Move. Between justice and mercy, between nakedness and warfare, between all that you would not do and all you have done, unknowing...
Tag: magic
Participating in Enchantment: Redefining Magic
Magic is not something you do. Magic is participatory consciousness: a consciousness of enchantment. Read more...
Participating in Enchantment: Redefining Magic
Magic is not something you do. Magic is participatory consciousness: a consciousness of enchantment. By placing participation at the heart of our magical work, we no longer relegate magic to the realm of anti-religious power-mongering and manipulation. Instead, magic opens us up to relationship. To reverence. To an engagement with an enchanted world that plays a vital role in an earth-centered spirituality that seeks the sacred in the natural forces and landscapes in which we live our everyday lives.
New Moon, Forever Maiden: Wild Worship in the Digital Age
Cynicism is just the mask that hope wears when it ventures out at night. Read more...
Holy Adoration: Fire as Prayer
It is enough to show up to this act of intention. Without the need to grasp what cannot be grasped. Without the need to name what cannot be named. To hold my heart like a candle wick, steady, upright, held open to the presence of my gods. Read more...
Bless the Waters Thrice: Making Environmentally Sustainable Offerings
We Pagans have a love affair with the past that leads us to try to model the rituals and practices of ancient times as closely as possible. But we live in a different world today. Despite the ornate beauty of certain approaches to ritual, I wince at the wastefulness I see sometimes. Can this really be what the gods want from us? Are we so busy trying to do ritual “correctly” that we fail to do it well?
Q&A: Do you have a familiar?
I'm not really the New Age type who thinks, just because my cat happens to enjoy watching me wave incense around making a fool of myself in front of my altar, that he has any actual interest in my spiritual or magical development. If he is a wise old soul, he is of a relatively indifferent kind -- I imagine that, of his nine lives or more, this incarnation must be his equivalent of retiring to Florida. He is much more interested in what time I feed him dinner, than he is in aiding me in my rituals or spellwork. Still, there is something about my Cu Gwyn that borders on the magical at times.
Making Ancestor Prayer Beads: A Samhain Craft Project
In my last post, "Honor for the Dead," I mentioned that this year as part of our family Samhain celebration, we crafted prayer bead bracelets to help us connect more deeply with our ancestors. A bunch of you have asked for more details on how to make prayer beads of your own, so I put together this handy-dandy step-by-step tutorial. Let's do some magic!
Honor for the Dead: Crafting Relationship with the Ancestors
There is always pressure to either romanticize or demonize the past. As it recedes into the distance of memory, its complexities are all too easily lost in the mists. The veils of time fall across our vision and we glimpse only vague impressions of a landscape, a culture, a handful of faces on the edge of our perception that seem to change and fade when we turn to look again. What does it mean to part this veil, to honor the ancestors?
Storytelling, Magic & Community
There is magic in good storytelling. In a world that can seem so woefully devoid of magic, we have a tendency to romanticize the writer, who is in touch with that magic in a deep, visceral way. But humans have been telling stories for as long as we've been human. Those who are lucky enough to call themselves professional writers have a particular set of skills and an admirable work ethic, but they don't hold the monopoly on good storytelling. The astrophysicist and the bank manager and the firefighter and the dairy farmer have stories of their own to tell. Storytelling at its root is a communal activity, something that can be shared by everyone. NaNoWriMo inspires us because it reminds us that storytelling is not about self-torture or perfectionism or asceticism, let alone popularity or profit. We can reclaim storytelling as basic human nature. We can recapture the creativity and imagination that is our birthright. We can push back against a society that would drain the world of its magic.
