Summer has finally arrived in Ireland (touch wood), and the fine weather draws people out of doors. With the pull of the 'glowing orb' on her mind, Traci considers how and when we tell sacred stories, and how considering such things is important for a Witch--or any animist. Read more
An ad hoc angel is a stranger who pops into your life for a moment for a purpose and then disappears. Don't take the term "angel" too literally, if you don't want to. One could just as easily say, "an ad hoc godform" or "an ad hoc faerie" if the context fit. It's when the Universe uses ordinary people in ways that touch another person's life in an extraordinary way. Read more
Doreen Valiente was the Mother of Modern Witchcraft, a religion which deifies Nature - yet she lived in a tower block, and loved it there. Elinor Predota ponders this apparent paradox. Read more
Today, Americans celebrate their heritage as dissenters and rabble rousers, but just what is this 'patriotism' thing all about? Read more
To choose to use the term "syncretism" over "eclecticism" is not a statement that one is better than the other. The syncretic path has a clear cosmology, a blueprint of how the world works, which it overlays with images, ideas, and practices from other traditions. To return to the quilting analogy, eclecticism starts with the patches and builds a picture, but syncretism starts with a picture and figures out how the patches fit into it. Read more
Today is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, and as the sun shines, the Cailleach has been crying for her son. Read more
The light, gold, like the deep raw honey of summer, washes the front garden. The sun rests just over the eastern ridge, risen less than 30 minutes, but the first light, the uncanny gold–like a crown–wakes me. This mysterious morning light rouses me every time, every year. By half five I am called out of my warm bed to crawl, on all fours, to the low cottage window and peer sleepily out at the waking world. In truth, it may... Read more
What I'm wondering now is if there is a way for me too walk out of the labyrinth and bring my priorities with me on a new path. Can I dream a new goal? Can I pick a straight line and walk it deliberately, stepping off the path for moments if needed, but always coming back to it quickly? Read more
Niki reviews fellow Alaskan Theo Grutter's book, 'Thinking Wild.' Read more
The knowledge crept up on me: that I love being in nature, find it soothing, calming and connecting, not because it's more beautiful, or more 'authentic', or better than obviously human environments, but because it doesn't ask anything of me: it simply is. Read more
A Sense of Place
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