PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

I sometimes wonder if heterosexual predominance may not be largely a matter of semantics.

When it comes to pronouns, it's way harder to talk about same-sex relations.

Then he climbed up on his shoulders, and he....

Which he is he?

If, back when, I'd had the shaping of English myself, there would today be multiple male (and female) pronouns, the better with which to avoid such ambiguity.

One wonders: just how would that work?

(image: Two hands in black and white cupping the bloom of a deep red rose)

I had tentatively started a post on the Roman months of May and June being filled with rose festivals and how the adornment of roses and violets marked both life and death in the Roman world during the months of May through mid-July. I was mentally filling this essay with how we could all stop to honor our Beloved Dead in the summer with roses and all the historical bits I could yank out of my tumbling, sometimes foggy mind.

And then on June 12^th, while I drank my coffee, the news filtered in that there had been a mass shooting in Orlando.

We will not stop dancing.

We will not stop loving.

We will not stop making love.

Let the haters hate us.

Let them do their worst.

We've seen it all before.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

This year I was invited to present my work, Priest of the Goddess at the 2015 Coph Nia festival. To quote their website Coph Nia is, “a 5 day outdoor alternative spirituality festival for gay, bi, queer and questioning men. Held at an interfaith sanctuary in Artemas, PA, Coph Nia is open to long-time practitioners and new seekers of a wide range of spiritual paths including Wicca, Paganism, Heathenry, Druidism, Shamanism, Thelema, Ceremonial Magick and more. Sponsored by the Ordo Aeternus Vovin, an initiatory Thelemic order for gay and bisexual men, Coph Nia features vendors, concerts, rituals, workshops, nightly bonfires, dancing, drumming, chanting, signing and many social events including our annual Masked Ball & Sensual Feast.”