PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

From kindred holidays to the return of my local Pagan Pride Day, I've had a lot of community experiences this autumn. It's been awesome and of course I am sharing my fun with my blog readers. 

American Celebration Kindred usually does our fall ritual as Rainbow Season, for two reasons. Firstly in honor of Heimdall, Tom's patron. Secondly, because we live in the Mojave Desert, where summer is the rainy season. After the rain comes the rainbow, so after the rainy season comes the rainbow season. This year we held Zisa Day in September and I did a Rainbow Season ritual at Pagan Pride Day in November. We'll probably return to doing our Rainbow Season ritual in September in other years, but we also try to do a least one or more new rituals each year. Last year my kindred's other gythia Amanda led Haustlong, a traditional autumn ritual, in September. This year we held Zisa Day. 

OK, Winter's halfway over: time for a completely unscientific survey. Complete this sentence:

The thing that drives me craziest about pagans is that we....

• Please keep it short: no more than three sentences. (One would be best.)
• Let me know by what name you'd like to be cited, what flavor pagan you are, and where you hail from.
• Remember, please: we're talking about us here, not them.

NATURALISTIC PAGANISM: A CHALLENGE
TO THE PARADIGMS OF THE OVERCULTURE

I received my third reading on the subject of whether I should take a job as a presenter at a specific online event.

Reading C: Tarot, from Lady Firespring at Sacred Spring

I got a tarot reading from Lady Silverspring. We spoke on the phone. At the start, she asked me what my purpose for the reading was, and I indicated that I had been wondering if I should take that job and at that point it was looking like no, but I wanted to go ahead with the reading because it was part of the next steps I needed to take on my career path. My friend said I should make a more open ended question, so I went with, "What's my best career move at this time?"

Surprisingly to me, although I had to laugh a bit at how much it dovetailed with internal godphone conversations I've had, the first thing that came up was that money is an illusion. I was like, "I know, sunshine is real, my cat is real, money is an illusion, but I have to treat it like it's real." And the next card was the Hanged Man, which made me laugh out loud. "Yes, Odin." I saw him in my mind's eye stroking his beard and saying "mmm" to indicate his presence.

As far as the convention job went, I should not take it, and basically, I don't have to take opportunities just because they fall out of the sky at me. The things I already decided that I want to do for money and career, that I'm already taking steps to go out and get for myself, are the things I should be doing. Those are long term and I need patience and trust and faith to keep going but that doesn't mean I just wait, I do things, and I should keep doing those things.

Another thing that came up in the reading was grief. I need to give myself space for that. I don't have to fill all my time with accomplishing things and keeping busy. My friend said the word Guardian more than once, and I let her know that that was a title Tom had now. She said he had decided to stay around as a protector instead of reincarnating and I said that was correct, Tom had been a Heimdall's man while he was alive and he had chosen to become one of Heimdall's Guardians.

After that our conversation became more general. We hadn't talked in far too long. It was a great reading. It confirmed what I had heard in my other readings, that I should not take that job, but it went farther and told me about what I should be doing instead. The tarot reading told me that my job right now is to grieve and to do the the long term things I'd already been doing before the job opportunity arrived. I should continue as I had already been doing before.

When you've been doing something for six months, and everyone around you has only been doing it for five, that makes you the elder.

Gods help us all.

That was the situation back in the early days of Paganistan. At the time, most of us hadn't been doing this for very long, but the fact that we'd been doing it longer than anyone else made us the de facto elders of the community.

Incredibly enough, the community survived anyway. It not only survived, but flourished.

You learn fast when you have to. When people around you expect you to be wise, it's surprising how wise you can actually be.

Well, sometimes.

It may well be that you yourself are in this same position: a premature elder in a young community.

There has always been something about the Wiccan Rede that has bothered me, and I've finally figured out what it is.

The Wiccan Rede, for those new to the community or coming into Atheopaganism from atheist/skeptic circles, is the only widely (though far from universally) adopted moral precept in the Pagan community. It reads: "An (if) it harm none, do what thou wilt."

It's still one of the best opening lines that I've ever heard.

A buddy and I had gone over to 'Saint' Paul to check out the new Ethiopian restaurant.

While we were there, I noticed at a nearby table a woman with very intense eyes, giving the waiter a hard time.

Tough customer, I thought.

About halfway through the meal, I looked up to see the tough customer standing at our table. Those intense eyes were on me now.

“I like your pentagram,” she said, then paused. “I have one too.”