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If you suffer from stress-induced symptoms, try these calming crystals: Lapis lazuli has been used to treat headaches for millennia. My dear friend Abby suffers from migraines and cluster headaches. I gave Abby some earrings with lovely blue lapis settings to help her with this chronic condition, and she has reported great success. These headaches can have many causes and triggers; my beloved amber essence oil was one until we figured that out! The main causes are stress, anxiety, and various food triggers. Oddly enough, amber in crystal form alleviated Abby’s heinous headaches, seemingly absorbing the negative energy. Amethyst and turquoise are also good for this. Several stones are good for stomach illness; citrine and moonstone create calm. There is certainly no shortage of stress out there in the world so do yourself a favor and pick up these soothing stones to have at the ready. These crystals are a vital part of your sacred self-care.

One of the more frustrating aspects of practicing Modern Minoan Paganism and studying ancient Minoan culture is that we can't read Linear A, the script the Minoans used to write their native language. So we have to rely on the fragments of Minoan myth and history that have trickled down to us via the Greeks (the Minoans weren't Greek - they were their very own independent Bronze Age culture).

This means we don't even know the words the Minoans used for ordinary objects like cups and bowls. The archaeologists who first excavated Minoan sites had backgrounds in Greek history, myth, and culture, so they simply used the Greek terms for the pottery they unearthed. That's why libation pitchers from ancient Crete are called rhytons (or rhyta, if you want to use the Greek plural); rhyton is the Greek word for this kind of container.

[Image from http://www.literateape.com/blog/2016/12/19/i-fully-acknowledge-my-white-privilege-now-what]

This is Part 2 of my three-part series on race in Paganism

I could no longer stand the hate I felt for people who hate. 

The night of July 5, 2018, I had the strangest dream. Instead of living in my sweet house, I was living in a large apartment, and Donald Trump was my flatmate. We weren’t lovers, we were buddies. The degree to which I have loathed the 45th and everything he stands for makes the dream quite strange, given that he and I got along quite well in the dream.

In the dream, we were talking, and then I accidentally bumped up against him, and it seemed like his little penis was hard, but he didn’t even blink. Of course, Trump would not blink because he is a sly, awful man. He‘d leave me in that oh-so-awful-and-prevalent feminine quandary of endlessly debating with oneself, wondering things like “Am I just imagining things ...?" But I brushed his behavior off because neither his slyness nor anything else about him was bothering me. Remarkable dream for me!

Click Here to Read Part One 

....In preparation for Part Two of the Inner Temple, spend some time thinking about the types of meditation and/or pathworkings you may have already experienced. Knowing what you know now, how would you classify those experiences? Which category would they fall more naturally in to? And, if they were pathworkings are you aware of the underlying keys and the discipline selected (Astrology, Qabalah, Tarot, etc..). This reflection will open you further to the work of creating your Inner Temple as you become more receptive to the keys you are setting within yourself...."

Goddess bless Ronald Hutton.

We all know the stereotypes: the Catholic Church, with its enforcer the Inquisition, burned witches, right?

Turns out that the Inquisition actually protected many people accused of witchcraft.

For some 300 years, between the 15^th and 17^th centuries, Christian Europe, both North and South, went wild with a massive witch-panic. One puzzling aspect of the Great European Witch-Hunt, however, has always been the huge disproportion between northern and southern Europe when it comes to executions.

The vast majority of people executed as witches in Europe during this period were executed in Northern—Protestant—Europe. Far, far fewer people were put to death as witches in the Catholic South.

In 1588, a teenaged girl brought before the Spanish Inquisition confessed to having had sex with the Devil. The previous year, a Sicilian woman confessed to having flown through the air on a billy-goat to a sabbat at which (interestingly) she worshiped a King and Queen who presided over a feast and an orgy (Hutton 200-1).

In England, such confessions would likely have merited the noose; in Germany, the stake. But the girl from Valencia, after receiving a beating, was sentenced to undergo religious instruction, and the goat-riding Siciliana was acquitted.

Why?