I walked into a convenience store a few weeks ago and made a startling discovery. I must have walked by that store a hundred times, but I had no idea that it held one of the greatest selections of magazines and newspapers in the area. As I browsed, I was astonished to see the face of the Black Madonna staring back at me. 

For those of you who read French, the hors-series edition of Sciences et Avenir (Science and the Future), January-February 2013, is an absolute gem.

https://www.epresse.fr/magazine/sciences-et-avenir-hors-serie/2013-01-01

A little over a week ago, I introduced a new series for the blog: a short series about the labours of Hēraklēs. In that post, I described the life of Hēraklēs up until the point where he set out to complete the tasks. Today, I'm taking you through the first of twelve labours: Hēraklēs' challenge to slay the Nemean lion.

The Leon Nemeios (Λεον Νεμειος), or Nemean lion has been described with a large variety of parents. Selene is mentioned by Aelian and Seneca, amongst others, but one of the drakons is also possible, especially Echidna. Diodorus Siculus, in his Library of History describes the lion so: 

(As readers of my Wytch of the North blog know, Queen Anne Boleyn is the most prominent member of a group of spirits I refer to as "The Queens"--since they literally are the spirits of dead queens--whom I have adopted as my Disir, and who have adopted me in turn and are kind enough to favor me with Their advice and support.  I may cover the story of how Anne first came into my life in another post, but for now I would like to share the below thoughts that were inspired by my Work with Her.  Probably this is more or less common knowledge, but for those who may not know, Anne Boleyn was beheaded by her husband, Henry VIII of England, on May 19th 1536, on false charges of adultery and incest.  Thus, I have set aside May 19th each year as Queen Anne's Day, which I observe by processing to our local Owen Memorial Rose Garden here in Eugene, where I leave gifts and offer prayers for her, and then at home I prepare a Tudor-era inspired feast in her honor.  This year, I will also be presenting prayers and poetry submitted as gifts for her by my readers.  Anne's death was a great tragedy, but as I commented recently on my blog, I think it's important to remember how she lived--boldly, with style and aplomb--and not just how she died.)

This week, in my search for Anne Boleyn-themed viewing material that I had not yet seen, I ended up borrowing (from our amazing local library) a BBC production of Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl.  (Which is also available on YouTube here.)  Many of you are doubtless familiar with the Hollywood adaptation of this story, featuring Natalie Portman.  (I watched this again recently too, and to my surprise found that the theatrical release doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense if you aren't already familiar with the novel; this must be due to bad editing and too many deleted scenes, as the plotline--which was fine in the book--just does not hang together well.)  I have to admit, although I love Philippa Gregory, especially her books about the queens involved in the Wars of the Roses (aka "the Cousins' War"), I am not a fan of The Other Boleyn Girl.  Gregory does seem to have a distinctly pro-Catholic bias in her novels, and when writing about the Reformation, that bias translates into an anti-Anne bias.  In The Other Boleyn Girl, Mary is the good girl who compromises her purity for the sake of her family's ambition, then ends up falling in love with the king despite herself, only to be foisted from his bed by the heartless Anne, who coldly connives her way to the throne and stops just short of committing incest with her own brother in a last-ditch effort to conceive the male child that would have saved her life.  (Gregory's treatment of Anne's daughter, Elizabeth the great Protestant Queen,  in later books is not terribly flattering either.)  In historical reality, on the other hand, Mary was more of a good-time girl than a "good" girl (the King of France, one of her many conquests prior to Henry, referred to her as his "English mare,") and Anne was very likely a virgin at the time of her marriage, although on the topic of whether or not she actually loved Henry there are as many opinions as there are writers to offer them.  (The Lady herself says that she did, and does, which makes her story all the more tragic.)

Public radio interviews convert to Khemeticism (KBIA)

"Porsha Williams knows a thing or two about walls – metaphorical ones, that is. She’s been up against a lot of them, whether religious, psychological or cultural. She describes herself as a “raised Christian, converted to Pagan woman.” And that conversion is the source of many of these walls."

