The role of the hearth-tender is a warrior’s role in its own right. A place of respite needs to remain connected to the outside world to know what the people fighting for will need when they return. Read more
The role of the hearth-tender is a warrior’s role in its own right. A place of respite needs to remain connected to the outside world to know what the people fighting for will need when they return. Read more
When I step through the veil, it is a bit like a waking dream. I can fly. But, mostly I stumble around walking into walls, off cliffs, and into oceans. I'm just learning, and this is the way things are in my second favorite place to be online, and where I am planning a new herb garden: the Second Life virtual campus of the Grey School of Wizardry! Read more
Last week, I attended the first meeting of the Portland Pagan Society of Commerce, along with 6 other people. All of these people were, to one degree or another, involved in their own entrepreneurial work, identified as Pagans, and all of them wanted to find a way to support their business and the Pagan community. As I left the meeting, I asked myself the question, "Can Business and Spirituality mix?" Read more
What if we were to re-frame the idea of compassion not as an act of self-sacrifice, but as an act of self? Read more
In my introductory piece I wrote about the day I lost my Christian faith. I didn’t become a Pagan right away, even though that would have made a great story. A heroine’s quest. I would probably buy that novel, but my life isn’t a novel. Mine is a story of apostasy, of conversion, of empowerment, and of transition, experienced from different angles all at once. Read more
Some teachers have called this "don't know" the very heart of Zen. There are many layers to it, but one of the most important is its warning against certainty. Read more
It always bothers me a little bit when I see Pagans take highly anti-tech stances sometimes even to the point of proudly proclaiming themselves Luddites and accusing all (or most) the evils of society on technology. That just isn’t something I can let slide by. Read more
What if boinking a beloved (or beloveds) isn’t your idea of celebrating Beltane? What if you don't associate the arriving Rites of Spring with the the literal act(s) of, ahem, raising the Maypole? Read more
I sometimes wonder why I bother leading rituals. Why does religion matter? And then, in ritual, I hear the sound of two hundred people singing a chant together in harmony…feet pounding the ground as we dance. People laughing, weeping. People telling me that the ritual shifted something within them, that they felt the divine, that they spoke to an ancestor, that they released an old pain. That it made their lives better. Read more
The oldest roses are still available today. Rosa gallica, called the 'Apothecary Rose' was the type mentioned by Greek historians and used in dark age monastery gardens and found too in medieval physic gardens. This is the type most used for the fragrance of their essential oils and in healing preparations at the time. And today, when the roses bloom in Bulgaria, armies of old women go to the fields picking 250 lbs of petals to distill for each single ounce of essential oil. Read more
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