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It was day three of a seven-day meditation retreat and I was busy sabotaging my practice by wallowing in guilt. At the mid-week interview with the meditation leader I complained about these negative thoughts: “I don’t know why I do this to myself.” 

“But are you doing it?” she said. “Are you doing it?” 

Well, no. My thoughts were basically thinking themselves, assailing me when whether I wanted them or not. The more closely I observed myself, the more I came to the conclusion that I had ridiculously little control over the thoughts and reactions that drove me into various states and actions. 

The stately magnificence of the hymn to Fortune (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: “Fortune, Empress of the World”) with which Carl Orff's 1935-6 pagan oratorio, Cármina Burana, both begins and ends, either belies, or comments ironically, on the over-the-top quality of the lyrics.

In this not-very-literal rendering, I've attempted to forefront this tone of self-parody. The speaker is a poet who's down on his luck, and in response hits back with both fists.

For all the good it does.

O Dame Fortune

O Dame Fortune, Queen

of it all: like the Moon

you wax and wane,

always in flux.

Misconceptions about seidhr (pronounced “seethe” or “sayth”), Norse trance journeying, abound in both the lore and Heathenry−much of it hinging on modern fantasies or medieval corruptions and loaded with sexual politics that have no real place in approaching our elder kin. This creates fear, distrust and distance from the Gods and ancestors where there should be real affection, truth and learning instead.

It’s time to change that.

I've been thinking a lot about Fate lately, what with all the crazy things going on in the Big World. Fate has always been a focal point for people's thoughts, and the Fate goddesses of the ancient pantheons have a lot to teach us. What I didn't realize until I had been in relationship with the Minoan deities for some time is that there is a Minoan Fate goddess. You may know her as Ariadne.

My first clue that Ariadne is a Fate goddess should, in retrospect, have been obvious: She has a thread. That's my picture of her up top, the Fate (Wheel of Fortune) card from my Minoan Tarot deck. In the Greek version of Ariadne's story, which dates to almost a millennium after Minoan times, Ariadne is just a girl who uses a ball of string to aid the strapping hero Theseus. But really, she's much more than that.

Title: Romancing the Null (The Outlier Prophecies Book One)

Call it luck.

One spring I planted the garden with old seeds. Many of them never germinated. No kohlrabi, no beets, no acorn squash.

Oh well, I thought. That's luck.

One morning that fall I happened to remark to Craig, Some acorn squash would taste good right about now.

Sure enough. That afternoon, interlaced among the tangle of the tomato plants, I found the vine, sprung up all unbeknownst.

With one perfect, perfectly ripe, acorn squash.

My first response was laughter.

Robert Cochrane (1931-1966), father of the contemporary Old Craft movement, was wont to say that the true name of the witch goddess is Fate (Cochrane 25). Yet he writes to Joseph Wilson in 1966 that the “prime duty of the Wise” is to “overcome fate” (Cochrane 23).

What is one to make of this?

Permit me to draw on the traditional vocabulary of the Elder Witcheries and to reframe the discussion in terms of “Wyrd.” Wyrd was anciently seen both as a goddess and as the inherent pattern of things: what Is, the sum total of everything that has happened until now, and the cumulative momentum towards the future inherent in that pattern. In the most abstract sense, one could say that the witches' goddess is Being, as the witches' god is Duration: in effect, Mother Nature and Father Time.