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In Awakening the Sacred Body, the author asks a hard question: "Who does your spiritual practice benefit?" That question isn't asked often. In fact, I can count on one finger the number of times I've come across this question in all the books I've read. It makes me wonder why this question isn't asked more often, but I think we can answer that by simply recognizing that a lot of the focus in spiritual books is on helping a person improve him/herself. Ironically, what isn't recognized is that in some ways what this encourages is a lot more focus on the self than on other people.

I think there's an assumption that goes into spirituality, which is that if a person is engaged in spiritual practices they somehow are becoming better people or more enlightened, or whatever else, but the problem with that assumption is that there is no guarantee that being engaged in any type of practice automatically makes you a better person. And that may not even be the point of the spiritual practice. Spirituality isn't always about making a person into a better person. It's a relationship, but what comes out of the relationship is also informed by what goes into it. Why we engage in spiritual practice is ultimately a personal matter.

Deinde Februarius Solmōnaþ...

Solmōnaþ dici potest mensis placentarum, quas in eo diis suis offerebant.

Before we get into Austerity and Glamour, you all know that an austerity is only an austerity if it

There is a quite different argument against abortion I have heard from several Pagan women.  I am more sympathetic to it than to the usual “fetus is human” claim that I demolished in my previous post.   Even so, I think it ultimately fails, though it does complicate a woman’s decision.

 I

Craig's mom was up from Texas to see the new house. She'd heard about the pagan guy that lived with her son, but you could tell that, being a good Episcopalian woman, she was working hard to reserve judgment.

One afternoon, while I was off at work, the doorbell rings. Naturally, she says: "I'll get it."

She opens the door. The man standing there is holding the dripping, severed head of a deer.

"Hi," he says, "Is Steve at home?"

Twelve Healing Stars is a yearlong project in cooperation with the Temple of Witchcraft that explores social justice through the lessons of the 12 Zodiac Signs. This is part five.

I live a few miles from Disneyland. We are close enough that throughout much of the year a loud cluster of explosions from the park’s impressive fireworks finale announces the arrival 9:45 p.m. It’s kind of nice, like the old time village criers announcing “9:45 and all is well!” It’s our little community ritual.