiment while broken

I never really noticed how much of my religion is physical until I couldn’t do it anymore. I broke my leg and possibly did some tendon/ligament damage in the knee — unknown at this point — over a week ago. On July 4th, ironically — there is no freedom in this situation. There’s a whole …

STOP THROWING AROUND THE WORD ‘PSYCHOPATH’ LIKE IT’S A CUTE NEW TREND

General trigger/content warning for this post.  Also: several gifs used.  I just read a post that called the Morrigan a psychopath.

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.

Addendum to the Ishtar = Easter meme: The Zealotry of Anti-Theism

Trigger warning: description of a rape analogy; discussion of mental illness stigmatization Yesterday I talked about the anti-Semitism in erasing the Jewish history of Christian holidays. (It is anti-Semitism; I know some folks think that I’m being hyperbolic here, but I’m not. When you erase an entire people’s culture, history, and religion from the equation, …