A skeptical look at dowsing (Livescience.com)

Well, the school term is finally, officially over, I've submitted my last essay exam, and now I am free and clear as a bird, almost. I'm at least free and clear enough that I can catch up on some of the Odin and/or Deity questions that have accrued while i've been battling through finals the last two weeks. As I know i've noted before, I'm really enjoying the questions that are coming in. I think these are conversations we need to be having. Moreover, I"m forced to really engage with my own practice, and think and analyze what I do and how i approach my practice much more consciously and I think that's a good thing. Nothing in devotion should ever become so rote that we forget why we're doing it!

Two days ago, Bronwen Katzke posted over on Mama Afrika about spiders, and how they began appearing in her life repeatedly. She, like me, saw this as a sign. I thought her post was interesting, mainly because for the first 20 or so years of being on my path, Spider was my totem. I posted this in the comments section and promptly forgot about it.
The next day I had a strange urge, the urge to record my ex-step-father’s recent death in the family scrapbook. This is strange because he was a terrible, violent man who abused our mother as well as us kids (me and his two biological children). When he died in prison, I honestly felt nothing. I had put him out of my mind and moved on long ago. But because he was my siblings’ father, and my nieces’ and nephew’s grandfather, I felt it was only right to include him in our family register.
So I dug the thick, bulging scrapbook out of the pile of books and papers where it lay next to my craft desk. I opened it and took out the page with the family register, then set the scrapbook down on the other side of the desk. After carefully lettering his name and birth and death dates, I picked the scrapbook back up to replace the register.
When I went to open the cover, there, on the spine, sat the largest brown recluse spider I have ever seen. Brown recluses are venomous, and though their bite isn’t directly fatal, it causes a painful necrosis of the surrounding tissue that will spread. If not treated, it will turn into sepsis and can cause death. They like to live in human habitations, near water sources, and they are aggressive. Because of this, they are the only spider that I will kill on sight.
In my path, which I describe as Zen Wicca, I believe that the Creative Force of the Universe is omnipresent, and while it’s not anthropomorphic, it does have a kind of consciousness that is too vast for our human minds to grasp; we can only sense it in a very limited way. Though we are very tiny compared to the vastness that is the Universe, we are a part of It, and It moves through us and around us. It can speak to us, if we know how to listen. It speaks in the language of coincidence, which we might call “signs” or “omens.” So as one who tries to align myself with the Universe, I listen when It speaks to me. And that large, poisonous spider on my scrapbook was a sign.
The challenge is to understand what the Universe is saying. I think it means that, like the poisonous spider, some people are dangerous, and it’s best to get them out of our lives as soon as possible. Perhaps the Universe is telling me that I only thought he was out of my life; like the spider, he (or really, his influence) was hidden, ready to strike when I wasn’t paying attention.  But now, because of my experience with him, I know how to identify poisonous beings, and I’m not afraid to dispatch them immediately.
I grabbed a scrap of fabric out of the trash and crushed it, then washed the stain off my desk.

Before I address the title, let me first address a fact that was illuminated in some fairly recent conversations:  I am old.  Chronologically, I'm just a bit over thirty, which isn't really anyone's idea of old --and contrary to the prevalent misconceptions of ancient longevity (which is an average) generally speaking, people who could survive past the age of 15 all through the Archaic and Classical eras could typically expect to live into their sixties, so this isn't even "old" by historical standards, but I'm old.  I'm old because I retain this stubborn identity of "Hellenic reconstructionist" even though many people my age and younger, even (sometimes especially) if they practise by the same general methods I do have long eschewed the term because of reasons.  I all get to those reasons very shortly.  I'm old because I've acquired greater measures of both patience and cynicism in my approach to dealing with others, largely because of persistent misconceptions of who and what I am and am about, and when I don't have the patience to explain it, I don't get angry, I just shrug and think oh well, this isn't news and frankly I don't think they're worth explaining it to, and then I ask the other person "Hey, let's agree to disagree?"  But the good thing about being an ageing cynic (but not really a Cynic, though I do appreciate some of their teachings --my philosophy is based largely on Kyrenaic Hedonism with equal parts Empedocles, Democritus, Kirkegaard, Sartre, Camus, Crisp, and Jarman filling in the gaps, and also a huge stress on aesthetic arts bringing joy and meaning taken from famous Dandies including, but not limited to, Beau Brummel, Oscar Wilde, and Lord Whimsy)...  [coughs]  Yes, the good thing about being an ageing cynic with a blog, is I get to make things as clear as i need to, update and revise as I need to, and point people to said blog when I don't feel like dealing with them right now.

