Category: Archive
Articles that appeared in the previous iteration of this blog, called Mirth and Reverence with Amy Rhea.
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The Sacred Fire: Kindling Life in the Circle
n my tradition, we have two different types of fire represented in the Circle: Elemental Fire, which dwells in the South, and Sacred Fire, which dwells in the Center. Elemental Fire is meant to represent the transformative quality of the element. Sacred Fire, on the other hand, is a conjoining of all the Elements: Earth
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Secrets of the Circle Casting: Creating Effective Sacred Space
Ivo Dominguez Jr. wrote in his book Casting Sacred Space: The Core of All Magickal Work that if we lost everything about our religion except the way to cast the magick circle and its symbolism then the religion could be renewed from that single seed. Far from a perfunctory act, to cast the circle is
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Building the Inner Temple: A Witch’s Refuge on the Astral Plane
Categories: ArchiveEach of us has an inner temple waiting to be built. The inner temple is a spiritual refuge and magickal workspace built at the crossroads of the inner realm and the astral realm, where the individual meets the universal. Like a Klein bottle, if you journey far enough inside yourself, you realize you’ve travelled outside
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Empty Womb and Dead Seed: Reconciling Infertility in a Fertility Religion
So much of Wicca is bound up in the idea of fertility — fertility of the land, of the animals, and of humanity. As a religion, we understand this fertility to mean the ongoing survival of the planet and the life that lives on it, but often the first thing that comes to mind when
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Pagan Prayer: Offerings of Praise, Gratitude, and Hope
Categories: ArchiveI’ve heard people scoff and say they don’t kneel down to their gods, that they stand tall and proud with them. And that’s all well and good. You should have a cordial relationship with your deities, be comfortable around them, be proud to do their work on earth. But don’t you think occasionally you should
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The Summerland: Understanding the Wiccan Afterlife
Paganism in general isn’t concerned with the afterlife. We know there is a life after death, and another, and another, in the cycle of reincarnation. But Wiccans have the concept of a place of rest between lives, called the Summerland. But what is the Summerland, and how can you rest there and also reincarnate? Body,
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Don’t Should Yourself: Freeing the Mind and Empowering the Spirit
Categories: ArchiveTags: personal responsibilityI was a little ranty in my last essay. Or rather, I was very ranty but I had a message I was trying to get across. I considered taking it down, reworking it, polishing it up, but then I decided to let it stand because it reflects the truth of what I was feeling when
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Tired and Oathbound: Filling the Empty Cup
Categories: ArchiveThere are days that I wake up and I am tired in my soul. I feel burnt out and unappreciated and forgotten and ready to give up. I question whether I have the ability to suck it up and keep on going for just one more day. For my students. For my colleagues. For my
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The Video Game Theory of Life: Lessons in Flow and Forgetfulness
Categories: ArchiveWhen explaining my hypothesis on how life, death, and the eternal soul work, I use an analogy I like to call The Video Game Theory of Life. The Video Game Theory of Life could also be called The Really Good Book Theory of Life, as the immersive nature is very similar. It involves what is
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The Threefold Law: Unraveling the Different Interpretations
The Threefold Law is a point of some contention in Traditional Wicca. Some priestesses, like Phyllis Curott, suggest that the Threefold Law is a remnant of Christianized thinking and amounts to a threat of punishment for doing bad things, which is incompatible with Pagan belief structures and should be rejected. Others, like Raven Grimassi, suggest