The Busy Witch: Sacred Stillness

SSC Yoga with Eoin Finn by lululemon athletica, 2011

In recent years, I’ve become something of a yoga junkie.  The first time I chanted a sanskrit mantra in a room full of strangers, I felt my heart open.  Magic filled the air, and I came alive.  For me, yoga is like participating in group ritual every week.  Yoga has become a deep part of my spiritual practice, as it has for so many others from a myriad of faiths.  It truly is a place of oneness, a place of peace. The magical aspects of yoga are well documented within the Hindu … [Read more...]

Seekers and Guides: Finding a Teacher

Tools of the Craft

Seekers and Guides is a new column by Sable Aradia! Follow it via RSS or e-mail, or look for it on alternate Mondays. Merry meet!  As a Witch who spends a great deal of time and makes some of her living by teaching Wicca, I’ll be writing this column to offer advice, discuss controversies, and find solutions for both teachers and students of the Craft.  While my writing will primarily be from the Wiccan perspective because that is the path that I practice, much of it will overlap … [Read more...]

Loop of Brighid: The Mysticism of Devotion, Part 1

Devotional mysticism is based on yearning for the divine.

In Hinduism, bhakti is a mystical path focused on intense love of the divine in the form of one of the gods. Bhakti is radical devotion to a god or goddess in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment through love. In modern paganism, something similar to bhakti has been developing organically through the practice of devotion to the gods of the old pagan pantheons. This wasn't very common until fairly recently, and it seems to have started spontaneously, outside of any formal neopagan … [Read more...]

Making Light: How we voted Imbolc off the Island (and aren’t even sorry)

Tree In Fog At Night by Petr Kratochvil

Making Light is an occasional column by Hellenic polytheist Sunweaver. Follow her via RSS! A few years ago, the group I worship with underwent a major transformation. We all realized we weren't Wiccan and that following the Wiccan wheel of the year was a bit ridiculous for us. We did a radical thing and gave ourselves permission to celebrate those holidays and observances that were meaningful to us over a system that didn't ping our collective feeling of communing with the divine. … [Read more...]

The Busy Witch: Making Time for Magic

Magical Stone

This post is part of a new ongoing column, The Busy Witch, by Jen McConnel. Look for it on alternate Tuesdays! Life seems to move faster every day.  Goddess knows that since I sat down and started writing this, I’ve popped up to get the laundry out of the dryer, clean up after the cat, and help my husband unload the groceries.  And that’s just on the weekend!  It can be hard enough to juggle all the mundane responsibilities of daily life.  Who has time for spiritual matters on … [Read more...]