There is a quiet place that burns brightly with the hearth fires. Family and friends gather round and love flows through each stone and tile. Food is prepared with loving hand and warmth flows like liquid honey sweetening the time spent together. There is no one location, for this space resides wherever there is heart enough to hold its flame of contentment and acceptance. The days are feeling shorter and the nights longer and I am ready to burrow in and tend to my need fires. In response to this turning within I have been thinking alot lately about the relationships and people in my life. About what nurtures and feeds my soul and which interactions could use a bit more tending to keep those fires of connection burning. And, the energy of gratitude has been called front and center as I am reminded of how truly fortunate and blessed I am.
As a child I was always told to be polite and to say please and thank you for what I hoped to receive and what gifts had come my way. I was taught that these were part of the routine of daily life and that gratitude offered would bring abundance in all endeavors. I was loved and cared for by my mother and grandmother and although we did not have much financially, there was always enough good food lovingly prepared by my grandmother and time to spend together with my mother despite her demanding schedule of two jobs at times. Hestia's flame burned deeply and love and gratitude was etched very deeply into everything that occurred in that home. The Goddess was present in the strength of the women who shared my life and actions were infused with the tools needed to teach how to call those flames of strength into my own life.
As some of you know, I’m not afraid to talk about cursework to college students. Everyone likes talking about cursework. It’s exciting, it’s sexy and it shows that you’re not afraid to get all honey badger on someone’s ass.
I maintain that it’s not a great idea to talk about personal cursework/occult fight club publicly but it’s a good idea to know a bit about cursework in my opinion.
Witchcraft gets romanticized a whole lot. Just look at my picture of the Charmed sisters. They're off solving problems in mid drift tops living in a huge house, learning about love and sisterhood. My first reaction is much like yours, it can be summed up as sigh. But. If it wasn't for Charmed, my mother and I would be locked in the same stalemate we had been locked in since I was 22. Charmed made modern Witchcraft accessible to my mom and made her less afraid of whatever I was doing.
Romantic witchcraft isn't reserved for non-Pagans though. In Paganism, being able to be a career Witch/Occult Shop Owner/Pagan Writer/Special Shaman Who Talks to Ponies/Whatever has become the dreamy eyed ideal. And why shouldn't it be? There's enough of us now to actually support career minded people who want to support themselves off their Craft. I know a few people who I'm incredibly jealous of who are doing that very thing. It's not exactly a new concept, communities generally supported an occultist who lived on the fringe of society/in the weird house at the end of the block for ages.
Anthony Gresham
Well, in "The Three 'Only' Things" by Robert Moss: "a coincidence is a meaningful convergence of inner and outer experiences. The sense of meaning co...
Steven Posch
For years, the Honeywell Project here held protest after protest against the Honeywell Corporation, which at the time was manufacturing (ye gods) clus...
Anthony Gresham
I watched an interesting video by that 'Religion for Breakfast' guy on YouTube. It was called "Would Jesus vote Republican or Democrat?" His basic p...
Mark Green
I could not disagree more.Our religions should be SUFFUSED with politics. If we're not here to make a better world, what is the damned point?Other tha...
Ms. Fennelly, Praise be to Hestia! Thanks for sharing.
