Category: Articles
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The Vocation of Priestesshood: Discerning a Clergy Calling
Categories: ArticlesTags: priestesshoodIn Wicca, it seems like everyone wants to be the High Priestess. There’s a level of prestige implied in the title, harkening back to The Mists of Avalon and Vivienne with her commanding presence as she ruled benevolently over the Holy Isle. Some people are more impressed with the title than they are with anything…
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Pagan Monasticism: Dreaming of Community
Categories: ArticlesTags: pagan monasticismAs a child I was fascinated with Gregorian chants. I thought it was so cool that there were people who dressed in robes and sang all day. Now, of course, I realize that there’s far more to the monastic life than that, but I can’t help but want to capture that experience of ordered and…
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Understanding the Planetary Hours: What They Are, How to Calculate Them, and Why to Use Them
The planetary hours are an ancient magickal tool that arises from Hellenistic and Babylonian astrology. It operates on the premise that each magickal hour of the day (that is, one-twelfth the time between sunrise and sunset, or sunset and sunrise) is ruled by one of the seven classical planets, and that the energies of this…
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The Vocation of Priestesshood: Teaching Yourself to Serve
Categories: ArticlesPriestesshood is more than having a mature spirituality and a calling. It’s also having the courage and grace to serve others humbly and compassionately knowing that you will never be compensated for your physical, mental, and emotional labor. It’s giving up your plans. It’s giving up your anonymity. It’s being the bad guy sometimes when…
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The Wiccan Virtues: Ideals from the Charge of the Goddess
It’s been said that Wicca doesn’t have sacred texts. I disagree. While it’s true that Wicca is an experiential religion, relying on one’s personal experience of Deity to define one’s beliefs, it does have sacred texts: Gardner’s original Book of Shadows, Valiente’s Charge of the Goddess, and the bits of sacred writing of early Gardnerians…