Translating Worlds
The new world we need to build must have more music, joy, personal freedom, and beauty of all kinds in it than the disenchanted alienating world of consumerism that is destroying the ecology that supports human flourishing. Read more
The new world we need to build must have more music, joy, personal freedom, and beauty of all kinds in it than the disenchanted alienating world of consumerism that is destroying the ecology that supports human flourishing. Read more
As part of the unfortunate anti-intellectualism and anti-authoritarian hippie leftover streak in the Pagan and Wiccan movement, reactive opposition to formal structure, or kneejerk relativism, many assert that Wicca has no theology, or at the least no theological absolutes which define the boundaries of our religion. This is arrant nonsense, of course. While we should steer clear of dogma, Wicca has a well-established set of sources, a history and insights derived from these things and from three generations or more of practitioners and... Read more
Friday afternoon as I was donating blood, (which I do every two months – A rh+), I thought again about the current annoying tendency toward call-out culture and political perfectionism and how self-defeating and moralistic (rather than moral) that stance is. You see, Canadian Blood Services does not allow men who have sex with other men to donate blood for a year after they last have such sex. I think that policy is stupidly homophobic and have complained to them... Read more
My church is a federation of self-governing temples. Our bylaws and organizing principles make forming new congregations and temples under our umbrella easy. The reasons for this are both pragmatic, reflecting the reality on the ground in the Pagan communities as well as the nature of the tasks ahead of us, and defensive – better to have several ambitious Priestesses out building their own temples rather than fighting over the control of a single larger group. Small groups are simply better suited to accomplishing our... Read more
My version of Wiccan theology is panentheistic and polytheistic. The goddesses and gods are present and partly embodied in every aspect of the material world, numerous individual beings with different sets of specific powers and interests. Human beings also differ and have different interests that predispose both humans and deities to form relationships with one another based on our affinities. Although all Gods of both sexes and a range of genders could potentially be one’s Matron or Patron, we usually... Read more
A key point in building public Wiccan temples and activities, one that has been underplayed to our detriment, is the idea of mission, the reason that we are doing this at all. Our mission on the largest scale and most generally, is to transform the religious culture wherever we are – to work toward a Wiccan and Pagan world. And on the local Temple level, active in our communities, to address one or two concrete areas where people are hurt and we... Read more
Last weekend I had the pleasure of being a guest of honour at Iowa’s Lammasfest, along with fellow g-o-h Ivo Dominguez Jr. and musical guest Aria Wylde. A long-time correspondent and online friend of mine is on the organizing committee and she thought that I could contribute something useful to the Pagan life of eastern Iowa. Well, I am not a traveller by nature, but they bought me a plane ticket, offered me a place in a tent, and... Read more
For many years I have followed a vision of a Wiccan movement centred on legal church bodies, that consciously seek out interested people and engage them in their activities, that serve the Gods and the community with no apologies for their beliefs and practices. The particular spiritual insights of Wicca and the kinds of actions and responsibilities assumed by us are valid and worthwhile completely regardless of whether they are like or unlike those of some other religion, and there is no need to justify them in... Read more
In this time of the ‘breaking of nations’ it is easy to get swept into the giant and difficult issues in the news and lose track of the things happening in our own lives. We can lose track of the power that we have here and now to cause change, lose hope. I do it, many of my FB friends do as well because we are intelligent and well-informed and concerned by these issues. Let me take a moment to... Read more
The best ritual books and approaches that I have found to ritual and ritual theory are briefly discussed below. There are no books of ritual scripts here – for scripts I recommend Janet and Stewart Farrar’s A Witch’s Bible or my own Creating Lore, Writing Ritual in the Wiccan vein. Read more
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