Love, lust, and leeks: Siobhan Ball offers us the legends and folklore surrounding the leek, a vegetable that ancient pagan cultures sometimes saw as revolting and sometimes as a symbol of desire, alongside a delicious leek stew that’s perfect for celebrating the Spring equinox.
I've long been skeptical of most self-help books. So I wrote one that's a little different.
I based it on what I, an ordinary mortal with loads of problems and not as much time or energy as I'd like, am capable of. It's realistic. It offers goals to aim for if you want to stretch a little, but mostly it just helps you cope with life the way it already is so you can get more out of it, while folding your spirituality into the process. Because we're spiritual beings as well as physical ones.
You don't have to be Wiccan to use the information in this book. It's aimed at anyone who follows a nature-oriented spiritual path. Find out more on my website (link in bio).
Lyonel Perabo provides a brief overview of three subgenres of heavy metal music of interest to Pagan listeners – folk, Viking, and Pagan metal – and offers TWH’s very own heavy metal playlist.
As Morgan Daimler had already discovered, there’s no record of the phrase “oak, ash, and thorn” before Rudyard Kipling. Specifically, they show up in his books Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies, wielded by the clever hands of one Mr. Robin Goodfellow. “Oh,” I muttered, learning this. “Oh, you clever sneak.”
Today in Labor History March 9, 1902: Actor Will Geer was born. Best known for his role as Grandpa Walton in the long-running series, “The Waltons,” Geer also appeared in the groundbreaking film, “Salt of the Earth,” which portrayed the struggle of Mexican American workers at the Empire Zinc Mine. Because of his activism on labor and political issues, he was blacklisted in Hollywood for many years. In 1934, he became a member of the Communist Party. He also met LGBTQ activist Harry Hay that year and they became lovers. Together, they supported the 1934 San Francisco General Strike and demonstrated against fascism and for workers’ rights. Hay was a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, the first major gay rights group in the United States, and the Radical Faeries, an anarcho-pagan queer spiritual-political movement.
Pagan Leaders share insights about International Women’s Day 2024 ~ Happy International Women’s Day! We share some reactions for Pagan leaders about the world-wide event happening today.
Thank you to Laura Tempest Zakroff, Phyllis Curott, Lilith Dorsey, and Selena Fox for sharing their perspectives!
Researchers investigating the ancient city of Gath, where David and Goliath fought their famous battle, find connections between plants and Mother Goddesses.
Someone I recently met who studied under Buddhist monks put it this way:
"The only thing we can really control is how we relate to everything else."
When you choose to relate to everything around you in conflict, when you choose to relate to the world as its victim, you inevitably become a void. You accept a station that was not given to you, but that you've given to yourself. You accept a mindset of eternal war: war with yourself, war with others, war with community, war with society.
I find myself less and less on here, because this once positive space of learning and shared ideas has, for some reason, devolved into voids. Voids of self-appointed victimhood, of constant warring with everything, everyone. I find myself more and more particular about the people I allow into my space, because even some people I find very dear are voids, and I am very sensitive to it, and because I am still learning how to create the appropriate psychic boundaries. Because I am, also, prone to becoming a void, and because if I spend too much time in others' I tend to then create one myself, and I want to choose not to allow myself this.
It's harder for many of us to choose the alternative: to relate to the world as its beneficiary, as a responsible steward of it, as a crucial moving part of it, even when it sometimes wrongs us; to relate to others with compassion and empathy and appropriate boundaries rather than constant conflict. It's easy to choose neural feedback loops of cortisol and adrenaline -- it feels good for a moment (and then it feels bad long term as it impacts our health negatively), our society provides plenty of opportunities to do so, and many of us learned to seek these feedback loops in our environments growing up. But what feels better, long term, that is harder to cultivate, are the feedback loops of dopamine through appropriate action and fulfilling achievement, oxytocin through true connection and existence among and with others, and so on.
It's easy and even rewarded in our society to tell me I'm wrong: "I don't get to choose how I feel about anything. If it's bad, it's bad, and it has to be bad." It takes work to relate to hardships with resilience, to accept that "trauma", the way that our lives shape us, is not always negative.
Pain is real, suffering is a choice. This I've learned. This I continue to learn, the hard way, each and every day as I engage with this journey I've been tasked with.
#Tarot underneath/shadow card of evening: Ace of Wands.
A good time to start a project or creative endeavor. With that Ace of Cups you might even find a good backer. Strike now while the iron is hot. Start and invest now for future rewards.
Except that what I heard then were no musical notes. These were sounds of the earth. Crackling; slowly rumbling; like a fissure opening up on the ocean floor; or a mountain growing, or a volcano awakening after millennia of stillness. The music had not even started that I was already captivated.
I've always said that us Pagans are a well-read bunch, and I think that's really cool. However, all those ‘required reading’ lists can be a huge barrier to newcomers. One shouldn't have to read 10-15 books, including difficult ancient manuscripts, just to be a Pagan.
In the US, 54% of adults read below a 6th grade level (About 12 years old). 46% of Americans didn't read a single book last year. Not everyone is literate, and our community should be inclusive of that.
A government project support in the sustainable practices of the Ava Guaraní Indigenous Peoples in eastern Paraguay highlights how Indigenous knowledge, economics, and native plants can create a climate-friendly sustainable future.
In this week’s (long) Leap Day Pagan Community Notes: how Leap Year works, hummingbirds and Witchcraft, and more events and announcements, plus our tarot of the week.
We also bring news of two Crossings of the Veil -- Diane Lorraine Darling and Edward "Ed" Fitch have recently passed away.
Read more about each of these items in today's PCN: