PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form
Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in traditions

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Happy Christmas!

so this is Christmas / and what have you done
another year over / a new one just begun

Christmas Eve was always a favorite of mine when I was a kid.  We’d eat sloppy joes, go to church, open presents, enjoy hot chocolate from the machine at the gas station, and look at holiday lights.  (Yes, we opened presents on Christmas Eve.  Santa brings presents for you to open on Christmas Day, duh!)  One of my family’s favorite memories is when I came home from my first semester of college.  My mom was in nursing school at the time and busy working at the hospital that night.  I borrowed the old station wagon and took my sisters and their friends out to look at lights.  We might have listed to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” 1,000,000 times that evening.  My sisters still tease me about my annoying obsession with this Christmas song (but I won’t let them forget how they mixed up the sugar and salt for the cookies that year.)

Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I know it's an unusual interpretation but I think of a Nightmare Before Christmas as a Thanksgiving movie. The Santa Clause with
  • Trivia at the Crossroads
    Trivia at the Crossroads says #
    Hahah, I LOVE the idea of A Nightmare Before Christmas as a Thanksgiving movie - it's a great compromise. Also, I ADORE Rare Expo

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Innovation vs. Tradition in Paganism

The mainstream current of modern Paganism has made much of celebrating “Ancient Ways” and “Old Gods”. This creates an inherent tension between old (or putatively old) practices and beliefs and the innovations and achievements of modernity.

Elements of the broad Pagan umbrella range widely across this expanse. At one pole, you have Reconstructionists, for whom ancient ideas and practices are pretty much everything, and those of other paths who choose to continue to believe (despite much scholarship to the contrary) that today’s Paganism derives from an unbroken lineage of tradition stemming from medieval times or earlier.

...
Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Mark Green
    Mark Green says #
    Thank you, Lisa!
  • Lisa
    Lisa says #
    Thanks for the great blog! There's some great ideas for me to think about here. I especially like the way you framed the idea of h
  • Mark Green
    Mark Green says #
    Carol, thanks for your comment. Yes, hopefully we have learned a thing or two in the past thousands of years. We have a long way t
  • Carol P. Christ
    Carol P. Christ says #
    I could not agree with you more in calling attention to the fact that there is a danger in simply "following" any tradition, espec

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Hefting

It's what cowans call “tradition”: heft.

It's an old word, a Northern word, from the Norse hefð. It's ultimately from the same root as have, heave, and haven, because heft—tradition—is what we have, what we hold and hold to.

It's a noun: both what (and where) we hold to, and those of us hefted—traditioned—thus. So we are our heft. The Driftless Area is our homeland, our heft.

It's a verb: used of a person or people, it means to hold to, to maintain. We heft the Old Ways here.

It's an adjective: hefted, describing those so held; the state of being traditioned, for as we hold heft, so heft holds us.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

What’s a Book of Shadows? How do I get one?

Amongst Wiccans and Witches, a book of shadows—often referred to as a BOS—is usually a collection of texts used in rituals, such as ritual scripts and stage directions, poetry and songs, spells, invocations, techniques and teachings, recipes, and sometimes ritual notes or journal entries. These items can be bound in an actual book, written into a blank book, stored in three-ring binders, or kept as Word or PDF files. We use the somewhat old-school “Great Green Three-Ringed Binder of the Arte” because it’s easy to rearrange pages and I don’t want to spill candle wax on a tablet. Everything in our circles seems to end up with wax on it. Some people even choose to write their books in calligraphy to infuse the book with their personal energy.

Types of Books of Shadows

There’s no one right way to keep a BOS, but they tend to fall into one of three categories.

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Ahl al-Kitab

I guide without need of scripture,

for my words are written on the hearts of my people.
 

Muhammad was right.

There are the ahl al-kitâb—the People of the Book—and then there are the pagans.

One of the things that impresses me most about the New Paganisms—and this is one of the ways in which we have remained most true to the ways of the ancestors—is that, from our very beginnings, we have been, and remain, non-scriptural religions. Occasional jokes about Edda-thumping aside (“Snorri said it, I believe it, That settles it”), we have, for the most part, managed to dodge the silver bullet of Canon. In a world in which religions are defined by their scriptures, this is an impressive achievement, rendered all the more striking by the apparently unconscious nature of the decision.

Last modified on
Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    Yes!

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

b2ap3_thumbnail_DSC00047.JPG

 

...
Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Many thanks to Nick Sagala for sharing his traditions with us ♥

Dia de los Muertos—the Day of the Dead--is a holiday dear to the hearts and souls of people who love their ancestors. The Santa Muerte is the goddess connected to Dia de los Muertos. She pre-dates Christianity in that part of the world, and the Mexica knew her as MICTECACIHUATL, Lady of the Land of the Dead. She was believed to be a protector of souls residing in the dark underworld, and she is depicted as a woman in a skull mask and traditional dress decorated with flags which were put upon corpses prepared for cremation.

...
Last modified on

Additional information