Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 14

Secret night song – new poetry book

New poetry book, just published.

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Poetry reflecting on the land, the seasons, and the hidden rhythms of Nature.

The Fae Café

I had a really weird dream on Sunday morning where I was going for a hike with a group of people. We stopped at a café among some trees. One of the group looked askance at the pancakes, but he and another person ate them. It turned out that the café was an outpost of the Fae and the pancakes were faery food so they were now in thrall to the Queen of Elfhame. (Not a person who normally shows up in my dreams.) I lucid-dreamed my way back into the dream and rescued them by reciting the Old English ...

Bwahahaha

Delighted to report that my interview with Phil Hine has reached 666 views — someone will probably go and watch it now but let’s all take a moment to enjoy the occult symbolism of this.

The interview is part of my Queer Magic series on YouTube

Falastin

Fingernails cracked and bloody

Tearing at the rubble

That stopped their mouths.

Their mouths that kissed,

Ate olives and pomegranates,

Read poetry, spoke of their dreams.

Stories, worlds, lives,

Broken and choked with dust

A dry rivulet, stopped in the sand.

Death from the sky, relentless.

Words stall and fail, stuttering,

Stumbling across miles of broken buildings.

The land remembers them.

The wind whispers their names.

The stones cry si...

Coven leaders support groups

Other religious traditions have formal support groups for leaders in their traditions. In Wicca, we tend to have informal support networks.

Given the potential for stress and burnout, and the occasional need to discuss issues that arise in a safe and supportive space, I think it would be a great idea to organize slightly more scheduled and formal support groups.

What would the framework for such a group look like?

Meeting outline

Each meeting would start with a check-in, where ea...

It could happen

If you can imagine something, it could happen. This applies equally to events of both beauty and terror.

Imagination begets hope, and hope begets action.

If you can imagine the end of genocide, colonialism, capitalism, they could end — if we work towards that goal.

If you can imagine world peace, taking care of the environment, and of all humans and animals, then it could happen, if we dare to hope and work towards it.

Back in the day, people could scarcely imagine equality for w...

The nights are drawing in

As the nights draw in and the winter cold sweeps over the land, thoughts turn to inner experience, trees and night. I was reminiscing a couple of days ago about the childhood feeling of being warm in the back of the car while my parents were driving in the dark, and the car headlights illuminating the trunks of trees in passing. Such a mysterious light.

Photo: Hacer (2018)

Be like trees

In the early 1990s when I was first starting out on my witchy path, I was taught that, whilst the Age of Aquarius (or whatever you want to call the post-capitalism world) is at hand, the old order won’t just disappear: it will fight tooth and nail to retain its grip on power. We are seeing that now: the genocides happening everywhere, the right introducing anti-trans laws, the overturning of Roe v Wade, the arrest and persecution of climate change activists.

We can also see signs of the b...

Indigenous water rights

I wrote this in July 2019.

I am currently sitting beside Lake Erie (Erielhonan), one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world. The surface area of the Great Lakes is about the same as the surface area of the British Isles (a statistic I’ve often quoted to impress the sheer size of Canada upon my fellow English people).

Despite Canada possessing the largest body of fresh water in the world, a significant percentage of the original inhabitants of this northern area of Turtle Island ...

Solon’s 10 guidelines

The “Ten Commandments” of Solon (as recorded in Diogenes Laertius’ “Lives of Eminent Philosophers”, 1.60), are as follows:

Trust good character more than promises.Do not speak falsely.Do good things.Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.Learn to obey before you command.When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.Make reason your supreme commander.Do not associate with people who do bad things....