PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
Specific paths such as Heathenism, blended traditions, polytheist reconstructionism, etc.
A lot of Pagans are hesitant to use the word prayer since it's so strongly connected with Christianity in modern western culture. But really, one of the things many of us do in our spiritual practice is pray. Prayer has been around a lot longer than Christianity has.
What is prayer? At its most basic, it's a conversation with a deity. In Ariadne's Tribe, we pray a lot, although often we simply call it talking with deity.
...Some Slavic pagan reconstructionist groups have a special day for the Dark God on Leap Year Day. This day may be for Koschei, Chernobog, or the Dark Face of Veles.
Leap years are years that have an extra day, and they happen every 4 years, in our current calendar system. The extra day is February 29th, and some cultures have holidays for Leap Year's Day. One of those is the reconstructed pagan religion, Ukrainian Ridnoveri, and other Slavic pagan groups. But they use the Slavic calendar, which is the same as the Orthodox calendar in use in Slavic countries, based on the old Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar in use in Western countries. Slavic February 29th is not the on same day as our February 29th in the English speaking world.
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I've been offering workshops and presentations about Minoan spirituality for several years now, and I'm delighted to be giving a workshop about just that topic next month at WitchCon. I hope you'll join me!
As I gear up for another year of public appearances, I'm wondering how deep I should dive into the topics that are my purview as The Minoan Lady.
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The Heathen Visibility Project was gearing back up in the early part of the year, continuing last year's trend. We were making more photos of people again, after pausing while groups and gatherings were sidelined by the pandemic lockdowns. However, a monkeywrench was thrown in the works by the sudden appearance of so-called "AI" art, and art websites' widespread embrace of it. What is being called generative AI is not true artificial intelligence, but since that's the term that's most commonly used, I'll be calling it "AI" as well (while hoping any true AI out there knows I'm not talking about it.) It's really just ML, machine learning.
Creators have to decide if it is worth continuing to create and share their work when the net is flooded with computer generated swill. The garbage churned out by "AI" / ML programs fills up searches, social media feeds, host sites, and sales sites, while human-made works become harder to find. Worse, the "AI" art and writing are based on the human-made work, mostly without the creators' consent. Some "AI" art prompts generate art with recognizable models and celebrity faces and sometimes even the watermarks of the artists whose works were stolen to train the "AI" systems. It's discouraging.
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Crisises. Take your pick, we aren’t running out of them any time soon.
War / Climate breakdown / political instability / social injustices / economic inequality/ people escaping war and oppression seeking asylum / food insecurity / access to healthcare / violence against women and girls / violence against trans people …
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This is a busy and festive time of year for the Tribe. Over the past month or so we've observed Therasia's Labor, which led up to Winter Solstice and was quickly followed by the Blessing of the Waters.
Because the Blessing of the Waters takes place on the first Full Moon following Winter Solstice, the number of days between the two events varies from year to year. The lunar cycle slithers around the steady points in the solar calendar, the two intertwining in a dance that stretches out into a longer cycle: eight solar years equal 99 full lunations.
...In a shocking display of vitriol for the pages of an old and otherwise respectable mainstream magazine, The Atlantic ran an opinion piece titled The Return of the Pagans which makes numerous outrageous claims about both ancient paganism and the modern manifestations of paganism. The op-ed's author, David Wolpe, contrasts paganism with monotheism and repeatedly expresses his opinion that monotheism is better in every way.
Every paragraph is a new wtf. Starting off by claiming that Trump is pagan because of his crass displays of wealth, the article only gets more disturbed from there. The entire article is a series of untrue and offensive statements about paganism.
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