Category: Paganism
-
Top of the Week at BITG
Top of the week to you! This week is starting off with a whole bunch of Internet happenings. First, it seems that my RSS Email subscribers haven’t been receiving my blog posts since mid-December. Sorry everyone. Here’s what you missed: I wrote a post on Yule at HuffPost, and we talked about decentralization. After pulling […]
-
How Does Divination Work?
I pulled three ogham out of the leather pouch and laid them, one by one, onto the surface of my shrine. This divination would be the omen for all of the Solitary Druid Fellowship, a broad swatch of Pagandom that joined one another in a shared practice for the first time on the Winter Solstice. […]
-
Yule on HuffPost and the Question of Decentralization
What a week this has been. The SDF liturgy is live, and the response has been tremendous. I don’t have any way of knowing what the perspective is from every person participating, and I kind of prefer that for the moment. It may seem that I’m coordinating some massively social endeavor, but there is still […]
-
We Don’t Have Faith: We Make Agreements.
A couple weeks ago I wrote about creating the Solitary Druid Fellowship, an extension of ADF designed to serve the broader community of solitary Pagans and Druids by providing them with a shared liturgical practice. I’m currently in discussion with the Clergy Council of ADF to work out the final details of the site launch […]
-
Blood Sacrifices Are So Messy
My inbox over Thanksgiving weekend was flooded with talk of — you guessed it — blood sacrifices. The debate raged over whether making blood sacrifices, a practice strongly rejected by my tradition, ADF, is worth consideration. After all (the argument goes), the ancients did it. Plus, there’s a case being made for the awareness of […]
-
How Does Paganism Reconcile Pagan Bureaucracy?
I’m coming to terms with the truth about why I left the Church. It wasn’t that I had an experience of deity that fell outside of the Church’s teaching. That would come later. My experience of God was always mysterious, never concrete. I was taught that one could, if centered and open, feel a presence […]
-
HuffPost Live Paganism Roundtable Followup
If you missed yesterday’s HuffPost Live Paganism roundtable with me, Amy Blackthorn, Gus DiZerega, Morgan Copeland and Patrick McCollum, you can watch it here: We covered a fair bit of ground in the brief time we had allotted, and it was an honor to be seated beside (digitally speaking) so many interesting thought-leaders and organizers […]
-
I’m Not An Expert On Paganism, But I Play One On The Internet
I’m not an expert on Paganism. If you’ve spent any time here on Bishop In The Grove you’ll know that being an expert on Paganism wasn’t why I got into blogging. I blog in order to be a better student. I ask a lot of questions. I point out the things that are curious to me or that […]
-
My Pagan Pride Day Post Went Meta
One of the most valuable contributions to the conversation around my Pagan Pride Day post came from a single commenter, who I’ll leave unnamed. He joined the comment thread and my Pagan Pride Day post went meta, because he gave me cause to take a closer look at the function of this blog, and the […]
-
I Felt Ashamed At Pagan Pride
The circle. The circle is fundamental. This simple shape, along with the square and the triangle, introduces our early minds to geometry, to symmetry, to physical and social design. This past weekend I felt ashamed at Pagan Pride on account of a circle. My body helped form the edge of a circle. My body stood […]
-
Keep Paganism Weird
Ever been to Austin? If you have, you’ll recognize the title of this post, Keep Paganism Weird, as a variation of the city’s popular catch phrase. Plastered on buildings and bumper stickers is a reminder that Austin has a history of wild, weird culture, and that it’s important that the young’ins continue the cultural tradition […]
-
A Daily Practice Matters
This morning we slept in until 7:30. That may not seem incredibly early to some (it isn’t all that early for my husband and I), but it’s a vacation compared to the day of surgery and the first day of recovery. We woke to discover that my kid was experiencing some sharp pain, a common […]
-
Gender Essentialism is a Problem, Pagans.
Inspired by a comment posted on Trans Is A Teacher For All Of Us, I posted the following status update to Facebook: “I wonder how my Wiccan friends might respond to the idea that the Lord and Lady gave us our form, or that a trans person transitioning is the greatest insult to them.” The […]
-
Autumn Becomes Emotional
The Rosemary is hanging all about my room, dried and waiting to be stripped from the stem. I look out the window, and the smattering of leaves around my house, an autumnal moat, is a reminder that there are still many things to do in preparation for the winter. The silence I used to write in, […]
-
What Do Pagans Want To Read In Their Blogs, Magazines And Books?
Writing is a bitch sometimes. I’ve given myself a number of writing projects, some religious in nature and some more scholastic. Some are a blending of the both. I’ve also begun to explore what it would be like to take my writing to print. All of these things are squeezed into my calendar and shuffled […]
-
THE DRUIDS ARE COMING! Plant a tree.
Open yourself to the movement of creativity in your life, and there is no telling what will happen. I have a tradition of rearranging plastic, magnetic letters on the back of my local coffee shop’s espresso machine to make ridiculous phrases. While waiting for my chai (much lower in caffeine than the triple espresso I used to drink), I […]
-
How Do We Respond to Conflict in Pagan Communities?
Paganism, on the surface, seems like a retreat from the challenges posed by organized religion. Our great, mostly-pentacle-shaped umbrella, under which all shades, shapes and sizes of earth loving, god or goddess invoking creatures rest, looks to the untrained eye like a respite from bureaucracy, miscommunication, and any of the other ills of “The Church.” It […]
-
How Do You Know It’s The Gods You’re Listening To?
Since I began working through the Dedicant Path this second time, I’ve run across a number of people who are also starting their studies with ADF. They’re showing up in the comment section on Bishop In The Grove, on Facebook, and I’m wondering if there’s some deeper meaning behind it. A friend of mine suggested […]
-
How Much Stuff Does One Pagan Need?
Should I let go of my stuff? Should I have a metaphysical yard sale, in which I sell my Cunningham books, my surplus of pewter jewelry, and my… …ahem… …crystals? Should I rid my closet of the long, green, hooded robe I’ve worn twice, my Guatemalan patchwork jacket I scored for $7 bucks, or my […]
-
You Can Take a Druid Out of the Woods…
In the morning, after (almost) sleeping through a night of 28 degree weather, I headed to the edge of the water to make my offerings. Pumpkin seeds were what I had to give, for they were what I had to eat. I proceeded through the same ritual I outlined in my post last week, only […]
-
Paganism Beyond the Warm and Fuzzy
I fell into a frozen lake once. It was winter, and we were on holiday from school. I was running ahead of my two cousins and my older brother, and I hit a thin patch. In no time, my tiny body was submerged. The water was violently cold, and I was certain I was going […]
