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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Tribe

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
People Like Us

It's Wednesday's and Pugsley's big sword-fight scene in the school play.

A severed limb thuds to the ground. Blood sprays the front rows.

The camera pans the audience: horror, incredulity, disgust.

All but the Addams Family.

They're loving it.

I'd gone with some of our sister coven to see Addams Family Values.

There we were, a row unto ourselves among the pastel suburban families, laughing at all the wrong times.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Witch Country

They call it the Driftless Area.

What strange forces spared one isolated region along the Upper Mississippi River, asks Timothy S. Jacobson, from the repeated crushing and scouring effects of massive continental glaciers during the last million-plus years? What pre-Ice Age throwbacks survived here in this unique refuge that holds more Native American effigy mounds, petroglyph caves, strange geological features, and rare species than anywhere else in the Midwest?

Every tribe has a territory. In this, the Midwest Tribe of Witches is no different from any other.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
To Find My Ancestors

One Pagan's DNA Research

My ancestors are important to my shamanic path. My previous post discusses that and why taking an AncestryDNA test is part of that path for me. 

Today's post discusses my feelings as I waited for the test results, my reactions to the results, and the adventure it put me on as a Pagan. 

An AncestryDNA test predicts ethnicity. Waiting for test results, I wondered if I'd like them. I felt excitement and a bit of trepidation.

I was empowered thinking about the benefits my friends' experienced. One friend learned which regions in Africa her ancestors hailed from. Prior to that, she did not know where in Africa she was from. Another friend uncovered secrets her family had hidden. This freed her from decades of lies.  

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Joyce ORourke
    Joyce ORourke says #
    I loved reading about your experience with the DNA testing and your results. Did you ever just know something about yourself since
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    Joyce, Thanks for checking out the blog. I am delighted you liked it. And yes, I really hear you about knowing stuff despite any
  • aought
    aought says #
    Yes, I look forward to having my DNA analyzed. Oh, the ancestry that is buried. Raised "English," (Grandma was an English immigran
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    aought, thanks so much for your perspective on this. I am glad that you agree with me that 1) discovering one's ethnicity both doe

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Watchtowers

Q: What's the difference between a Jehovah's Witness and a Wiccan?

A: Three Watchtowers.

These days witches' circles are often cast complete with invocations to the guardians of the Watchtowers, one in each cardinal direction.

According to researcher John Michael Greer, the Watchtowers most likely entered the Craft from the Golden Dawn, which in turn derived them from John Dee's Enochian magic. During the original Enochian workings, during the 1580s, scryer Edward Kelly had a vision of four great towers at the quarters of the earth, the seats of guardian archangels (Greer 581).

Down the years, the Watchtowers and their guardians have acquired a deal of lore, little of which has anything to do with the original metaphor. But rising above the amassed archangels, elements, and Enochian tablets stands a simple, clear image: an image with implications.

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  • Piper
    Piper says #
    Well, maybe the bible, but I share 2 lodges (Blue and SRICF or SRIA)with these three guys: Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers Willia
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I thought the watchtowers thing was taken from the freemasons, and that the masons in turn got it from the Bible. I can never rem

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Land, Lede, Lore

What makes a religion pagan?

I'm going to contend that paganisms are preeminently religions of land, lede, and lore.

Land. Paganism is local, intimately related to specific places. Pagans are by definition the People of the Place; when peoples change their place, they bring their mythologies with them, and those mythologies naturalize to the new place. While the term “nature religion” is problematic on numerous levels, the paganisms direct themselves largely to this-worldly concerns, and engage the environment and the non-human beings with whom we share that environment as a matter of primary spiritual course. There are no universal paganisms; or, rather, the paganisms are at their most universal insofar they are most specifically local.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Gods My People Swear By

I think it was Judy Harrow that told me this story. If not, apologies to my actual informant, whoever you are. As my father is fond of saying, “Age spares us nothing.”

