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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…
So something that comes up fairly regularly is the question of whether Danu and Anu are the same goddess or two distinct individuals*.
I want to say up front that this is one of those fun things that scholars disagree about so what follows is not meant to be conclusive but merely reflect my opinion and the evidence I base that opinion on.
I tend to believe that Anu and Danu are different…
So another Pantheacon has come and gone and the Morrigan community is currently abuzz with our very own controversy. People are blogging about it and there is quite a bit of hyperbole winging around on both sides. I’m not going to link to any of the other blogs, just google ‘bullets for the Morrigan’ and you can start wading through the results.
I really debated weighing in on this one or not…
How’s that for a boring blog title?
Seriously though, one of the reasons that I tend to be such strong advocate for an omniglot approach or at least attempting to have a basic understanding of terms in other languages that relate to our practices is that often there are nuances within those terms that are – quite literally – lost in translation. And we shape our understanding, our…
The Ogham that we are most familiar with in a modern context is the Tree Ogham which associates each letter of the Ogham alphabet with a specific tree. However there are actually many different types of Ogham associations including River Ogham, for example, and Pig Ogham. Each one is layered, both a mnemonic device which associates the letter with a word that begins with that letter and also a…
Experimenting with a little translation of a different sort. There’s an excerpt from one of the Carmina Gadelica prayers making the rounds (without credit to the source of course*) and when I took another look at the original Gaidhlig I realized that Carmichael’s translation was more poetic than literal. I don’t have any Gaidhlig myself but it’s close enough to Sengoidelc that I can actually read…
Recently a friend of mine wrote two very insightful blogs ‘The Line in the Dirt’ and ‘Deepening the Line’. Both deal with looking at the way the pagan community, in general, approaches magical and ritual practice, the laziness that’s rampant among practitioners, and the idea of what happens beyond basics.
I’ve been thinking a lot since I read them, both because she raises some good questions…
Many people are familiar with the Norse God Odhinn, but less well known is his German counterpart Wodan who is similar but not identical. Wodan (Old High German Woutan) although almost certainly derived from the same root as Odhinn has several distinct characteristics. In today’s blog I would like to discuss Wodan as we see him in the German material.
Duncan Royale German "Odin" statue…