May Day is coming. This year, May Day falls on a Sunday, which is great because it means that getting up in time to hear the May morning song from the top of Magdalen Tower in Oxford won’t be quite so difficult (because instead of going to work afterwards, I can go back to bed). Since moving to Oxford in 2011, I have rolled out of bed well before dawn on May morning to go and hear the singers from... Read more
I am delighted to see that EarthDay is trending on Twitter. That means people care about the planet, which is encouraging. Have you signed A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment, and acted on some of its recommendations? Have you checked your ecological footprint lately? We only have one Earth – this beautiful planet with so many amazing life-forms on board. This pale blue dot lost in a sea of space, as Carl Sagan wrote: Our planet is a lonely... Read more
It is well known from the lore that the gods actually have a brewery, not a bakery. It’s true that Iðunn’s golden apples keep the Aesir ever-young… but on Mount Olympos, the tipple of choice is nectar and ambrosia. The devas of Hindu mythology drink Amrita, a related substance. There is no shortage of alcohol in mythology: Norse mythology tells of Aegir, the ale brewer of the gods, who held a big party for honored guests every winter. The party... Read more
The way things have been going lately, anyone would think that Eris had lobbed an apple pie into the middle of the Patheos Pagan channel. There are so many apple and apple pie related posts, it's hard to keep track of them all. Read more
John Beckett has a witty and amusing post up about apple pie, vanilla pudding, and other kinds of dessert. He’s got practically the entire readership of Patheos Pagan going “I want apple pie”. But he missed out all the people who are saying that only their apple pie is the real apple pie. (John himself acknowledges that there are many kinds of apple pie.) Your apple pie is not my apple pie I am horrified that John puts cinnamon in his apple pie,... Read more
Brainstorming, workshopping, sharing and publishing are all good and necessary parts of the creative life. But at heart, at root, at some point the creative soul closes the door and returns again to her own deep well. Read more
Cultural appropriation is when someone from a colonising or culturally dominant culture takes a ritual or sacred or meaningful practice from a subjugated or devalued or colonised culture, lifting it out of context and draining it of meaning. And probably making money out of it. Read more
Why polytheism is the default setting to which religion will always gravitate. Read more
There comes a time when we feel the tug in our gut, the impulse to nose our way down a little further into the murk. Something in us wants to descend. Read more
Few people know that Harry Dacre, the author of the song Daisy Bell, was an accomplished alchemist. He was a shy and retiring man - indeed Harry Dacre was a pseudonym for Frank Dean, his real name. Another artist recorded the song which was to be his chief monument in the world - but what a song: one that clearly shows that he attained that rarest of gifts, the crowning glory of the Great Work of the alchemist. Read more
Dowsing for Divinity
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