Category Archives: Priestessing

Dealing with ‘Others’

June is Pagan Values month, and unlike previous years, I’ve actually been given a topic I can write about. (I’m not great with overly broad topics, it doesn’t usually stir my creative juices.) Today’s writing is “others and othering. What are your philosophies of conduct when around those very different from yourself?”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the large vast scene we call ‘paganism’ is also immensely diverse. There’s an old line you may have heard that sums it up beautifully: ask 10 pagans what paganism means and you’ll get 13 answers.
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Current and Future Goals and Dreams

(To be revisited in six months, around my birthday.)

Health:

Peri-menopause is proving to be more difficult than I expected, although why I thought it would be another else, I’m not sure. Having spent two years attempting to get in better shape I find myself at the same place, nearly, that I was post-chemo. This (literally) depressing. (A mental state I wrestle with far too often to be healthy.)

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2015 Accomplishments/ 2016 Goals

Each year I like to look back over the previous year, and then set goals for the coming year. Many people do this on Jan 1st; I prefer to do it on my birthday. I often refine the accomplishments and goals until my new year, Samhain, but the bulk of the work is done on or around my birthday. I also like to do a tarot reading.
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Working With the Dark Moon

When I first started on the path of witchcraft I was told that no White Witch would ever Work a spell at the dark of the moon. I was told that time was reserved for those who walked the left-hand path, casting manipulative spells and using sinister forces to work their will on others. And if you think I just used a lot of loaded language, you would be correct. What I came to learn through following my own intuition, with a few helpful guides, was that the Moon’s other face can be powerful and transformative, which can feel very scary. What I was told wasn’t wrong, just very steeped in superstition and fear.

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JaguarMoon: A Tradition Evolving in CyberSpace

The advertisement looked a lot like the kind you see on the community corkboard of spiritual bookstores throughout the world. “The ART OF RITUAL,” the advertisement explained, would not just take me through the basics of the Craft but give me “real food for thought as [I] practice and learn”. It intrigued me and I replied. What made this advertisement unusual – what launched an entirely new tradition, in fact – was that it was posted on the witchhaven listserv. That class led to the formation of a cyber coven whose daughters continue even today. We teach, we study, we share sacred space.

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A Mabon Meditation (Probably Not What You Think)

Today’s meditation is about balance.

No surprise, really, given that Mabon is a celebration of the Equinox a time of equal night and day and many ritual texts work with this symbolism. But ‘balance’ has come to mean ‘duality’, which is such a Western frame of reference, with its inherent opposition and underlying sense of fragility. Even threat. Or hopelessness.

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Spirituality & Activism

Every since I read T. Thorn Coyle’s profoundly beautiful post, “Opposition is a Prayer,” I have been contemplating whether my spiritual practice needs to be politically charged. Are the two linked?

In discussions I’ve had people tell me that they equate politics with control, and that much of their of spiritual journey has been about giving up control, so for them they need to keep politics out of it. My own HP wisely pointed out that it was a personal choice, not a requirement.

For me, politics was always a dirty word and something to be avoided at all costs, other than voting. But as I grow older and see the same old crap coming around again and again, I’m starting to get irritated, and then (finally) angry.

And maybe because my spiritual life is an intrinsic part of my life, its all wrapped together. I’ve done spell work and magic for political outcomes, and will do so again. I’ve put my money and resources into causes that catch my immediate attention, and the ones that I feel are fundamentally in need of ongoing support.

Mostly, though, I see the AoR class as my longest magickal political act, as I am aiming to create subversives and rebels, free thinkers and radicals. Critical thinking people who will go into the world with just a little more awareness, a tad more questioning, and less acceptance of the status quo. . . and in turn raise the ‘vibration’ of people around them . . . until the influence of the class has spread much further than just I, or us.

That’s my kind of radicalism.