I want to make clear what religious reconstruction is and is not, because in spite of being pretty active for about the last five years in trying to promote this method of practise as both a perfectly valid and relevant "pagan path", it seems I've been met with more gross and appalling misconceptions in this last year than the previous four combined.  Now, I have some suspicions on key players who may be a large part responsible for this, but this isn't about naming names, this is about using the position afforded me on PaganSquare to clarify, perhaps even educate.  In this, I also want to stress (though I doubt that I could ever stress enough for some people) that identifying with a reconstructionist method is not synonymous with being ultra-conservative, traditionalist, neo-luddite, or regressionist.

Religious reconstruction is a method of practise, not a religious doctrine in and of itself.

When I was a child, I would wave to the man in the moon who I imagined peering down at me through the window. 

It wasn't until I became a Pagan that the moon came to be associated with the feminine.  The phases of the moon just seem like the perfect symbol for the stages of a female and for the menses.  So when I first heard about moon gods, I was sure there was some mistake.  How could that be?  It not only can be, but isn't as unusual as I thought it was. 

I've been thinking about what to write for this column for the last week and I've been coming up blank. No topic has really seemed right. There was nothing exciting going on or anything of real note standing out to me. If anything my life has been pretty mundane. Get up, go to meetings, meet with clients, come back and work on a project, spend time with the family, and of course throw some meditation and exercise in the mix for grounding purposes. Nothing very glamorous at all, and yet it strikes me that perhaps there is something to write about that, on this blog and its this: Magic isn't always glamorous or full of drama or anything else that we might associate with pop culture references to magic. Sometimes magic is just part of daily life, something you are doing to make your life easier or more meaningful or to connect with the spirits, but not something which necessarily has a lot of glamour associated with it.

My latest book, A Magical Life, has just been published. I'm excited to have it out, but something that the author of the introduction, Storm Constantine, wrote has been on my mind. In describing the book, she explains that magic isn't a colorful garment we put on, but rather it is an integral part of our being, woven into our lives everyday. And that is how I think of magic. I meditate each day and my meditations are an essential part of my life, something done as a way of bringing order to my mind, while allowing me to connect with the spiritual forces I work with. Nonetheless I'd have to say there is nothing inherently glamorous about the meditation. In fact, there are days I don't want to meditate or do anything else along those lines, and yet I make sure I do meditate because it is part of my life, and because not doing it takes away from the quality of my life.

I think to some degree your average magician is in love with the idea of magic being glamorous. Certainly at the beginning of a person's spiritual work with magic, there is this sense that you need to get all the ceremonial tools and that every act of magic must be an overt, explicit affair that screams to the universe: THIS IS MAGIC! And there is something to be said for doing those loud acts of magic that are glamorous and over the top and amazing in their own right. I've done and still do those kinds of acts of magic when the time is appropriate. But I recognize that fundamentally magic isn't always that way, nor does it need to be. My meditation practice isn't over the top and yet it still fills me with a sense of wonder and amazement. Indeed, if anything my daily work speaks more loudly to me than an over the top ritual because the daily work is where the discipline of the magician is tested. In that daily work, I don't necessarily do magic to solve problems (at least not overtly), but what I do is connect to the magic in a meaningful way that allows me to deepen my relationship to the spiritual forces I'm working with.

