This was inspired by two things – a story called ‘A Guide for Young Ladies Entering the Service of the Fairies’ and a poem by my friend Jennifer Lawrence called ‘Tam Lin’s Garden’. Both are brilliant pieces of writing and you should read them immediately.
People talk about wishes now as if they were cheap things
Spending their desire on casual words and wants that are
lost between one…
Doing this one a bit differently – going to alternate the lines instead of doing separate text.I hope you enjoy it.
Cétnad nAíse ~ Poem of RestorationAd-muiniur secht n-ingena trethan
I invoke the seven daughters of the stormy seadolbtae snáithi macc n-áesmar.
shaping life’s thread from boyhood to ageTri bás flaimm ro-ucaiter,
Three deaths be taken from metri áes dom do-rataiter,
Three…
The subject comes up occasionally – what makes a God a God?
It’s a good question, really, especially if you haven’t thought about it before. I’m pretty strongly against the idea of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience – basically all the omni’s usually attributed to monotheistic deities – as qualities of individual deities. There’s just a level of cynicism in me that finds it impossible to…
EBEL TRANSCRIPTION1. Cris finnáin dumimdegail imum imacuáirt. nar amtairthea innsét timcellas intuáith2. Raucthi láin induleán mubrond. lurech dé dumimdegail otamind gombond.3. Cris fimieain muchris argalar arches aruptaib banm*beth (+) afraech adamles.4. Cris eoin muchris ralég súidi n*glan. daid ferga fer soid upta m*ban.5. Cris nathrach muchris nathair imátá náramgonat fir naramillet mná.6….
I can’t stand April Fool’s Day, but in the spirit of the holiday (no joke) I thought I’d do a fun short post on the different words for fool in Old Irish and their contexts. Much like my previous blog about the word ‘witch’, saying fool in Old Irish isn’t a straightforward matter because there are a variety of options each with different nuances.
First we have the words which are used for…
Recently a news article hit both the Irish cultural community and the pagan community. Titled ‘Man’s discovery of bones under his pub could forever change what we know about the Irish’ the article discusses an archaeological find, the genetic analysis of the bones found, and one main academic response to it. The response focused on is that of Barry Cunliffe, professor of Archaeology at Oxford…
Pangur Ban is one of the more well known Old Irish poems, a work from around the 9th century which details the exploits -academic and hunting – of a scholar and his cat. The following Old Irish is from Stokes Thesaurus Paleohibernicus, from 1903. The English translation is my own. Messe ocus Pangur bán,cechtar nathar fria saindán;bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg,mu menma céin im saincheirdd(Myself…
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Every year there’s a lot of commentary that floats around the pagan community claiming several things about the holiday of Ostara, most of them untrue. So lets take a look at the urban legends and the realities, shall we?
Firstly the idea that Easter is related to the Goddess Ishtar. Ishtar is not pronounced ‘easter’; it’s a pretty straightforward name actually and is pronounced ‘ishtar’ just…
This is one of those blogs that’s going to seem completely obvious to some of you, but I have found that for many pagans and polytheists we get so caught up in our idea of our spirituality being a certain way – read: primitive – that we can be a bit blind to some things. Like the way that modern life and technology intersect with ancient Gods and spirits, for example. Recently a friend of mine…