I know Philip Heselton hoped to find (but did not assume that he would) evidence that Gerald Gardner’s friends were practicing a rudimentary form of Gardnerian Craft in the 1930s. As he shows in Witchfather, he did not find any. He discovered quite a few people in Gardner’s circle of occultist friends who may have had a coven of sorts in the late 1930s, and some of whom may have worked with or cooperated with Gerald and Edith in founding... Read more
Life’s a little too complicated at the moment to write a new long blog, but I’ll post things I hadn;t gotten around to. Friday morning I had a long conversation with a pleasant young woman named Gerry, a customer service representative for Comcast. I did not make her day worse. I told her I was pretty good at customer service myself and therefore appreciated it when I got some. For example, when I did such work for AT&T, sometimes a... Read more
All saints revile her, and all sober men Ruled by the God Apollo’s golden mean – In scorn of which I sailed to find her In distant regions likeliest to hold her Whom I desired above all things to know, Sister of the mirage and echo. It was a virtue not to stay, To go my headstrong and heroic way Seeking her out at the volcano’s head, Among pack ice, or where the track had faded Beyond the cavern of... Read more
Now that life has calmed down a bit, I’ll try posting some more of my profound thoughts on here. Or maybe some satire. Tea Party Libertarians look like total nutcases to us liberals, but there is a rational explanation for their irrationality, one that might offer a way to push them toward at least a little more sanity. The problem is the illusion that there was once a Golden Age, which plays out on both the individual and the social... Read more
A reader recently commented on one of my blogs dealing with sexuality that I was being pursued by the “Erinyes of Victimhood” (a felicitous phrase), who certainly were never going to believe anything I might say. I have been accused of “mansplaining,” of being a “leering chauvinist,” and so on. I do not believe any of my wives or lovers have ever thought of me that way. Perhaps he’s right, but I hope I can bring a message to those... Read more
Gardner asserts in Witchcraft Today that belief in reincarnation was preserved by the witch covens during the middle ages, and this has become part of the foundational myths of the Craft. In fact, belief in reincarnation was reintroduced into the Western world in the 19th century by Spiritualism and was then taken up by Theosophy. Read more
Goody Jones is your archetypal Ozark grandmother. She’s observed a great deal about humanity in her lifetime, and, although life did not afford her the luxury of college, let alone a doctoral degree, she has always believed that “God gave us brains to use” and has never let hers be idle. Early in life she learned to skeptical about beliefs that seemed not to be backed up by facts, and the modern technology of interlibrary loans enabled her, by making... Read more
I’m 73, and have been writing since about age ten. I live in Tacoma with my wife, Melinda, and our three children: Evan is 19; Chloe is 14; and Isibella will be 12 on June 28. Thanks to modern technology, I now have four books available for sale. I have always been fascinated by fragmentary information. In 1965 I created a suite of poems entitled “Aeolian Transformations” out of the fragments we have of Sappho. (I think it exciting that... Read more
I had completed much more writing linked to my Goddess Murder project, and it was not obvious what to do with it. I experimented with doing a sequel or a prequel or . . . but the protagonist/narrator needed to rewrite his earlier effort in order to deal with new information he became privy to after the end of the events he described. So this revision is significantly longer and includes some very new materials, especially The Acts of Mary,... Read more
I've been writing blogs on here for about a year and a half. The discipline of writing 1000-1500 words on most days means I have accumulated about 200,000 words. These I will turn into books. Books make me money to feed my kids. Thay also mean my writing will survive. Read more
Aidan Kelly: Including Paganism
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