Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 31
January 30, 2022
Books I read in January 2022
I love this book. I mean okay so it takes them absolutely ages to leave the Shire (17 years between Bilbo’s birthday party and when they actually leave? I mean!) and I love Tom Bombadil but I have to read everything he says as if it was prose or else his tune goes through my head for days. This is also not a modern book (it’s not OK that orcs are black-skinned, or that there are no main female characters). But sometimes the prose rises to great beauty ...
January 14, 2022
Heresy and haeresis
Heresy and haeresis 
In Ancient Greece, a haeresis was one of many schools of thought. Christianity made heresy a bad thing, a deviation from the norm. In Paganism, having many schools of thought is a good thing.
January 6, 2022
Non-occult books that inform magical practice
I urge you: for a witchcraft practice- read a bunch of non- occult books. Read queer theory. Read academic history. Read craft books. Read polisci and social theory. It all feeds back in. It will make you a better practitioner.
— Austin Fuller (@banexbramble) December 28, 2021
My magical practice has definitely been influenced by books other than specifically occult ones.
I am a big fan of science fiction, especially Ursula Le Guin. I have also learned from theory of science fiction (...
January 1, 2022
On tradition
On tradition 
Tradition is a living, breathing, growing thing. It develops new practices in keeping with the spirit of the original. Trying to keep a tradition as an unchanging thing will cause it to stagnate and die.
Queer Pagan Reading List 2022
New titles this year by Enfys Book of the Major Arqueerna blog, Casey Giovinco, Fire Lyte of the Inciting a Riot podcast, Aaron Oberon, Fio Gede Parma and Jane Meredith, Lee Morgan, Devdutt Pattanaik, Roberto Strongman, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, plus translations into other languages of Mat Auryn’s book Psychic Witch.
Check out the 2015 list, the 2018 list, the 2020 list, and the 2021 list.
Yvonne AburrowAll Acts of Love & Pleasure: inclusive Wicca – Yvonne Aburrow (2014)[INCLUSIV...
December 31, 2021
Books I read in 2021
At the start of the year, I figured I’d try to read around one book a week. Then I faffed around in January starting books and not finishing them, and thought I’d fall well short of 52 books, so I reset my Goodreads target to 42 books (42 being a resonant number for Hitch-hikers fans).
Around the middle of the year, I did a lot of reading, especially while we were camping, so I got ahead of schedule, and ended up with 52 books by the middle of December. Of course, I don’t read to complete tar...
Books I read in December 2021
This month has been an odd mixture. I finally finished Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, which I started in November. And I read Rewards and Fairies which is quite a melancholy book. I also finally got hold of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows in book form, for which I’ve been waiting for a long time, but it’s more of a dipping book. I read Esmond in India and found it a bit depressing. Then I read a collection of interviews with Ursula K Le Guin.
Rewards and Fairies, Rudyard Kipling...Books I read in December
This month has been an odd mixture. I finally finished Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, which I started in November. And I read Rewards and Fairies which is quite a melancholy book. I also finally got hold of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows in book form, for which I’ve been waiting for a long time, but it’s more of a dipping book. I read Esmond in India and found it a bit depressing. Then I read a collection of interviews with Ursula K Le Guin.
Rewards and Fairies, Rudyard Kipling...December 29, 2021
Unexamined Baggage
Both individual Pagans, and Pagan traditions, have unexamined baggage from their childhood. Individual Pagans have intellectual and emotional baggage from the tradition they grew up in (even if that tradition was atheism). Pagan traditions have baggage from the era in which they emerged.
Before you assume that something is just a given in your personal worldview or the worldview of your tradition, you should check to see where it came from, and whether it gets you to where you want to go...
December 14, 2021
The Rose
The rose is the flower of Venus and the symbol of love in all its delicious variety. It is symbolically linked to Adonis, Aphrodite, Dionysus and Eros. Greek lovers gave roses as a courting gift to their eromenoi. “So must you beautiful boys arm yourselves with roses,” wrote Philostratus in the second century CE.
According to mythology, Aphrodite trod on the thorns of a white rose-bush when she rushed to succour her mortally-wounded lover Adonis. Her blood stained the petals red, and this...
