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            Despite the convenience of the internet, most Neo-pagans love the experience of a brick-and-mortar magic shop. The incense, statues, music, and company are inspiring. For vegans who may be trying to avoid the use of animal products (including feathers, fur, and leather), finding that perfect something can be a little more difficult. With the addition of some down-home craftiness, we can make certain objects and have fun cruising the shops for the rest.

            One of the easiest ways to attain ritual objects is to find them in nature. Stones, feathers, shells, bones, shed reptile skins, and leaves are just a few examples of items you can just pick up on a walk in the woods or on the beach. Finding animal products is often considered a better alternative than buying them. Buying them sometimes sustains a market for animal exploitation. Finding items gives you a more magical connection to them. They remind you of an experience that you had in nature.

While participating in Joanna Colbert Powell's 30Days e-courses around the Wheel of the Year in 2016, I revived my practice of creating seasonal altars. But recently I have started being a bit counter intuitive to the seasonal symbols. I have had to have a bit of a ponder, squaring up what my unconscious was nudging me to create with what my more logical, conscious self was prescribing as 'appropriate' for the current station on the Wheel of the Year.

First off, I have to say that I have twin devotions to Brigid and Danu. Since Danu's feast is in June she precides from June to the January New Year. Then Brigid is the deity who has pride of place. So you see Danu in this photo of an altar I created this week just before the Aries Full Moon. 

As keeper of the coven temple, it's my responsibility to make the daily offerings and prayers there on the People's behalf.

This I do twice daily, morning and evening.

(In an ideal world, with a full temple staff, there would be four offerings each day: at sunrise, solar noon, sunset, and solar midnight. Oh well. We do the best that we can with the resources available.)

A fortnight back I was staying at Sweetwood Sanctuary in the heart of Midwest Witch Country. While I was there, I made the daily offerings and prayers before the main altar in the Grand Circle.

There I noticed something very interesting indeed.

What does he feel, the Horned, as he sits upon the altar and gazes on the faces of his people?

What does he feel?

This I can tell you, I his priest, who have sat upon his shoulder and watched with him there.

It is love.

When he sits upon the altar and looks upon his people, he feels for us a love so unbounded, so all-encompassing, that he would do anything, give anything, for us.

Even to the laying down of his life upon that very altar, that we might feed on his flesh.

Title: What Is an Altar? (Pagan Children Learning Series Book Four)

I’ve been asked all sorts of questions about Modern Minoan Paganism, but the most common one is probably also the most fundamental: How do you do it? In other words, how do you actually practice this spiritual path?

To start with, I’d like to point out that this is a very individualistic path. It’s not a monolithic tradition with a set of rules and regulations everyone has to follow. It’s more like an umbrella structure under which each person can tweak the details in the way that they find most satisfying. So you start with the basics: the gods and goddesses of ancient Crete and their stories. Then you approach them in the way that makes the most sense for you.

Just came across this June 2013 piece I’d never shared. Now seems the time to share it, though I don't know why.

Amidst distractions—fears making my thoughts scurry in multiple directions, people attacking in hopes of distracting themselves with turmoil, forms promising to be essence, delusions masquerading as passions—I light a single candle. Simple altar. The Friend adds a stone.