Invocation is one of the penultimate acts that a Priest or Priestess can perform, for themselves or in a group ritual.

This ritual is one of the things that separate us from other religions. In some ways, it is the most important act that we do for our covens. Through our priests and priestesses, coveners can speak directly to our deities.

One of the things that my partner and I discuss a great deal is how it seems old school Wicca (not solitary, Cunningham Eclectic Wicca) is dying out; we argue about whether or not old school Wiccan traditions deserve to survive after all of the strange drama that many within the path have produced in the last thirty years. He argues that if the old traditions die out, we will lose a great deal of knowledge. I generally argue that while I agree with that sentiment, abuse shouldn’t be rewarded.

Whenever he starts talking about Wicca with strangers, people roll their eyes at him and start muttering about fundamentalism and the need to change with the times. British traditional Wicca is a hard path, not meant for everybody, and what people who don’t pursue a traditional initiation don’t always understand is that the training that comes along with it is to facilitate some very specific mysteries that you just don’t find in Eclectic Paganism. This doesn’t mean that traditional Wicca is better or worse than Eclectic Paganism, but it has specific training for a reason, and those of us who go through it have a very specific point of view about what we are doing and how we do it. It is hard work. Once you have done the hard work, being asked to get over yourself and be flexible with ways of thinking that are against everything you’ve gone through is pretty antithetical to all of the experiences that a traditional initiation brings. It’s especially difficult when you have worked hard for years to gain the knowledge you have and you are confronted from someone who has (maybe) read a few books who tells you that you are the one that doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

 Ayee cooty fiyo - hey la hey, hey la hey

I've got a Big Chief, Big Chief, Big Chief of the Nation
Wild, wild creation

He won't bow down, down on the ground
Oh how I love to hear you call my Indian Red!

I had one of the most spiritual experiences you can have in New Orleans tonight; I walked for St. Joseph's night with a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. David Montana, nephew of the most famous Mardi Gras Indian Chief, Big Chief Tutti Montana, led the Washitaw nation in a nearly ten mile hike around the city.

I was inspired by Janet Boyer's article "Rabbit Symbolism in the Tarot" to repost from my personal blog an article that I wrote about a week ago on the hare.

Last weekend,  I made the long pilgrimage to San Jose, California, where I joined about 3,000 other Pagans for PantheaCon. It was the first time I had been to California or seen the Pacific Ocean. In several ways it was also both an ending and a beginning.

PantheaCon the event didn't change my life like it may have done for many others, but that wasn't because of any lack on the part of the convention or anyone involved in organizing the events; most of the con faded in view of the enormous milestone I reached and overcame the Friday night of PantheaCon. Last week, while at PantheaCon, I went through my first degree Initiation, and that event ended up overshadowing everything else that happened to me over the rest of the weekend.

Today in my Facebook feed I came across many people who expressed the following sentiment, which I am summing up with Devin Hunter’s (of The Modern Witch Podcast) post about our recent outbreak of people questioning Pagan identity.

“This pagan identity crisis thing is ridiculous. This is what people spend their [time] on? Not helping to educate? Not helping to take care of our elderly and families in need? Not participating in the betterment of the community? This community is wonderful at keeping its self distracted while everyone else passes it by. I'm my own definition of Pagan, and I for one would hate it if you tried to define it for me. I won't define it for you.”

We are a young community. I feel that many people are content to remain hidden under a rock, communicating anonymously, which modern technology allows them to do. But if we want to build community, we can’t remain this way. And I also think that people are missing the point: we aren’t trying to define “you”. We are working to define “us,” and what makes up “our” community. Unfortunately this takes time, disagreement and most importantly, communication between people of vastly differing views.

Since Joseph Bloch over on GOPagan: Thoughts from a Heathen Republican posted his recipe for Smoking Bishop, I thought I would repost my Wassail recipe from my Pagan Household column to accompany it! Bloch's recipe is Victorian, mine is a little more Saxon/Medieval and can be enjoyed while celebrating some of the things that Kenny Klein wrote about in his blog "Yuletide and the Wren". Enjoy!

