Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 55
June 30, 2019
Books I’ve read in June
I started the month with The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams but I just couldn’t get into it. Feeling nostalgic, I reread The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates, and then Quantum Night by Robert Sawyer (for a reading group that I’ve started at work).
The Greater Trumps, by Charles WilliamsI’m not sure if I didn’t finish this because it was the third Williams book in a row, or because I didn’t really warm to any of the characters, or because I couldn’t visualize what the moving Tarot figures were...
June 21, 2019
Notable and quotable 16
French Druids, tidings of Ragnarok, responding to the climate emergency.
French DruidsRyan Cronin reviews a French documentary about Druidry in France. The trailer is stunning, so the film looks well worth a watch.
Druides – neo, as the film is charmingly called, is both engagingly told and beautifully shot, making the absolute most of the breathtaking French mountains, forests and coasts. The three Druids featured show a wonderful combination of Druidic wisdom and down-to-earth practicalit...
June 15, 2019
Pride is a Protest
Pride started as a riot. As everyone knows (or should know by now), Pride commemorates a riot at the Stonewall Inn. A riot that lasted six whole days, and changed the course of the gay rights movement from one of assimilationism to the celebration of queerness. And two of the main leaders, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, were Latinx and Black drag queens.
A major LGBT rights organization in the UK (which only added the T relatively recently) was named Stonewall to commemorate the riot. P...
June 14, 2019
Notable and quotable 15
Posts that got my attention this week. A reminder that humans are animals and a part of nature; fatphobia; the birth of Witch Lit; the power of stories.
Humans are animals tooThe Decolonial Atlas shared a map with the distribution of all the great apes, including humans.
This is a simple map showing the current ranges for the eight living great ape species. It’s otherwise unremarkable except for the inclusion of the forgotten ape – us. Seeing ourselves as part of a wider biological group –...
June 12, 2019
Steve Wilson
I was reading the fascinating American Folkloric Witchcraft blog, and came across a post about folk rhymes and witchcraft. This reminded me of a talk given by Steve Wilson in 2004, in an attempt to launch a witchcraft tradition that would be like how you imagined witchcraft would be, before you found Wicca. It also included a disquisition on the possible esoteric significance of One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, among other cryptic folk rhymes.
Remember that back in 2004, hardly anyone knew about tr...
June 7, 2019
Notable and quotable 14
This week, some interesting attempts to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable: science and spirituality, the Bible and feminism.
A post drawing a much-needed distinction between beauty and glamour, which are all-too-often confused with each other. And a post about the often contradictory mythology and folklore of owls. And an amazing post about how magic, prayer, and visualization can be explained with the ideas of morphic resonance.
Science and spiritualityBeith at Wandering the Woods has...
June 6, 2019
Pride questionnaire
My answers to the Pride Month questions posed by LaPelosa on Tumblr
what is your sexuality?
I am bisexual.
what gender do you identify as?
Genderqueer / nonbinary / genderfluid.
how long have you been aware of your gender?
Pretty much forever, before I had words to describe it. As a kid, I was a tomboy, and my parents encouraged me to like whatever hobbies and interests I wanted, regardless of gender.
how long have you been aware of your sexuality?
Since I was about 14.
share a positive mem...
June 1, 2019
Books I’ve read in May
Books I have read in May: Charles Williams, Tom Cox, and Silvana de Mari.
21st-Century Yokel by Tom CoxThis is such a lovely book and I am really enjoying it, but I am still only half-way through it. Tom Cox’s quirky perspective on life, scarecrows, animals, landscape, and walking is delightful, and by turns poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. I also love the way his dad talks in ALL CAPITALS.
The Last Elf by Silvana de Mari(translated into English by Shaun Whiteside, now titled The Last Dr...
May 31, 2019
Notable and quotable 13
What I have been reading this week.
The story of a love affairDandan Hansen has a beautiful post about the love story of his grandparents. Alaskan Sunrise: a gift for my family is a wonderful story of a deep and enduring love.
I am not talking about adventure in the normal sense (though adventure they often did), unless you, like me (raised in a family based on love), think of adventure as a romance that spanned almost seventy years, five children, ten directly descended grandchildren, a st...
May 30, 2019
Believing Survivors
“Shame stops children reporting abuse in religious institutions” – The Guardian
Every group where there’s trust and closeness attracts abusers. But there are some key features which make it more likely that abuse will go unchecked.
TW: abuse survivors may find some aspects of this article triggering.
Features of a system that are likely to enable abuseA culture of shame around sexuality will make it more likely that abusers can shame their victims into silence. If you’re coerced into believ...
