I’ve never made any secret that I wasn’t raised Christian but rather grew up a secular agnostic, with all the fun of Santa and a magic chocolate delivering bunny. I actively got into paganism and witchcraft around the age of 11 or 12 and have been practicing since; I didn’t make an effort to learn about Christianity until I was in my 20’s. This gives me a different perspective on some things…
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
Ritual for the Heliacal Rising of the Pleiades
Continuing with our series of rituals for the cycle of the Pleiade we have arrived at the next one, the heliacal rising of the Pleiades after their conjunction with the sun. This marks the time when the stars are once again visible in the sky just before dawn and occurs now between June 18th and June 24th. I have roughed out a ritual that people can use if they’d like, in line with the others in…
Q & A With My Fiction
I’m still working on the next book in my fiction series, progress being slowed by several other contracted projects that have deadlines. But I thought it would be fun here to do a question and answer on social media for my fiction, to tackle any and all question people might have about my ‘Between the Worlds’ series.
The following may contain spoilers for those who haven’t read the books or have…
Cautions For Pagans Who Want to Honour the Fae Folk
My friend Seo Helrune has recently been blogging about ancestor cultus and I recommend checking out the series of posts they have out so far. Reading the series and especially their take on the pitfalls of ancestor veneration has inspired me to write my own post here about the problems that can come up for pagans incorporating the Fair Folk into their practices or who are trying to set up the…
The Conjunction of the Pleiades: The Darkening
We are moving forward in the year and I am continuing to frame out a series of rituals for the cycle of the Pleiades. We have arrived at the next one, the conjunction with the sun which occurs around old Bealtaine (mid-May) – this year on May 14th. I have roughed out a ritual that people can use if they’d like. I’d recommend doing it during the day, when the sun is up as this is also when the…
Priesthood in Service to the Other – Part 3: the trouble with terms
I began this series inspired by conversations I was seeing in the wider pagan community about clergy. I felt that it would be good to add my voice into this as someone who serves a different role but one which has been identified as a ‘priestess’ and willingly took on that word and its associations. This has opened a fascinating dialogue on social media that has given me a lot of insight about…
Priesthood in Service to the Other – Part 2
So having written more abstractly about what I think being clergy to the Others is like in contrast to being clergy to the human community I felt like maybe I should follow that up with a bit of a more personal take on it. A discussion of what being that sort of clergy actually means in my life.
Again this is reflective of my own personal experiences and may not apply over to other people….
Priesthood in Service to the Other
Recently I’ve seen a lot of discussion about what exactly pagan priesthood is and should be, which is a good thing. This is a topic that needs to be discussed more often and more thoroughly in a community where many people clamour for the title but fewer are perhaps willing or equipped to do the actual work. John Beckett has written about pagan priesthood in several blogs including ‘Preparing for…
Why Do We View Fairies As Nature Spirits?
It’s a widespread idea at this point particularly in modern paganism and popular Western culture that fairies are nature spirits, that is that they are intrinsically bound to our natural world in some way. This idea is often simply stated as fact, implied to have always been true, or even argued as the older or more legitimate belief. In paganism its one aspect of a current trend I’m seeing to…
2018 in Review
Its hard to believe we’re already wrapping up 2018. Inspired by Benebell Wen’s ‘My 2018 Year in Review’ post linked on social media I thought I’d do my own version here.
So, my 2018.
I travelled a lot this year!
In April I went to Ireland, visiting Ardagh, Sligo, and the Beara Peninsula. Part of that was for a Land Sea Sky Travel tour and it was a great experience.
June I was back for another…