PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
Every January, I like to look back over my blog posts of the past year and see which ones were the most popular. I usually find the results a little surprising, and this year is no different.
For 2021, my top five blog posts, beginning with the most popular:
...I hope your religion 
has plenty of roses
and lots of sunrises.
I hope your faith
is full of smiles
and alive with joy.
I hope your spirituality
tastes good,
smells sweet,
and holds you kindly.
I recently finished reading a book called The Spirituality of Imperfection. (Side note: it doesn’t indicate it clearly in the title or book jacket that it has a significant emphasis on AA, but the assumption seems to be that the people who are reading it will be AA members, which I am not.)
...
I was recently asked a question during an interview, and I've been thinking about it ever since. The question: What kinds of people seek out Modern Minoan Paganism, and why?
The first part of that question spans the gamut of not just the modern Pagan world but the modern population in general: Wiccans, Hellenic Pagans, Druids, former Christians seeking polytheistic spirituality, former atheists and agnostics who have felt the call of the deities...
...
There's a lot of argument in the Pagan community about what constitutes a "valid" tradition. Some people are only comfortable with reconstructionist traditions that can provide an ancient text reference for every portion of their spiritual practice. Others only want to participate in traditions that can claim to have unbroken practices going back generations, even centuries.
Ariadne's Tribe is neither.
...
The longest single event in the Ariadne's Tribe sacred calendar is the Mysteries. This ten-day-long festival, running from September 1 to September 10, is our revival of what may have been the Minoan precursor or cousin of the Eleusinian Mysteries in mainland Greece.
A number of different groups have recreated some of the rituals from the festival in mainland Greece that lasted into classical times. But those recreations aren't based on Minoan mythology.
...
Forged artifacts are a fact of life in the archaeological community. How should we, as Pagans who rely on archaeology for our religion, relate to these objects?
I've written before about the problems with the large numbers of forged Minoan artifacts that are still in circulation, many of them in museums. Thankfully, the museums are now recognizing the lack of authenticity and provenance of many of these forgeries and sharing that information with the public.
...
I'd like to point at the title above and say, "That's it; that's the post." But I know I'm going to have to explain.
No one owns the gods: That means that no one can tell you how to interact with them, how to experience them, what to believe about them. Your spiritual experience is your own, filtered through your psyche as a part of your personal life.
...
