Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 2

Shrub and switchel

If you’re looking for refreshing non-alcoholic drinks for your Pagan ritual or circle, these 19th century recipes might be helpful, and they’re very easy to make. Getting the quantities right can be a bit tricky, so I’d recommend experimenting before serving them to other people.

Old-fashioned drinksSwitchel recipeRaspberry Shrub recipeLinks and sourcesOld-fashioned drinks

Yesterday evening we watched a video on how to make switchel, a summer drink from 19th centu...

Well this is awkward

I have just checked and I have 75 unread messages via my contact form, which I assumed when I set it up would forward messages to my email.

Sincere apologies to anyone who has used the contact form to send me a message. I will work through the messages and reply to any that are still current.

I usually post articles via my phone, and I do not see the messages on the WordPress app for iPhone.

I will try to keep an eye on my contact form in future!

Understanding religions

A few years ago I advocated for a Holi (Hindu festival) celebration at my place of work. They said “we don’t do religious holidays”. I said, “But you just did something for Valentine’s Day, Pancake Day, and Easter.” They replied that those are “just part of the culture of Canada”. My Hindu colleague and I went ahead and started organizing something just for our office. Unfortunately it was just before the start of the pandemic so we had to cancel it.

If we wanted to celebrate something that i...

9 sure-fire ways to make your post go viral

The original version of fake news was called propaganda — originally a means of disseminating the Catholic religion, then from about 1914, a news item meant to promote a political point of view. Propaganda is related to “propagation”, the cultivation of plants to increase them. This is similar to the concept of something “going viral” — spreading so fast that it’s almost like it’s doing it invisibly, like a virus.

So what are the key ingredients of a viral story?

1. Make it untrue ...

Collective punishment?

Here’s a question to which I don’t have an answer. Given that there are Those Who Walk Among Us who seem very confident that all women and/or all feminists agree with the recent decision by the Supreme Court in the UK, and similar views elsewhere … how did we get to this point? How do we get back to a more reasonable position ?

When I’ve tried to argue with people who disagree with me about trans women being women, I have found that sharing articles arguing a trans-inclusive point of view...

Pagan Roots is now available

“Pagan Roots: Reclaiming Concepts of the Sacred,” by Yvonne Aburrow.

Available now from 1000Volt Press via books2read.com/paganroots

Cover art by Lydia Knox.

“Pagan Roots: Reclaiming concepts of the sacred” will be published on 22 April 2025 and available from all online stores.

Contemporary Paganism has sought to recover some concepts that were lost or rejected in past centuries, but has ignored or rejected others that were absorbed into Christian discourse. Can we reclaim some of ...

Trans is beautiful

In light of recent events in the United States (anti-trans legislation and the erosion of trans rights) and the United Kingdom (a recent Supreme Court ruling which limited the definition of a woman to “biological women only”), I want to reaffirm the following:

Trans women are women; 

Trans men are men;

Nonbinary genders are valid.

I has always stood for the full inclusion of LGBTQ2SIA people in Wicca, and I will always affirm that gender is far more than biology, and that people’s ow...

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High control covens

There’s a new article from Storm Faerywolf on The Wild Hunt today talking about the warning signs of high control groups and covens.

Members of these damaged covens are often instructed not to socialize with others outside the group, or lineage, or are otherwise told certain individuals to avoid. Information is often restricted; leadership oftentimes telling congregants that certain books or materials are forbidden, especially those that challenge the teachings or politics of group leadersh...

Pagan Words Challenge 2025

The Pagan Words Challenge 2025 invites you to pick a word you’d like to explore the connotations of, and look at its use in poetry and prose, its etymology, its history, and/or what it means in your spiritual practice.

This challenge is a bit different from the previous ones (Changing Paths challenge 2023 and 2024), as it doesn’t have daily prompts. It can be exhausting producing a blogpost every day. I know I was happy when I was done at the end of the month.

So pick a blogging cadence th...