This weekend, which is a holiday long weekend north of the 49th Parallel, Pagans from all over the vast expanse of the Canadian landscape will be meeting in Gatineau, Quebec (which is just across the river from our capital city Ottawa) to discourse on what it is to be Canadian and Pagan, exchange ideas, study workshops, exchange chants, review scholarly works in our field, and of course, socialize.  It's called the Gaia Gathering (the Canadian National Pagan Conference,) and I believe this to be the most exciting thing currently going on in the Canadian Pagan community.  I made an epic journey to the 2010 conference in Montreal to present at a couple of panels, as well as one of their first workshops, and it was a life-changing experience.  This year, I am unable to attend but I was able to interview "Winnipagan" Dominique Smith, the current Chairperson, via Facebook about this outstanding event:

Question: So from your perspective, what is Gaia Gathering all about?

Dominique: The Canadian National Pagan Conference: Gaia Gathering at its most basic is about the identity and culture of Canadian Pagans. As Canadian Pagans we have unparalleled perspectives on the world and on the Craft. Our politics, our environment, and our Canadian culture influence us Pagans in a profound way. We see the world and react to it quite differently than most other people. Gaia Gathering is a way to explore and honor our uniqueness. Gaia Gathering is also an opportunity where Pagans from across Canada can interact, learn and create with a diverse group of individuals that have peerless perspectives and experiences on issues facing Canadian Pagans. Figuring out what makes Canadian Pagans different also opens us to identify our similarities and in a country this large its important for Canadian Pagans to feel connected and not alone, especially in rural areas where access to information and other Pagans can be quite limited.

Tories say law allowing humanist weddings could lead to "ridiculous" groups being allowed to conduct weddings... like Pagans and Druids (Daily Mail)

"Jedi, druid and pagan weddings could be made legal across Britain under proposals from MPs, it was claimed last night. They want to change the law to allow humanist weddings, for couples who do not want a religious or civil marriage to express their commitment. But Tories say such an amendment would ‘dilute’ the institution of marriage by allowing other ‘ridiculous’ sects to marry couples."

Construction crew demolishes centuries-old Mayan pyramid for gravel (i09)

The constellation Draco (from the Greek Drakon, meaning dragon) is identified--funnily enough--with some dragons in Hellenic myth but not others. There are quite a few creatures, after all, who would qualify as a dragon in Hellenic myth. For a dragon or hydra not connected to the constellation, think of the one Kadmos vanquished, for example, or the one Apollon vanquished at Delphi, or even the dragon who guarded the Golden Fleece and was slain by Iásōn. In truth, only two dragons were associated with the myth in ancient times, most notably by Hyginus in his Astronomica: Drakon Hesperios, the Hesperian Dragon, and Drakon Gigantomakhios, the Gigantomachian Dragon.

When I met Reverend Jessica LaReau in an Intro to Wicca class taught by Reverend Peter Hertzberg of Northern Lakes Temple, I was struck by her kindness and generosity. In a comfortable room above Mimosa Bookstore in downtown Madison, the class worked from a text containing basic information found in witchcraft. As a newcomer, I hadn't received the book. Without prompting, Reverend Jessica, also of Northern Lakes Temple, offered her book to me. Later, the text "A Dedicant's Guide to 1st Degree Priesthood" would become a resource for any tree magick I decided to try. A few weeks later, the class hit on the topic of familiars. Being an Aries, I immediately decided that if others had familiars – and seemed rather content about having them – then I might as well have one, too. Not exactly an expert on the subject, I aimed question after question at Reverend Peter, who seemed to grow tight-lipped after a while. I liked Peter tremendously, and if there was an opportunity to banter with him, I'd pounce on it tout de suite. This afternoon, though, Peter seemed to dig in his heels, much as a spectacled mountain goat that would not be coaxed or pushed from his terrain. Patiently, Reverend Jessica explained that maybe my familiar would or had come with a specific purpose such as protection. Any preconceived notions I formed – and perhaps those notions would be shaped by Peter's answers – would possibly interfere with the reason behind the familiar's arrival.

The Ace of Swords is such a powerful card. Those who love Arthurian legend enjoy the fact that the Ace of Swords is archetypally Excalibur.

I call the Ace of Swords the “Anti-Bullsh*t Device.”

Yesterday I did what I normally do in the afternoon- bring the laundry in from off the wash-line. I reach for a shirt, and there is a spider that has spun a delicate web between it and another shirt. Grabbing a small stick, I carefully pick it off its web and place it on a branch. See, I’m not scared of spiders.

