Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 3

Cover reveal – Pagan Roots

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

It will be published by 1000Volt Press on 22 April 2025 and available from all online stores.

Cover art by Lydia Knox

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 these terms and recover their original meanings?

Praise for Pagan Roots

Words have r...

NASA intern found hope in the Moon

This article was originally published on the NASA website.

It’s not on the NASA website anymore: it was erased because of the anti-DEI activity of the Trump regime. You can access it on the Wayback Machine archive, or by reading on.

NASA Intern Found Hope in the MoonNASA Webb Telescope TeamSEP 20, 2022

Written by Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters

Lee esta historia en español aquí

When Rose Ferreira first saw an image of a field of galaxies and galaxy cluster...

Resistance Around the Table

by Sabina Magliocco

My dining room table was purchased in Paris at the end of the 1800s when my great-grandfather Giulio de Castro married my great-grandmother, Marguerite Weil. It is a solid, beautifully-crafted Second Empire-style piece made of European walnut.  With both leaves attached, it can seat twelve. It is the kind of piece an upper-middle-class family would have wanted at the turn of the 20th century to demonstrate its prosperity and hospitality to guests and family members alike. ...

Noteworthy posts — Nimue Brown edition

If you’re not following Nimue Brown, I highly recommend her posts. Always thoughtful and helpful, whether she’s writing about activism, Druidry, writing, or life in general.

Injustice and Druidry

A set of magic bullets

Peace on Earth

Nimue Brown

Activism and News

People who say that you can’t do anything about world events: that is what collective action is for. Boycotting products that harm people you care about is very effective. The BDS movement has shown that. Letter-writing is very effective. Mass protest is effective (though it doesn’t always feel like it). It helps to build momentum for the cause, at the very least.

A guy I once chatted with at a demonstration said it’s best to pick one cause and work on that. Otherwise you end up scattering yo...

Books I read in 2024

Statistics

Sone of these categories overlap.

29 books by women27 books by men 3 books by People of Colour (needs increasing!)33 fiction books23 non-fiction 11 landscape / history / walking2 books of letters2 biographies (Stewart Farrar; Mary Wesley)19 witchy / occult / magic (fiction and non-fiction)19 science fiction and fantasy 1 politics

Review: An Apostate’s Guide to Witchcraft

Once upon a time, Christendom labelled the Emperor Julian “the Apostate” because he reverted to Paganism. Nowadays, the title is applied to people who leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Moss Matthey left the JWs in order to live his truth as a gay man—as many others have left high control religious groups for the same reason.

Not long after he left, he discovered witchcraft, as well as a loving relationship and a community of Pagans and witches and occultists.

This joyous and life-affirmin...

“Festivals are made up.”

“Axial tilt is the reason for the season.”

This is true, but it doesn’t stop us from creating meaningful festivals in response to the season.

“Festivals are made up.”

Also true, but they’re not arbitrary or random. Festivals are created by people in response to their stories, their needs, and their environment.

It’s dark and cold in December in Northern Europe so people light bonfires, candles, fairy lights etc, eat lots of food to survive the cold, and tell stories for entertain...

Gendered spaces

I just saw this post on Threads and it is something that I have been noticing a lot as well. And it does make me feel excluded, as a nonbinary person. It also makes older cis women feel excluded (because “girls” implies younger women).

There’s an assumption in many witch spaces that all witches are women. This often gets perpetuated in witch books as well. This bugs me. There are male witches, nonbinary witches. Witchcraft is not restricted to one gender, nor to any other social categ...

The spirits of Yuletide

The huge diversity of personifications, spirits, deities, and other entities that are associated with Yule and Christmas is astonishing. There are multiple versions of Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus); there’s Krampus, Black Peter or Sooty Piet, Perchta, Lucia, Frau Holle, Befall, the Yule Goat, the Yule Cat, and many more. Not forgetting the three Dickensian ghosts from A Christmas Carol, and the spectral protagonists of many a festive ghost story.

Old Father Christmas (England)

Old...