It’s the end of the secular calendar year, that delicious time of stillness between Winter Solstice and Imbolc. The land in the northern hemisphere is settling into rest and encourages us to do the same. It’s not quite yet time for dreaming, but it is time for remembering–time for reflection, for thinking about the past year, for making an account of the ways life has changed in the past 12 months.  Underside of a gazebo at the New England Botanical Garden, constructed of raw cedar logs. Simultaneously, there’s also the pull of community, of gatherings full of food and fellowship. Our desire t ..read more

Then he [Cormac] sees in the garth a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water. Nine hazels of Buan grow over the well. The purple hazels drop their nuts into the fountain, and the five salmon which are in the fountain sever them and send their husks floating down the streams. Now the sound of the falling of those streams is more melodious than any music that (men) sing. Stokes, Whitley (ed. and tr.). 1891. “The Irish ordeals, Cormac’s adventure in the Land of Promise, and the decision as to Cormac’s sword”. In: Windisch, Ernst, and Whit ..read more

Well, it’s been a year. I wish I could say that I made a deliberate decision to take 2022 as a blogging sabbatical. I didn’t. It just worked out that way. It isn’t as if I haven’t been writing. I have. Analog-style, long hand, with a delicious fountain pen on decadently smooth, thick paper in my handmade journals. It isn’t as if I haven’t been practicing Druidry and magic. I have. I completed the OBOD Druid Grade materials (and am crafting my final project now). My personal daily practice has been consistent and strengthened. I joined the AODA as a means to deepen my Druid studies even further ..read more

Here we are, the last day of 2021. Perhaps it’s because I just listened to too many astrology podcasts in a row, but I’m having a hard time feeling any hope for 2022. I pulled the shadow-face of Elder for my plant divination card this morning—and it’s not wrong. It’s a time when the weight of things unfinished can weigh heavily. Rather than feeling guilty, I’m trying to allow that weight to propel me forwards—after deciding whether or not I really DO need to complete these things in my life. I am so very lucky to have found friends who not only have supported me through my failings (and flaili ..read more

Hail, shining jewel of the forest’s edge, who, guarding the damp and shade-worn oaks, graces the green boughs of the sun-warmed hedge and hides in the root-skirts of the Wort Folks. Strong oils weep, coating your arrows-leaves: a warning, a curse to any so arrogant, ignorant, or foolish, your fierce spears fine punishment for woeful woodland thieves. Erroneously thought malevolent, human ruin ignites your caustic tears. Ahhh, Poison Ivy, glorious in her guardianship of the borders and edges (and hedges!) of North America! Europeans have Nettles, we have this lovely. And I say this without s ..read more

O’Driscoll, D. 2021. Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year through Earth-Centered Sustainable Practices. Atglen, PA: Read Feather Mind, Body, Spirit. For those of you who haven’t come across the 19th century Japanese word tsundoku, it’s a wonderful term that in my case has resulted in liberation from the guilt of often buying more books than I’m able to read at one time (the English equivalent bibliomania sounds too much like a disease for my taste!). There’s at least a shelf-and-a-half (and probably several other smaller piles in all honesty) of reading material that’s waiting in the w ..read more

Fuzzy fiddleheads erupt from the floor of a pine grove. It’s been a while. Two years, in fact. That definitely qualifies as “a while”. It would be nice to blame my absence on the pandemic, or the previous administration, or unemployment, or a new relationship, or any of a dozen terrible, wonderful, mundane things that have happened in the past two years. But the fact is, I just lost the will to write. I felt like I had nothing to say (well, to be honest, I still feel like that, but I’m putting that part of my brain in a chokehold-of-love for now). What does the internet need in the ramblings o ..read more

And not a drop to drink? No, sorry, wrong poem. Sometimes it can be a bit hard for folks to wrap their heads around how a person can have a devotional practice without having a patron, per se, or at least being henotheistic or monist for that matter. I’m one of those rare, blessed writers in the blog-o-sphere who gets passed around from unseen critter to unseen critter–usually within the same couple of cultures mind you, but I definitely am poly when it comes to my spirits. It’s sad when accusations of “spirit collecting” or “Poké-god” get tossed around. I don’t doubt that there are some peopl ..read more

And not a drop to drink? No, sorry, wrong poem. Sometimes it can be a bit hard for folks to wrap their heads around how a person can have a devotional practice without having a patron, per se, or at least being henotheistic or monist for that matter. I’m one of those rare, blessed writers in the blog-o-sphere who gets passed around from unseen critter to unseen critter–usually within the same couple of cultures mind you, but I definitely am poly when it comes to my spirits. It’s sad when accusations of “spirit collecting” or “Poké-god” get tossed around. I don’t doubt that there are some peopl ..read more

“Next…Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men.” –Hesiod, “Theogony” “As they whirled together, faster and faster, fire kindled a spark of life within the ice.  An enormous, ugly shape rose roaring from Ginnungagap.  It was the frost giant, Ymir, first of the race of the jotuns.  At his side, a hornless ice cow came mooing from the pit.  Together jotun and cow lived on the rim of Ginnungagap.” –D’aulaires, Norse Gods and Giants “And as She looked into the curved mirror of black space, Sh ..read more