Like everyone else, I’ve been following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And like a lot of people, I’m mad. I’m mad at the constant blame shifting of the corporations. I’m mad that the agency designed to regulate the oil rigs was also set up to receive the royalties from them. I’m mad that people have lost lives for our national dependency on crude. I’m mad that more people are going to lose livelihoods because of the disaster.... Read more
People often ask me why I write about my relationship with Odin, why I lecture about devotional work, why I feel the need to write about ordeal work and other practices that are either part of my spiritual work or part of my shamanic work. For many years I wondered the same thing. I only knew that I was pushed very directly by the Old Man (as Odin is sometimes called) to be very public about experiences that I personally... Read more
Rinan asks, “Does the Pentagram have anything to do w/symbolism in Asatru, or is that only Wicca?” The Pentagram and/or the pentacle is not a symbol native to the indigenous cultures that worshiped the Northern Gods, and as such is a symbol that those who are reconstructionists in the Northern Tradition would not use today. Asatru is defined as a reconstructionist religion, so the answer to your question is no. However, the Northern Tradition is not only comprised of reconstructionists,... Read more
This morning the news was full of the tragic demise by lightning induced fire of Touchdown Jesus, aka Big Butter Jeebus. A highly flammable plastic foam and fiberglass statue rising 62 feet high, “King of Kings” was built in 2004 for a cost of 250k. The jokes and theories have been non-stop. Obviously Zeus was pissed. (But he gets pissed on a regular basis nowadays.) Maybe the man who turned the tables on the moneychangers and preached charity didn’t care... Read more
K.N. asked, “What are the Nine Virtues? (Are they something to really reach for, or are they idealistic [perfectionist] goals?)” Dear K.N., to answer your question we’ll need to first look back at the 1970’s and the start of the modern heathen reconstructionist movement. As a new and budding religion, trying to talk about your religion to those of other faiths or even help codify a way of life to those who have converted to the new path is a... Read more
William Arnal writes that “no statement about what religion is can avoid at least partially explaining what religion does, where it comes from, and how it works.”(Arnal, p. 22). This is an issue not just for the specialist but for would-be theologians within the Asatru community as well. There is, especially given the rising denominational clashes within the religion, no fully accepted consensus on any of those things. Leaving aside semantic questions of definition, I believe it is possible to... Read more
Sunkissed and bug-bit I am fresh from a private Pagan festival. The covens of my tradition came together last weekend for classes, rituals and partying in a moonless night. I don’t have anything really deep to say about it but with PSG gearing up I thought I’d share some random thoughts from the weekend. First, Pagans are truly fabulous people. Being in the woods with Witches was a really incredibly beautiful experience. They are such warm, mindful, thoughtful people. I... Read more
Midsummer (or Litha, Sonnenwende, Sankthansaften, Midsommardagen, etc.), is without a doubt, a day with heavy connections to the sun. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, Midsummer is the longest ‘day’ of the year, as the sun appears in the sky for far longer than any other day of the year. In certain places of the Northern hemisphere including parts of Scandinavia, the sun may never fully set, giving locals an eye-witness view to what’s colloquially known as a... Read more
Pagans are fond of poetry. Some truly lovely verses litter our liturgy, and some really horrible ones too! I have been in love with poetry for 18 years. Since I was a young girl I have worshiped Blake, Tennyson, e.e. cummings, Whitman, Scott, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dickinson, Neruda, Ginsberg, Byron Herbert Reece, Donne and Hafiz. We all know the particularly Pagan verses of Shelley and Byron but there are so many poets we don’t tend to utilize in our rituals.... Read more
If I had 3 words of advice to give anyone doing metaphysical work (and especially work with the dead), they would be “ground, shield, cleanse”. To me, this is the holy trinity…do them well and your practice will be stable, neglect them and and soon you’ll be loopy, ungrounded and have an aura that looks like Pigpen from “Charlie Brown”. I have noticed that, all too often, these basics are being overlooked and neglected. For today, I’d like to focus... Read more
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