A very joyous Longest Night (or Longest Day, in the Southern Hemisphere) to you!
Here is a compendium of Yuletide traditions, projects and rituals you can use to inspire your own celebrations.
Wolcum Yule!
Happy Winter Solstice!
Happy Winter Solstice, or Yule! Of course, our spherical planet also gives us the beautiful symmetry of the Summer Solstice (Litha) being celebrated now by our Southern Hemisphere friends. With the exact Solstice moment after 11 pm EST today, it…
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The Secrets, Pt. II: Ritual and Observance
I’ve been thinking more about the idea behind this post. Had a good comment exchange with Yvonne Aburrow about the concept of a day when we can share our deepest and most shameful secrets. She agrees that it could be really beneficial for many; an opportunity for the kind of “absolution” that Catholics, for example, … Continue reading The Secrets, Pt. II: Ritual and Observance
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Pagans Scapegoated Again, this time in the UK – by Starstuff, Contemplating
Pagans again blamed for something they didn’t do? Say it ain’t so, Joe! It’s not a surprise, of course, that Christian privilege means that time after time, non-Christians (especially Pagans, because they can’t be demonized for being foreign) are vilified…
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The Secrets
What if we could speak the unspeakable, shameful secrets, just for one day? What if we could say, I have come to hate my child, or I make my money illegally, or I like rough sex, or I am impotent or I am using heroin or I am a compulsive shoplifter or once, I hit … Continue reading The Secrets
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The Gift of Winter, by Stardust, Contemplating
For many of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we are about to enter a wonderful season! Winter is an incredible gift which we all too easily take for granted, or worse, complain about. Like the constantly changing sky, the constantly…
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More on Community Transition
Recently, I wrote an optimistic piece about the evolution of the Pagan movement. Some insightful commenters were not so sanguine as I, and I’d like to address their contentions here. Their arguments fell into several general buckets: The Internet is not a substitute for in-person contact and relationships. Rigid ideologies and fundamentalism are tearing us … Continue reading More on Community Transition
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The Pagan Community in Transition
Once upon a time, there was a deeply oppressed minority whose very existence was illegal: the gay community. And though we* are far from winning the fight for full equality for LGBTQ folks, it is fair to say that much progress has been made, and the LGBTQ community has made transitions as a result. For … Continue reading The Pagan Community in Transition
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Robbing Fox to Save Rabbit, by Lupa
We need to return to an ancestral way in which nature is not an Other, but an Us. If we truly love nature, if we consider ourselves friends to the animals, then we need to know nature itself, through books and observations, through science and questioning. We need to know the rest of nature as well as we know ourselves.
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The Point of Friction
Once upon a time in the mid-80s, few of the Pagans I knew ever even talked about what they believed. We just did rituals together and enjoyed one another’s company. Sure, there were shout-outs to various gods and goddesses in most of the rituals, but those were easily understood as metaphorical (as I did). When … Continue reading The Point of Friction
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