“I feel awe of the gods, I love, I revere, I venerate them, and in short have precisely the same feelings towards them as one would have towards kind masters or teachers or fathers or guardians or any beings of that sort.”
— Julian the Philosopher, in “To the Cynic Heracleios"
why limit yourself between choosing between a pretty feminine aesthetic or a dark one? if persephone can be the goddess of spring & queen of the underworld at the same time so can you
A god stops being a god when your heart calms at the thought of Them. A god stops being a god when you wake up to the thought of Them and you cannot help but to be soothed by Their presence.
That is when They become /your/ god. That is when you become Their devotee.
It’s a resonance in the soul that can’t be put to words. One day, They are a stranger. Another, you wake up and suddenly They are so much more. It’s the presence of choice and gradual devotion that makes it unclear when you cross that line.
A god does not become yours on the first day. You do not become Theirs on the first day. It’s like growing up: you can mark it with years, but it’s the days you can’t quite remember that are when you grow with divinity.
This book is awesome. I’ve long been a witch and I know the holidays and the colours and all that, but THIS BOOK is so important. It gives a solid breakdown of the holidays and a run down on how you can celebrate the holidays, from quiet, private meditations and celebrations all the way up to lavish rituals and ceremonies for a whole group of people. And even though the holidays are Wiccan and this book makes that clear, it also makes it clear that these holidays come from much older pagan traditions and so are open to basically every practicing pagan.
So basically it’s good for everyone, from the baby witch starting out to the crone who wants some new ideas. For the witch still in the woods, to the out and proud witch who howls at the moon.
It’s called The Modern Witchcraft Guide to the Wheel Of The Year, by Judy Ann Nock.
My hot tip for today is that sometimes you can do silly, spiritual pagan things because they’re fun and they don’t have to be particularly logical or relevant in any way. You don’t have to believe in everything 100% to do and enjoy things.
Every Samhain my mother leaves a plate of food outside. She says that the ancestors come in the form of raccoons to eat it. When I was little I of course wholeheartedly believe this. Now I think we probably just have a lot of raccoons in the neighboorhood, but that understanding doesn’t detract from the tradition. Suspending my disbelief for just one night to think that the animals I see wandering about are visiting spirits makes Samhain a hell of a lot more spooky and mystical then it would be otherwise. I wouldn’t want to do it any other way.
We don’t touch the garden between Samhain and Yule. The explanation given for this is that anything left outside during this time is food for the fairies and taking it angers them. As I’ve gotten older and learned more about gardening I’ve realized that this is probably an explanation for why we need to let the soil rest, and I certainly don’t think picking a plant in early December is going to cause me any harm, but don’t pick the plants anyways. Leaving the garden alone during the cold months makes tending to the plants that much more enjoyable and special during the hot months, and if my reasoning for why I can’t harvest that very last squash of the fall is fairies then that’s my own business.
Sometimes when I go down to the beach I find strange or out of place things. My explanation for these things is always selkies. In the back of my mind, I’m always aware that there’s probably a much more logical and reasonable explanation for whatever I’m seeing but those reasons usually aren’t quite as interesting, so I say that it’s selkies. And that’s fun. I feel like there’s some unspoken rule that after a certain age you’re not allowed to try and believe the things you’ve imagined, no matter how inconsequential and silly those things are and honestly, that’s boring, I’m not a fan.
The point here is that not all of the things we do in the name of our spirituality and faith need to be serious or even well thought out. Clearly, if you’re doing a ritual or a spell that’s one thing, but there are other fun little ways to make your spirituality more magical and wondrous that are less about what’s actually happening and more about the suspension of disbelief. And those things are wonderful and fun, and they add a little bit of joy to your life.
I meet a lot of witches and pagans who take themselves and their practice very seriously, and well that’s fine to a certain extent I think it can sometimes make your spiritual beliefs feel like a chore. Letting yourself have fun this way can be a really good way to prevent that.
i’m just saying hermes is not only a trickster god who likes gambling and risk and traveling and making mischief and laughing and playing music and kickin’ it but he’s also the guide of the souls in the underworld and one that is metal af and two it is quite a magnificent show of character
like here let’s play while you’re racing and daring and alive and then when you’re not let me take your soul home
1) No more tarot decks
2) You can get new jars once you’ve filled all the empty ones.
3) Another book? You haven’t read some of the ones you have yet!
4) Herbs aren’t good after a year anyways, just keep the fresh ones.
5) Seriously though, how many crystals do you need, some of these sparkly ones are man-made/dyed.
6) More than 365 piece if occult jewelry? You’ll never wear all those! We haven’t even gotten to your collection of [insert favorite bird here necklaces).
7) You have sticks in every corner, why? Wands, really! These are a fire hazard–
8) Which brings me to candles.
9) Lol, yeah right, witches don’t follow rules!!! Let’s go to the pagan faire, I want a new besom to cleanse this place 😉
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