Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 40

More Queer Magic interviews

I’m doing a series of interviews with queer magical practitioners. So far there are eight published: River Enodian, Fire Lyte, Misha Magdalene, Enfys Book, Cassandra Snow, David Dashifen Kees, Soli, and Julian Vayne.

Coming soon: Phil Hine, Matt Wisner of Trinity Tarot, Crow of the Marget Inglis School of Witchcraft, and more. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so as not to miss them.

The Threefold Law

I have discussed the Threefold Law in several previous articles but it’s never had its own post before. Most people get the wrong idea about the Threefold Law. It does not actually say that you get back threefold what you send out.

The so-called law of threefold return is actually a misinterpretation of Wiccan liturgy. It is not saying that there’s some cosmic law that means that what you send out will return threefold. The rule is actually telling witches to return good threefold when w...

The Northumbrian Futhark

I have always liked the Northumbrian Futhark more than the Elder Futhark or the Anglo-Saxon Futhark. The extra runes in the Northumbrian Futhark cover some important concepts that are not dealt with in earlier futharks. My own rune set is this futhark.

We had a big sort through of stuff that never got unpacked after we moved from England and I found this rather faded representation of the Northumbrian Futhark, which has 33 runes. I think I made this in around 1991, and had it stuck to a d...

Magnetic poetry

Secret night song

Now you can make fridge poems on the internet. Hat-tip to The Skeptic’s Kaddish.

How to use gender-inclusive language

By Enfys Book

I originally wrote this for an internal blog at work, and my colleagues and friends requested I repost it publicly to be shared more widely. I’ve …

How to use gender-inclusive language

Not the messiah

A few years ago, I organized an event where Philip Heselton gave a talk based on his excellent multi-volume biography of Gerald Gardner. He was looking for a title and said that the talk was about the murkier aspects of Gardner’s life. I suggested calling it “He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy” which I’m sure you will recognize as a line from The Life of Brian by Monty Python. So that was the title of the talk.

Philip’s biography goes into full detail about all the stuff that ...

Books I read in January

I’ve set myself the goal of 52 books this year, but I don’t know if I am going to read as many as that. Not that it matters, because this is about the joy of reading, not the quantity. And I’m very happy to have started the year with The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane, as it’s a really beautiful book.

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, by Robert Macfarlane

I bought this book before leaving England and hadn’t read it till now because I was afraid that it would trigger immense hiraeth and s...

Everything you think you know about Wicca is wrong

This blogpost was inspired by this conversation on Twitter:

That’s OK, I’m the “knows everything occultist”, so I’d just tell you that everything you think you know about Wicca is wrong. It would be fun

(Actually that’d make a great blogpost title: “everything you think you know about Wicca is wrong”.)

— 𝕐𝕧𝕠𝕟𝕟𝕖 𝔸𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕨 (@vogelbeere) January 30, 2021

The snark quotient of this post may be dangerously high — you’re strongly advised to put your snark goggles on, because I have a snark hammer a...

If your coven is inclusive, say so

Recently I was contacted by someone from the USA looking for an inclusive coven. Having ascertained what state they’re in, we started trawling through the coven listings on Mandragora Magika. It’s hard to figure out from the listings which covens are inclusive.

I’m currently reading Queering Your Craft by Cassandra Snow, in which they basically say don’t bother joining a coven because they’re all heterocentric, and single out Gardnerian Wicca in particular as the biggest culprit. I and ma...

New map of the landscape of gender

Intrepid explorers have discovered new towns and villages on the landscape of gender. The continent of Xenogender and Neogender has been discovered. The villages of Theyby (mapped by the cartographer as Theybes, owing to influence from the Greek geographer Strabo), Enby, and Thonthwaite have been established near Much Genderqueer in the Marsh.

Our intrepid cartographer was unable to map the Cave of Trans Men, as it was near the Secret Volcano Base. She was also unable to locate the underwate...