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Perfect Practice

It is common for people interested in home, hearth, garden and kitchen based Crafting to think they aren’t well suited to it. A lot of people get this image in their heads of someone akin to a love child of Martha Stewart and Scott Cunningham. I know myself that I find it hard to read Mrs. B’s blog over at Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom and not feel just a little inadequate.

I’ll admit, there have been times where I’ve felt like a failure because I used a blanket that is only for show or put a dish in the microwave that doesn’t go in the microwave. I still don’t understand why people own bowls and plates that are not microwave or dishwasher safe?

Only recently did I discover you’re not supposed to store food items in the refrigerator in the tin cans they came in. I’m still working out how to explain this to my mother, who does that! I’ve often wondered if there a class my mother failed to take me to, as a child, where we are supposed to learn how to tell if something is an antique or if it will clash with the drapes?… Continue reading

Attack of the Podcasts!

While you wait for me to finish editing the next episode of Standing Stone and Garden Gate, please enjoy these recommended episodes of other podcasts:

First up, over at The Infinite and Beyond, Chris interviews Lon Milo DuQuette about Low Magick and much more.

Then head over to New World Witchery for fun winter traditions and to meet Cory’s wife, yay! Stick around for some more Yule Tide cheer.

Then Witch Talk Radio interviews Peter Paddon of the Crooked Path and Pendraig Publishing fame.

The Way it Goes

Off and on I have delved deep into practice, into doing … no more than that, into really living my practice.  I have lived on many acres of land, living a fairly simple lifestyle and also living off the land to a certain extent. I was also having a go at traditional lifestyles as well, doing it the old way.

I carried water up a mountain side everyday (sometimes twice or thrice) so I could cook, clean and drink. I learned the value, the sacredness, of every single drop. There are few things in the world that can teach you to truly understand that water is indeed the lifeblood of the Earth (and everything that lives on and within Her) than being a small, barefoot woman, thirsty to the point of parched, dragging 30 pounds of water up a rocky mountain side under a blazing summer Sun.

I dragged (and later carried as I grew stronger) hay bales about the place to feed horses and livestock. I wishpered prayers to Epona everyday … and more as I tried to tend a wound on a half-gentled young filly.

I spent many long nights up to my elbows in blood and birthing… Continue reading

Smarty Pants!

You don’t need “Pagan” books to be a smarty-pants Pagan. Most libraries (even small ones) have books on history, mythology, folk lore, archaeology and so forth.

There’s more to being a smarty-pants Pagan than being well read as well.

Its called critical thinking and deep thinking.

How about observation? That’s a good one too!

Here’s an important one: application of knowledge.

And another thing! Thinking for yourself and not doing what a book tells you, but sorting the information and coming to your own conclusions, then trying them out, then back to the drawing board.
The problem is that a couple of books or classes aren’t going to make you an intellectual or a smarty-pants Pagan. That’s the first step on the road.

Repost: I am Not a Real Witch

I am not a real witch
I am not a proper pagan
No, not even
When I rise with the dawn
And greet signing birds
And walk my hounds upon the mountainside

I am not a real witch
I am not a proper pagan
Not even when I speak to the land
Not even when I listen to the wind
Nor when I watch the Sun cross southern skies
And mark the Moon’s fall and rise

I am not a real witch
I am not a proper pagan
No, not even when I praise the thunder
Or dance with the ebb and flow
Of many tides

I am not a real witch
I am not a proper pagan
Not when spirits follow my steps
Through summer woodlands
Or brush my heels on moonlit trails

I am not a real witch
I am not a proper pagan
Not even when gods answer my call
For I have answered theirs
Not when I farm my land
Or lend an animal a helping hand

I am not a real witch
I am not a proper pagan
You see
Because I have no initiation to speak of
No puppy papers to prove my lineage… Continue reading

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