Getting to the final bit of laundry, I unpeg a long black skirt off the line and drape it over my arm. Out the corner of my eye I notice something large and greyish rubbing against me. I think nothing of it. As I plop the skirt in the laundry basket, the greyish thing moves and realisation dawns.

There’s a shrill scream of some choice ‘French’ and I do the heebie-jeebie dance one naturally does when an eight-legged mammoth has rubbed up against you. Ok, I’m scared of spiders- but only when they are the size of dinner plates (I’m exaggerating, the size of saucers). However, I didn’t kill it. I just grabbed a big stick, and from an overstretched distance, flicked it off on to the ground… and then grabbed my laundry and ran for the door. However, the Gods were not done with me yet…

So, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to address some misconceptions I see all the time in the online pagan community.

We'll start with Sunweaver's statement that:

Heracles was hugely popular and most Ancient Greeks would have known his story from Hesiod.

“Let’s hear it for the God
Let’s give the God a hand
Let’s hear it for the male
You know you gotta understand
Maybe he’s no Romeo
But he’s my loving deity
Whooa, whooa, whooa-oh
Let’s hear it for the God!”

You know what? I get it. Really I do. Goddesses are wonderful beings. Yes, they have been neglected and abused in the past and in some cases, still are. But. Let’s learn from that and not do the same thing to the Gods. One hears a lot about feminine deities…pictures, stories, poems, prayers, divination decks, etc. You can find Pagan/Polytheistic items with a goddess theme quite easily any more. Not so much for the masculine divinities. Often they are relegated to the sidelines, treated as a minor player, if mentioned at all. I get it. I did it too. But then Zeus came along…

It all started on Halloween 2007. I was continuing my study of the Gods using the idea of Gods of the Month Club. It is where you draw a god to study for a month. I drew Zeus. I wasn’t thrilled. In my mind, Zeus was firmly linked with the Roman Catholic god, the only difference being that Zeus had sex…a lot…and he didn’t seem picky about it either. I was raised Roman Catholic and painted all male divinities with the same broad, ugly brush. Yet I vowed to study whatever divinity came up and so I did. I spent that month studying and meditating on Zeus.

I'm pleased to announce that a friend of mine has launched a new blog for Israelis interested in Canaanite polytheism. The blog, called Canaan is Here, is written entirely in Hebrew by Israelis. 

I have updated my previous post, Know Your Middle East Religions: Ancient and Modern Polytheists, to reflect this new addition. 

Why is this important and groundbreaking? The Holy Lands were holy long before monotheism, yet many fear that fundamentalist conservative monotheist religions have obliterated the ancient ways. It's true that the situation is difficult and often dire depending on the locale for the few people who honor the ancient deities and the ancient ways. But, nonetheless, it happens.

It is mind-blowingly beautiful to know that growth, beauty, and restoration continue in our world. And there are brave, gentle souls who quietly do the heavy lifting. 

For spirit workers the hedge is the threshold, the boundary line between the city and the country, a doorway into what is wild, uncharted, and unknown. The hedgerow is both a real phenomena and a potent allegory-whenever land is/was cleared for settlement and agriculture a liminal hedge shows up-usually composed of plants that have medicinal and magical use but that do not do well under domesticated conditions. Hedges in the old European Neolithic settlements were full of dubious plants like Hawthorn-long associated with faeries and witches, and Elder-associated with healing but also with life/death/life cycles. The hedge is an allegory many of us have grown up with-crossing the hedge is choosing to transgress or transcend cultural norms and to chart one’s own path-usually into the wildwood.

I was thinking about the idea of the hedge earlier this week and wondering what does crossing the hedge look like today in the 21^st century?

People seem to be enjoying the Odin questions that I"ve been answering here. I'm happy to keep this Q&A series going as long as folks have questions. Many of these things, while I've thought about them and internalized them, I've never actually broken down and analyzed for anyone else, so this is making me look at my experience and my practices and the way i interact with the Gods in new ways too and that's useful to praxis. 

On that note, Liza asks: