Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 39

The melancholy of lost spaces

There are spaces that once existed that we can no longer visit. The bedroom I had as a child is gone. I went to university. My parents sold the house and relocated the remainder of my stuff to the new house. That was a cute room, too. Various apartments I’ve lived in over the years, creating cosy spaces — those spaces can never be exactly recreated. Even if your parents still live in the same house and didn’t redecorate your childhood room — you still see it through different eyes as an adult.

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Writing tips

I’ve been writing for most of my life, so it’s hard for me to analyze what I do. Most of the time I just write. However, even for the most experienced writer, it’s helpful to practice different styles and types of writing, as that’s a good way to improve.

Find your words. Practice writing frequently. Use writing prompts (Write for your life, Small Beauties).

Write for your life is a series of prompts for writing daily reflections and prayers by Merle Feld.

Small Beauties is a prac...

Names for Pagan Festivals

You might be wondering where the names of contemporary Pagan festivals come from, and why some of them them are controversial. Here’s a brief history of where they come from, and why it matters.

Beltane and Imbolc and Lughnasadh and Samhain are Irish and Scottish Gaelic names (the English names are May Day, Candlemas, Lammas, and Halloween or All Hallows Eve). Yule and Litha and Eostur are Anglo-Saxon names.

Imbolc or Candlemas

The name Imbolc is Irish and Scots Gaelic, and refers t...

Books I read in March

I’m trying to read more books this month as January and February have been a slow start. Currently reading The Meaning of Witchcraft by Gerald Gardner, which led me down an interesting rabbit hole about spiritualism and witchcraft.

Mr Rosenblum’s List by Natasha Solomons

This is a lovely book. I had read it before but I like reading things for a second time as you get more details. My favourite character is Sadie. She wants to remember their life in Berlin and her relatives who died in...

Writing a ritual

A step by step guide to creating a ritual.

1. Are you writing a seasonal ritual? What symbols are associated with the season?

Example: you are writing a ritual for Beltane, so you write a quick list of symbols associated with Beltane: Hawthorn, May blossom, May poles, Morris dancing, the Beltane fire, creativity, lust, joy.

2. What are your goals and intentions for the ritual? What concepts do you want to get across? What symbols would help with that?

Example: we want to be inclu...

Spiritualism and Witchcraft

I am currently rereading The Meaning of Witchcraft by Gerald Gardner. I know I read his book Witchcraft Today about 30 years ago, and I am pretty sure that I read The Meaning of Witchcraft around that time too. His theory of the survival of witchcraft must have seemed pretty convincing to his earliest readers; and provided we do not assume that what survived was a full-blown Pagan religion, or an organized cult, then a lot of his ideas still hold water: namely, the impulses behind the earliest f...

Books I read in February

I started a few books but haven’t finished them yet. I’ve started Terminal World by Alastair Macdonald and Queering Your Craft by Cassandra Snow.

The Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey

I thought this would be a nice escapist book like the Pern series, but instead it was a rather plodding plot and I didn’t like the main character. I liked the drinkers of Yarran beer. I did not appreciate the number of times that the main character ended up in bed with men whose lives had been artificially...

BIPOC Tarot Decks

When I did my post on BIPOC Pagan and occult authors, I did Google for Tarot decks, but I did not find much. The amazing  @revolutionary_mystic on Instagram has compiled a list of BIPOC Tarot creators.

Dust II Onyx @dust2onyxtarot⁠⁠

Next World Tarot @croadcore⁠⁠

The Star-Spinner Tarot @trungles⁠⁠

The Sibyls Oraculum, Hoodoo Tarot @tayannahleemcquillar⁠⁠

Flora and Fauna of Africa Deck, Afro tarot @jessijumanji⁠⁠

Akamara @akamaratarot⁠⁠

A Deck for Wonder Walking @amytwon⁠⁠

Kaleidadope tarot @k...

The Ardanes

I was not passed the Ardanes, so I have never recognized them as part of my Craft. However, they are of historical interest. Not because I believe them to have been written (or at least compiled) any earlier than the 20th century, but because of the light they shed upon the ideas of early Wiccans as to how the Craft could be organized.

It is fairly widely believed that Gardner wrote them, or at least compiled them from a collection of earlier ideas which he presumably picked up from the New F...

The Wiccan Rede

The concept of the Wiccan Rede is frequently and widely misunderstood and misquoted. The full version is “An it harm none, do what thou wilt”. (If it harms no one, do what you want / do your True Will.) I have written about this before but haven’t devoted an entire blogpost to it.

The Wiccan attitude to ethics is mainly based on the Wiccan Rede. However, it is significant that this injunction occurs as part of the first degree initiation, and was probably originally meant to show the new...