I was teaching a class last week about the types of Otherworldly spirits more likely to be found during the winter, and I had one of those moments that will sometimes happen where I opened my mouth and spoke off the cuff, as we were discussing the Unseelie Court. I pointed out to the people attending the class that contrary to what most of the young adult novels and paranormal romance…
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
Fight the Bad Meme – Blog Edition
I’ve started a new thing on my social media page, which I call "fight the bad meme", because it seems like every single pagan holiday that rolls around sees an influx of poorly researched memes purporting to ‘educate’ people about the real history of that holiday and it’s traditions. Usually most to all of the information presented in the meme is utter bollocks. So after I’ve seen the bad info…
The Winter Solstice
Although there is no solid evidence connecting Christmas in Ireland
to older pagan practices, there are some hints of traditions which may pre-date
Christian influence. As Estyn Evans tells us "Although Christmas is the outstanding Christian festival of the year
its traditional ‘Twelve Days’ of holiday are steeped in pagan lore and in folk
practices relating to the winter solstice…" (…
Winter Crow
She flies with the snow
Black against white
…
Continue reading…
The Value of Darkness
So I write a lot about the value of darkness and recently I’ve been making memes about it as well, such as this one:
and this one:
When I posted the first example on facebook yesterday someone asked me, privately, what exactly I meant by ‘darkness’ which got me thinking about the larger issue of what I was trying to say and why.
First a bit of backstory. This all began a bit tongue
The Noínden Ulaid
Ailiter: Machae dano ben Chruind meic Agnoman doriacht and do comrith fri heacha Concobair, ar atbert an fer ba luaithiu a bean. Amlaid dano bói in ben, is hi inbadhach, cor chuinnigh cairde coro thoed a brú, ocus ni tucad di, ocus dognith in comrith iarum, ocus ba luaithem si, ocus o ro siacht (cenn) in céiti beridh mac ocus ingen – Fir ocus Fial a n-anmand – ocus atbert co mbedis Ulaid fo ceis
Translation Tidbits 2
I’m in the middle of writing my fourth novel but I thought you all might enjoy some miscellaneous translation tidbits. These are some of my favorite short pieces from a variety of sources.
Sonus lomma is
lenna lir,
buáid comairle
in cech caingin,
búaid comperta,
clú co mbail,
búaid creiche
adiu, buáid slúagaid.
Trí lán ma
chluic d’usci úar
do chur esti a
n-agaid slúag,
innreth t’innse
Crossing Lines
As my regular readers know I almost never get political on this blog. I try to avoid that sort of thing because, quite frankly, that’s not what this blog is for.
However, there’s been a recent issue coming up in the wider pagan community*, which is itself just another verse of an older song, relating to elders in paganism making comments that are exclusionary and prejudiced. And that
The Influence of Fiction and Hollywood on Paganism
I’ve been pagan for a couple decades now and I’ve observed a couple trends over that time. One of the most perplexing to me is the way that popular fiction – by which I mean novels, television, and movies – shapes and influences paganism. The reason it perplexes me is because the things that get picked up and absorbed into the pagan paradigm are often based in plot points and rarely fit
Modern Prayers in Old Irish
This is something I’ve been working on to submit for a anthology* which is looking for modern Celtic Reconstructionist prayers. I thought it would be interesting to offer basic prayers in Old Irish to different Gods.
It is still a work in progress, but this is what I have so far:
Guide Nuada
Nuada Argetlam
Nuada fo dí Ríg
Nuada narsheng
Guidim do a bhennach
Guidim do a eolas
Guidim do