For those of you who are not familiar with this delicious Yule treat, Wassail is an old Saxon tradition. The word breaks down to ‘Waes Hail’ or ‘Good Health,’ and it was traditional to drink to the ‘good health’ of the village for the year. The young men of the village would go door to door on Yule singing a Wassail song. Each household would give them silver to “pay” the young men to drink for the good health of the household and their fields for the new year. This is where caroling comes from, and in many small towns in England, this old tradition is still carried on to this day. (Bobbing for apples probably came from the wassail tradition as well).

Wassail is a hot punch that brings comfort and cheer, though I wouldn’t recommend it for the children. (Unless of course, you want your children to sleep very soundly that night. In all honesty, you can make this completely alcohol free, though traditionally the alcohol is an important component, ritually and practically).

In the "real world", I buy books for a university library. Saying that I feel strongly about the ability to freely and easily gain knowledge is an understatement. Knowledge is power. We are free to read anything we want, and for me this is right up there with our freedom of speech in defining individual freedom and personal dignity. Libraries are a vitally important aspect of our "free" society. These last few years, it's hurt me to see how many libraries were the first thing to be cut in the economic crisis, and how little people have taken into account the resources that are being taken away from us. Perhaps in this digital age we take libraries for granted. We've forgotten what it's like not to have easy access to anything we want to know, and what it's like to have our information controlled by entities outside of our control. Access to new information (wherever you find it) is the only way we grow and learn.

In the world of the Craft, we are at an unprecedented point of having access to written materials. We can communicate with people all over the world to seek out the things we ache to know. It's easier than it's ever been to find teachers, and for those of us who live to far away from an actual Pagan community, there are blogs, articles and books available to us. The fear of being "discovered" or of being accused of Witchcraft is not what it was in the past, and it no longer applies in the same manner. While being public, or "outed," can still have serious consequences, it doesn't usually lead to a fiery death at the stake.

Ah yes...Thanksgiving. That time of year in America where we stuff ourselves full of turkey deliciousness and pie, then pass out in front of a football game, while probably saying “thank you Gods” for having a few paid days off of work. Of course, this isn’t what the holiday is actually about, but, as Pagans, we’ve already had our “Hooray, we got through another harvest!” feast.

When we were children, our schools filled us with images of peaceful Pilgrims and Native Americans sitting down to celebrate survival together. Hand print turkeys ran rampant over our decorations and buckled shoes seem to magically appear everywhere.

(Oh common, you can't tell me that you still wouldn't do this if you got the chance).

Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday. And in more ways than one.

Once upon a time...

But then...

Mabon is the Sabbat where the focus of the wheel of the year goes from Life and growth to Death and the harvest. It is when the young God experiences death and begins his journey to the Underworld. It is also when the White Goddess begins her descent to the Underworld to take her rightful place as the Queen of Death. The Welsh figure of Blodeuwedd is an often ignored facet of the Queen of Death.

Blodeuwedd is a Goddess that modern audiences have a hard time viewing outside of the lense of our industrial, patriarchal culture. Blodeuwedd, who comes to us in the Fourth Branch of the Welsh Mabinogion, is a woman created out of the flowers of the forest by the Gods Math and Gwydion who need a wife for Gwydion’s son Lleu; Lleu has been cursed by his mother, Arianrhod, to never take a human wife. Blodeuwedd’s story is often seen as one of rape and revenge, similar to the way the Arthurian legends are often treated. It is a story that most people never try to reconstruct with the meaning it might have had to pre-Medieval Welsh listeners. For modern listeners, Blodeuwedd is not seen as the White Goddess that she is; she is viewed as a woman torn between two lovers, such as the Medieval Iseult, or Shakespeare’s Juliet, and the tale of the two Gods/men (Lleu and Gronw) becomes one of lust and revenge.

