As the flavor of smoke and crackling leaves fills the air around my home, I listen to the silence. Halloween is here. I am witch enough to enjoy the secular nature of the holiday; mageia enough to remember with sadness and awe what this time of the year means to many, myself included. This is a time of remembrance, sometimes with joy, occasionally with tears, but always with the knowledge that the ancestors who have bequeathed us blessings are nearest during this time. Read more
In walking through this pain with my students -- and in my own being -- I remember that each day is a gift. Each day is a chance to make a choice to start over -- to renew our spirits and align our power to a vision that we want in the world. My vision is a place of justice -- a world that is safe and right for all people to thrive within it. It is the wish I whisper every morning, and the prayer I recite to the Gods every night. It is the vision that closes that 18-inch gap between my head and my heart; my insides and my outside; my emotion and my action; my past and my present. It is the future that I am envisioning, and the moment of rebirth that I am embracing. Read more
I believe the ancestors are limitless. Beyond the material and conscious world of the living, the power of the ancestors are not restricted by the boundaries and limits of the mundane. The infinite power of those who have crossed-over the veil still contain the ability to guide, teach and transform the living, if only we allow ourselves to tap into the wisdom that is there. Read more
Part of my work the past three years has focused on the stories and experiences of my ancestors, learning about them and connecting in several different ways. I realized a long time ago that I knew very little accurate information about the real history of the ancestors of my African American lineage. I know the same stripped down stories that are taught to us children in our broken American school system, but those stories are neither completely accurate or spiritually fulfilling. Read more
Since the full moon ritual this month, I have been thinking on a lot of things in my life and within my future. Life gets hectic, the mundane world has a way of pulling us away from the focus that magic can bring. We are all subjected to this type of influx of clarity that happens when the balance between the magical and the mundane shifts, and then we struggle to regain it as it changes again. This ongoing imbalance, the struggle, makes it easier to distance ourselves from the need for ritual… from the benefit of ritual. Read more
Carl Jung took the work of Sigmund Freud and expanded the concepts of what he referred to as the “shadow side of the psyche,” the unconscious mind that holds the secrets and the hidden parts of our being, often triggered to the surface when we do not wish them to be. I continue to work to integrate those two parts of myself into the oneness that I am, even while walking through what seem to be endless challenges. Read more
My spiritual world explores change as a means to growth. It is a beginning to a road that we have yet to experience or understand, and while sometimes our experiences appear to be the same the lessons are usually not. This conflict between the desire to grow and the need for things to stay the same, brings about a strange dilemma. It is the understanding that I must live through the discomfort and fear to get to a place of personal movement, that I cannot avoid change. Read more
Being a Black Wiccan Woman navigating mostly White spaces has fostered interesting experiences in privilege, power and intersectionality. Those terms are not easily understood even when you have the experience of facing multiple oppressions. Then, I became a shelter worker and I was quickly hit with complexities of privilege, power and authority. Read more
A friend calls: White, blond, Iowa bred. ‘Can I ask you something political?’ She tells how her sister-in-law-to-be posts a picture on Facebook. “She does not understand how one shooting causes riots. She calls me 'liberal.' What do I say? How do I get her to understand?” Read more
Pagans have not failed in the environmental activism and preservation movement. We as people have failed to take into account the psychological conditioning that capitalism and other such systems here in the United States have had on the average American. We are are continuing to struggle between the messages of society that are based on worth, gain and monetary values, and the knowing that this life will not continue if we do not change. Read more
Daughters of Eve
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