Dateline: Chicago, 1993: the World Parliament of Religions. (This was the event at which the archbishop of Chicago used his political muscle to get the pagans a permit to do a ritual in a public park. Now that's what I call ecumenism.) It's the main event: religious leaders from all over the world are lined up on stage. The place is packed so full that they have to set up TV screens outside to accommodate everyone that wants to see. The pagans are all outside, watching. (There are, of course, none on stage.)

Some grandee gets up to talk. “Let us all be as one,” he says. “After all, we all worship the same god.” Nods, smiles, and knowing applause from the entire line-up on stage, including (shame on them) the Hindus. The audience eats it up.

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  • T-Roy
    T-Roy says #
    I don't name my Gods, they exist as identities, Hearth, Summer, Mother and so on but those aren't names, just labels. Not until
  • Lady Pythia
    Lady Pythia says #
    Delighted to share that the Parliament of World Religions returns to the States in 2015! We're not sure where yet. Andras will let
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Yeah, this is one story about one incident. Having seen my own thinking change on a number of topics over the course of the years,
  • Alison Leigh Lilly
    Alison Leigh Lilly says #
    "Nods, smiles, and knowing applause from the entire line-up on stage, including (shame on them) the Hindus." Do you find it at al
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    It was certainly not my intent to declare shame on Hinduism or Hindus generally, Allison. During revision, I thought: Maybe I shou

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
My Journey to the Goddess Deities
 "Yeah, I'd break bread and wine. If there was a church I could receive in." Sometimes Bono just totally gets me. I love ceremony and I love truth and happily, I can find both almost anywhere. What I can't find almost anywhere, however, is a sense of complete belonging. In most religious houses I can't shake the sense that I'm not truly welcome there. This isn't to say that I'm not welcomed on the surface, I don't go into religious houses with a great big pentacle around my neck or a vile of Moon blood to offer the Virgin Mary, they aren't aware that I'm a Goddess loving Priestess upon my entrance, but there is the sense that if they truly knew how I worshipped they'd probably rather that I just turn away and find the nearest crop to worship in and be done with my heathen soul. Oh they've tried to 'save' me, but apparently the 'spirit of witchcraft and lust' just wouldn't budge.
 
I'm fine with this sense of not belonging in the religious houses for the most part now. Yet when my call to become a Priestess first beckoned me, it was the pain of being rejected by the religious folks, the so-called faith filled ones that came up to be healed. Because while I don't fit into any of the major religions, despite my great thirst for a devoted and surrendered life, I also didn't feel I truly fit into any pagan, wiccan, Goddess or any other ancient or alternative circle either. I was a bit of a spiritual misfit, an orphan of sorts with no home that I could find on Earth.
 
Where my lack of belief in a Devil, a male God living on a cloud and my refusal to conform to the idea that I as a women am to play a supporting, subordinate role in this drama of life counts me out of the religious world, I feared that my lack of a belief in many deities or the necessity rather then the desire to worship in a circle or a prescribed fashion,  along with my personal choice not to try to manifest or use magic to make a situation unfold in my desired direction counted me out of all other potential spiritual circles. This made the first half of my spiritual journey a solo one, I just didn't care to explain my renegade brand of beliefs to anyone anymore after the run ins that I had found in the fellowship of the churches. I had been disillusioned to find that nobody was actually interested in hearing why I didn't believe in a Devil, rather they were waiting for me to finish speaking so that I could be corrected and saved. This rang true for the many names but same Source conversation, or the pointing out of Bible verses where Jesus urges His followers not to proselyte, or discussing the misogynistic writings and practices of Paul, deemed St. Paul, none of these were discussions to be had, they were misbeliefs to be corrected and if not corrected then I was a lost soul to be prayed for and turned away from. I wasn't about to face another rejection from a group of spiritually practicing women and men if I could avoid it.
 
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  • Candise
    Candise says #
    What beautifully, raw feedback Jason. Thank you for relating and sharing your similar jaunt aping this rainbow path Home. Many
  • Me
    Me says #
    Candise, Thank you for taking the time to write this. It spoke to and encouraged me. I can particularly relate (right now, at le

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