“There will be no foolish wand waving or silly incantations in this class!” – Severus Snape, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone One of the biggest misconceptions about magic is that it’s easy and sure – at least for those with the right genes. Wave your wand or mumble a few words of Latin or Sanskrit or Gaelic and whatever you want comes into being. Anyone who’s attempted magic at even the dabbler stage knows this isn’t true. Real magic... Read more

From Religion Dispatches comes this article on the evolutionary origins of religion. It’s at least the third such article I’ve seen in the past couple of months, all making essentially the same claim: religion helped early humans to cooperate better with each other, giving religious families/tribes/nations an advantage over their non-religious competitors. Natural selection does its thing, the religious grow and prosper more than the non-religious, and before too long (on an evolutionary time scale) all of humanity is religious... Read more

I had envisioned doing this outdoors to torchlight, but the weather forced us inside. The candles did a nice job of creating a magical atmosphere. Back in October, I linked to a blog post by Ruby Sara at Pagan Godspell where she asked why we couldn’t have a Pagan tent revival. I said I liked the idea. The Baptist revivals I went (was dragged) to as a kid had a lot wrong with them, but they were energetic: they made... Read more

And now back to a review of a more specialized book… There aren’t a lot of serious academic books on Paganism and related topics – this is one of them. Susan Greenwood is an anthropologist and (per the back cover) Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. Her new (2009) book is titled The Anthropology of Magic. I bought it to see how a serious social scientist would handle a topic like magic. I’m very much unqualified to... Read more

There are some Pagans who say our rituals and observances don’t just celebrate the seasons, they help turn the Wheel of the Year. If that’s true, some of us need to be pushing a little harder because it just went into reverse! This is the first full day of Spring. In Texas. In DFW, where we average 2.6 inches of snow per YEAR. Where we had 12 inches in one day in February. And now there’s another 5½ inches overnight.... Read more

Fellow DUUFer Bruce sent me this column from the Huffington Post titled “Sin Isn’t the Problem with the World, Theology Is” by George Elerick. The bio Bruce tacked onto the article says “George is an author, speaker and founder of Chairs for Dialogue, an interfaith initiative that unites people from different faith traditions, no faith traditions, and different lifestyle backgrounds to work together to find relevant, creative, and practical ways to respond to global issues such as poverty, sex trafficking,... Read more

I occasionally review books on this blog – things I read that are helpful to me that I want to recommend to others, and sometimes things that don’t turn out to be quite what I expected that I want to warn others about. But since I’ve been reading and practicing for a while, these books tend to be more specialized than what I’d recommend to a beginner. I put this together for our Introduction to Modern Pagan Religion class. It’s... Read more

I don’t remember who said what, but obviously it was funny! Thanks to David Sparks for taking pictures.Our Introduction to Modern Pagan Religion class went very well. We had ten in the class, plus four of our own folks teaching and supporting – a decent turnout on a very nice Saturday with a music festival just a few blocks away. The power went out for about 40 minutes, but we aren’t total technopagans – we worked from the handouts and... Read more

If you’re in the DFW area, come out to our Celebration of Spring next Saturday evening. The circles I lead tend to be serious and introspective – this one is going to be light and fun. Cynthia is bringing several of the Vocal Magic folks to do three songs, we’ll do some participative chanting/singing, a simple but (hopefully!) effective Wishing Well ritual, and charge it all with a spiral dance. The early weather forecast is favorable for being outside, but... Read more

The start of the 2001 Chickamauga Chase – I’m in there somewhere. I finished the 15 kilometers in 1:14:45. I may never run again, but I can get a lot healthier than I am now. When Life / the Universe / the Goddess is kind enough to send you an omen, you should pay attention. When you get three messages on the same theme in 24 hours, you’d better get your butt in gear. Those of you who know me... Read more