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My first blog for SageWoman. Welcome sister! May this become a Sacred Space where you come to breathe, resource, come home to sisters and the Sacred Feminine. A place where you reconnect to the sacred.

I am writing this on a flight from Amsterdam to Denver. I will be meeting Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Exciting, as my life as a spiritual teacher started out 20 years ago with giving workshops around her fabulous book Women Who Run With the Wolves. What a thrilling moment! A good opportunity to reflect on my years of teaching and priestessing. What has proven itself important through the years?

There is lots of talk in modern Paganism about 'holding space'. It's an idea I rather love - the focused intention and purpose of a (usually ritual) act. But how often do we consciously realize the holding of space in the everyday as well? How far do we become beholden to it as we take it for granted?

Lately I’ve been contemplating the title of my blog. Cauldron is magikal space. The theta wave brain state where we access guides, ancestors, and deities stands in contrast the kitchen, mundane space. Many Pagans struggle in mundane space. But even those of us that function effectively in the world outside the circle or festival, often find ourselves longing for that place of magik and connection.

We all know how hard it can be to keep swimming in the cauldron when the kids or boss is screaming, and bookkeeping (my personal nemesis) is looming. I go to a yearly festival, and, in the last few years, weekend conferences here and there. For the first few years of attending Rites of Spring, I would return home feeling torn and saddened. At the closing ritual, we were invited to take the magik back out into the world and that just seemed so impossible. But I kept working on it.

It's been a while, but I'm back again, lovely readers! I'm currently hard at work on my second book (amongst other projects, as you'll see below), but I will certainly continue to post here as and when I can. Comments and topic requests always welcome.

At this time of year, it's easy to understand why our ancestors (both actual and spiritual), those wise women and cunning men, were considered remote, unusual, untouchable, even fearsome.

As Autumn moves into Winter here in the UK, we feel our natural, animal pull to dig in, hibernate, take time within the darkness to assess the previous year and anticipate the time to come - but I doubt any busy society has ever really allowed that to happen, except when they have no choice. Stoke up the fire, head to the pub or communal house, light and laughter against the outside world.

(Photo - 'Autumn in the New Forest', from Glastonbury Goddess Temple)

Like many Pagans, I am a lover of literature. It was in books that I first discovered the Gods. I devoured tales of Artemis and Apollo and Isis and Anubis and Brigid. And -- like many -- the first thing I did after my (re)discovery of the Gods was build an altar.

I felt most drawn to the Hellenic Gods, but I had no real guidelines for the proper construction of a Greek-style altar. I found a basic diagram in Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, and used that as a template: bust of Apollo and a gold candle on the right, bust of Artemis and a silver candle on the left, bowl of dried flowers, small cup of earth, small cup of water.