New for 2023! I’m offering monthly Friday Night workshops on Zoom, starting in February, on a variety of Pagan and witchy topics. These workshops are all stand-alones, so you can take the entire series or just the ones that appeal to you. They are $15 each, with sliding scale options for folks who face financial…
Tag: modern paganism
Many times, when a pattern repeats itself for me a few times, I think of it as a cue to speak more widely about that particular pattern. The repeating theme right now? It’s luck. Over the last few months I’ve had an unusual number of clients, students, and friends come to me for help with…
The very first pre-Christian Deity I served was Brigid, an Irish goddess. As a young musician with a military background, she was easy for me to relate to. “A musician AND a blacksmith? Sign me up! I want to make music and hit things too!” I still consider my time in service to her to…
Many years ago, I was introduced to the idea of selecting a single word for each calendar year to act as an intention, touchstone, and big-picture goal. The beauty of a single word intention is that the simplicity means multiple ways of connecting are possible. For example, my word for 2020 was “Manifest.” One of…
One of the ritual forms I practice is Hrafnar-style Seidr. This type of ritual is a modern liturgy that traces its roots to the form practiced by our ancient kin of faith in Iceland, Scandinavia, and Norway. Hrafnar-style Seidr is oracular divination: a seer goes into trance and is then able to ask questions of…
Normally, I write for the Pagans and witches of the world, but today I’d like to share a blog for the allies, family members, and Pagan-adjacents. It’s holiday shopping season, and gifting a witch can be…well…a little challenging. I’ve been the recipient of some very well-intentioned but misguided gifts, and I want to give you…
“To be hopeful is to have a form of emotional resilience. A hopeful person believes that although challenges, grief, and adversity occur in every life, somehow things will work out. They believe that they have the ability to figure out a path forward or respond in a way that makes adversity just another part of…
This sermon was offered live (via Zoom) to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wyoming Valley (Pennsylvania) on Sunday, November 27th. To be human is to be part of the natural world and also oddly separate from it. We technologized so quickly. Electric light wasn’t common in homes in the United States until the 1920s, roughly…
The best target for a spell was, is, and will remain the self. There are many reasons for this. We learn to manipulate ourselves into doing things really early on in life – picking up toys, brushing our teeth, being nice to our siblings when we don’t feel like it, etc. Self-manipulation on multiple levels…
Magic is not only used for big efforts like finding a new job or healing an illness. It’s also incredibly useful as a stabilizing, smoothing force. When the patterns of life shift, it can be useful to look at what we can do magically to make the waves a little calmer. The transition out of…