Big rituals are a way different experience when you’re on center stage I don’t mind bugs as much as I did a week ago (although I’m still not fond of them) Sometimes you really do need a break from those you love the most The camaraderie you get from being a part of a diverse […]
Macha, Mesrad, and Heads
It’s become an increasingly common thing for me to see people confidently stating that severed heads are the Morrigan’s acorns or her acorn crop. Sometimes people do correctly identify the “crop” in question as belonging to Macha, but nonetheless keep on with the acorn part of it. In some cases, including some popular books, people get quite elaborate with this, adding in some poetic details or layering on deep spiritual significance.
Alright, well, let’s take a look at the actual material from the mythology, or to be precise the glossaries, because there is no mythic story of head taking or reference to such. So what do we actually have?
Some Crooked, Some Upright
My last entry on the three different spells I was working on at the time got me thinking about the roots of those magics and how even though they are all spells, they’re ruled by a different school of practice that is often the singular focus of devotion by some witches, myself included. Even though two of those charms featured a form of black and red magic, they were still done in my way; the green way. This got me thinking on the different kinds of paths that exist, sometimes simply categorized into good or bad, high or low, ceremonial or natural, but sometimes they are categorized by their intention and the practices which benefit those intentions. In traditional witchcraft, this can be construed as the separation of black magic from green, red and *white* magic. I don’t know if “magic” is the right word, I never really know how to describe what I think is going on here, but I will use the term magic to mean one’s spiritual and mystical influence in the world and upon other living things.
Unemployment!
Blessings, Darlings!
This last Sunday, May 17, at 3 pm, Corporate locked the doors at the restaurant Spawn and I worked at, closing the store. No official advance warning, just a notice of a mandatory meeting about ‘food safety issues’. Oh, okay – for those who Googled the company, there was this announcement last month that they would be closing a bunch of restaurants.
Nemain, Goddess of War
If you ask most Celtic pagans to name the three Morrigans a good number of them, in my experience, will say Badb, Macha, and Nemain despite the fact that Nemain is never explicitly called the Morrigan or included with the other two anywhere in Irish mythology. I personally blame this one on the multitude of modern pagan books which blithely say that the above named trio are the three Morrigan, however it can likely be traced back to Hennessey’s 1870 book “The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”. Hennessey put a lot of emphasis on Nemain and included her with Badb and Macha in his discussion of the Morrigan in a way that I feel led to the later conflation of Nemain with the three daughters of Ernmas elsewhere called the three Morrigans.
Articles, Manuscripts, and Essays, oh my!
I have really not done well keeping up with the blog this month and I apologize. I’m gearing up for the second annual Morrigan’s Call retreat next month and have also been in the middle of several larger writing projects.
I recently finished up my 13th manuscript, a book for the Pagan Portals series. This one, like my Fairy Witchcraft and Morrigan books, is meant to be a basic introduction to a topic in this case the topic is Irish Reconstructionist Polytheism. The final draft is with my publisher and I’m hoping the book will be released in …
Planetary Energies
So I talked a little bit about my explorations into planetary magick. By my question was, now that I have been exposed to these energies and can invoke them, what do I do with them? My original idea was to invoke planetary energies in such a way that I could compensate for harsh or difficult […]
Describing the Morrigan
A common question that I hear people asking is what does the Morrigan look like. There really isn’t a simple answer. Generally when she appears in mythology she is not described in much detail. Instead we get passages like this one from the Cath Maig Tuired:
Book Review – A Practical Guide to Irish Spirituality
I have to start by saying that I met Lora O’Brien at Pantheacon 2015 and was fortunate enough to be able to take several of her workshops. I found that she and I had a very similar perspective on most things relating to Irish paganism, the Morrigan, and the Fair Folk. I decided to review her book A Practical Guide to Irish Spirituality: Sli Aon Dhraoi because I read it when it was first released (long before meeting her) and liked it and wanted to offer a positive book review for the blog today. As always I will approach this book review in an honest manner and please trust that I like her book on it’s own merits, however I’m acknowledging a potential bias up-front.
Eating on the Wild Side
Blessings, Darlings!
So, as some of y’all already know that my husband neglected to read some of his e-mail … so didn’t send in something that our health insurance needed … so auto payment of health insurance emptied our checking account of not just our expected $245 payment but an additional almost $2000. The $2000 for rent, utilities, food, etc.
We scrambled to cover the bills this weekend, and we will EVENTUALLY get the $ back, but it will take 2 to 4 months. So we are in financial pain just when we thought things would be calmer.
So … let’s talk about eating weeds again. It’s something that *I* can do, but my husband can’t. Wild greens have more flavor, or as my husband puts it “are too bitter”. My husband is a super taster.