Yvonne Aburrow's Blog, page 73

Creating Meaningful Public Ritual

We have all been to rituals that fell flat, or didn't work as intended. We have all facilitated such rituals, and hopefully learnt from them. Public ritual doesn't have to be dull and lacking in transcendence, and it needn't involve a lot of standing around being bored. And it absolutely should be a transformative and meaningful experience that makes us feel more connected to the numinous, to Nature, to the gods, and to our community.

Living Traditions

A culture, and a religion, is a massively complex system of interlocking ideas, philosophies, symbols, and practices.

Paganism and the Body Class Sneak Peek

This Fall I'm offering Paganism and the Body, a 14-week graduate-level online class in body theology and sexual ethics, at Cherry Hill Seminary. This may be the last time a class like this is available for some years, so if you're thinking about signing up, please do it soon! We start Sept. 12.

My Polytheism

One of the things I really like about polytheism is its inherent plurality. Gods and spirits are not one single entity, but a multiplicity of identities, local and finite and specific and particular. They can be the consciousness of rocks and trees and water; or deified humans; or forces of Nature, spirits of place, emerging from the complexity of the universe (or multiverse).

Hospitality for the Stranger

Both hospitality and reciprocity are Pagan virtues and have been since ancient times. Honour is also important in many Pagan traditions, and I think the honourable thing to do is to welcome the stranger.

Poem on a Birthday

All the myths and stories tell us the gift exists to be transformed and passed on, or it loses its power.

Why Black Lives Matter (Too) – A Book Review #BlackLivesMatter

Black Lives Matter (Too) critiques racial injustice in the United States in a huge variety of contexts, and it does so with equal servings of research and personal narrative. It is a a powerful resource for anti-racism educators.

UK Satanic Abuse Scare: 25 Years On

As a pagan who has also worked in the press for the past 30-odd years, it isn’t the first time I’ve come across fellow witches not believing I can be both. Journalists have been among the biggest enemies of modern pagan witches since the mid 20th century – and during the late 1980s to early 1990s we fanned the flames of the Satanic Panic with lurid stories such as those in the clippings at the top of this post.

A Tale of Two Britains

It ought to be obvious to anyone that Tory-imposed austerity is responsible for the economic misery that has cut services and reduced jobs and rendered many areas full of despair. Certainly, the brutal realities of capitalists accumulating wealth at everybody else's expense also plays into this, causing division between the people they prey upon. Instead, people blame immigration and the EU.So we have been led to the brink by a group of irresponsible and out-of-touch upper class twits, as The New Yorker immediately grasped. And although the 17 million who voted to leave the EU didn't all vote that way on the basis of anti-immigration, the racists who are currently committing vile acts of hate up and down the land have felt empowered to do so because they are assuming that the rest of the Leave voters agreed with them.

Pagan Ritual for Pulse, Orlando

After the Orlando shooting, a small group of LGBTQIA Pagans came together to create a ritual for the dead of Orlando. The group is called Wands Up for Orlando. The founder, Salvatore Caci, wrote: Why “wands up”? In the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, after the death of Dumbledore, all students of Hogwarts [Read More...]