I'm currently sitting at a restaurant on Esplanade Ave, in the French Quarter. A really bad piano player is massacring "Wade in the Water", but it doesn't matter. This is the first electric, air conditioning and hot food that I've had in four days. The city is alive and well. New Orleans has gotten through another hurricane just fine.

Those to the South of us were not so lucky. So please, keep them in your thoughts this week as they begin to deal with the flooding and the destruction that they experienced.

Having gotten through my first hurricane, I've been reminded yet again why I love this city so much. Here is a piece that I submitted to an anthology that didn't end up happening (due to a lack of submissions). Hopefully it will explain a little bit more why hurricanes are a sacrifice those of us who live here are willing to make in order to stay in our beloved city.

I felt the need to respond to Literata’s latest blog, “Toxic Weapons.” I was laying in bed at 2 a.m. and it just wouldn’t leave me alone. 

The issue of guns is a devisive one. I’ve been traveling this past week and the issue of gun ownership keeps popping up everywhere I go. I generally find myself hanging out with extremely liberal people. I am extremely liberal myself; I am an avid Pagan, a nudist and a polyamorist. But I am also a gun owner and generally have a different opinion on the matter than most people.

I grew up in a household with guns, and I don’t mean just one or two. My father is a serious collector of WWII rifles. Hunting, shooting, smithing and reloading are his life. So guns have always been a part of my life. I do not consider them to be toxic. I also don’t consider myself to be toxic because of them. (This is my father and this was a typical Saturday in my childhood).

Forgive me, that should be, "When Deity Approaches You".

I've been a part of a discussion on another forum where someone pledged themselves to a particular deity and is now regretting the decision. It didn’t turn out the way they thought it would.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that when a deity chooses you, they have a purpose for you. Maybe they are just calling you to worship them, but sometimes there is a particular purpose and you aren't walking away from them until that purpose has been fulfilled. I was kidnapped by a particular Goddess and I know that that is one of the reasons that I ended up in New Orleans. While I have no particular upset with this particular spiritual kidnapping, I also knew what was up and know that while I was a part of the whole thing, I was definitely not the instigator.

I just returned from Sirius Rising, a festival held at Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, NY. 

For me, festival is a liminal experience. That probably sounds rather cliche in this context (who doesn’t like to bring up liminality?), but every time I go to a festival, something life altering ends up happening.

After the last festival that I went to, I hit a young buck with my car coming home. The police officer who arrived to help me, told my father as I was sitting on the side of the road next to my completely shattered car, that I was lucky to be alive. At the time, with a full Mabon moon riding red and heavy in the night sky, I assumed that I hadn’t given enough of myself that Mabon and that some more blood needed to be offered.

Now, looking back on the events of that festival and what happened in my life around that period (all of which started right before that particular festival), I’m pretty sure a particular God was giving me a very clear message about a decision that I had just made, letting me know that I was going to have to change course to set myself back on the proper spiritual path.

I thought that I would take a second to introduce myself a bit before I leap fully into this new writing endeavor.

When pirates come into your life, you get thrown about, topsy-turvey, on the sea of life. Things just never really stay the same ever again. Let me explain...

The Pirates of the C.U.C. (that’s Crew of Unsavory Characters to you) Constantine are self described as “a small collective of independent minds bent on bringing more pirate antics to the world.” You may have seen them singing and entertaining at Wisteria’s Summer Solstice and Cornstalk festivals, amongst others, or stumbled upon them on Facebook. Or maybe you were walking down Ludlow and caught a glimpse of a tricornered hat and a swinging tail that danced over a pair of very weathered boots, as the person who was wearing these things disapears with a jingle into Sitwells. Pirates like to pop up in odd places. They are also eclectic Pagans, living just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio and even though I no longer live in Cincinnati, I am one of them.