A recent discussion on social media has motivated me to start a small series which I am going to call ‘fairy facts’ which will offer a brief overview of specific types of beings often labelled as fairies or within the wider purview of the subject. This will not be an in-depth full article – I have already written a book, A New Dictionary of Fairies, that deep dives into various fairies and…
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
Three Book Reviews: Folklore 101, Fairytale 101, Sex Education 101
Today I wanted to do a combined review of three books by the same author, dr Jeana Jorgensen, because while the topics vary the wider purpose of each book is the same, to offer a solid basic introduction to a complicated topic. This goal is admirable and one I share myself, because I think that its important to have material that can bridge the gap between layperson and academic, and can offer a…
My Published Work to Date 2023
This year’s updated list of all my published work. 2023 may best be described as the year of the magazine articles, but I did squeeze some other things in as well.
Bibliography
Articles
“Healing
Ritual for the Ocean Waters”, Circle Magazine issue 109 summer 2011
“A
Gaelic View of Samhain”, Celtic Guide, vol. 1 issue 10 Oct. 2012
“Celebrating…
Christmas Traditions, Paganism, and Some History
Every year I see social media absolutely flooded with terrible misinformation about the ‘pagan’ origins of several Christmas traditions. I wrote about this in 2015, covering some of the main claims at the time but that was 8 years ago and its worth revisiting this one. There is a driving determination to claim that Christians stole absolutely everything from pagans which I think we need to…
Review: Celtic Goddesses, Witches, and Queens Oracle
I have always had a weakness for tarot and oracle decks because I love to see the different artistic interpretations applied to each card. But, as anyone who is interested in them knows, the market has become really glutted with decks over the last few years, to a degree that its hard to maintain any excitement for them (at least for me). There are a few exceptions to that though and this deck…
Book review: Bogowie
Doing things a little different today, a book review of a subject I actually don’t know much about. I thought it would be fun to dig into a subject that’s new to me so today we’re going to be talking about T. D. Kokoszka’s book ‘Bogowie: A Study of Eastern Europe’s Ancient Gods’. This one is out through my publisher Moon Books.Bogowie is a fascinating dive into Slavic paganism from an academic…
Fairy Folklore in Coraline
In 2021 I had started a series of posts examining fairy folklore found in popular movies and shows. I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from that but wanted to return to it with a look at Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (the movie, not the book). Obviously I am not trying to argue here that the author’s intention was to frame the story this way, although it may well have been, but what I want to do here is to…
7 Things About Irish Mythology
Today I thought it would be good to cover some points about Irish mythology that are important for people interested in the subject to know. These include common confusions as well as helpful tips and I hope people will find it all interesting. Of course for some readers this won’t be new information but for others it may be the first time they’re seeing these ideas, so I’m trying to cover a…
Freya’s Cats
The subject of Freya’s cats came up recently on social media, so I wanted to share this excerpt from my forthcoming book Pagan Portals Freya. I hope this may clarify some points, as this summarizes the information we have from the older sources and may help people differentiate between new ideas and stories and the older beliefs. Cats –
Freya is said to travel in a chariot pulled by two cats,…
All of My Fairy Writing
I’ve been asked several times about what I’ve written on fairies by people looking into my writing on the subject. I finally decided it would just be easier to write a quick bit here about it. I’m including articles, presentations, and books. I am not including the range of my blog material on Living Liminally or on Patheos Agora: Irish-American Witchcraft or Witches&Pagans On the Fairy Road. (…