I is for Individual Practice
One of the most exciting — and at the same time intimidating — things about coming to paganism from a background within organised religion is the necessity of developing one’s own practice. Stepping...
View ArticleJ is for Joy
“I have issues with anyone who treats God like a burden instead of a blessing [...] You people don’t celebrate your faith, you mourn it.” – Dogma (1999) Joy is one of the more profound spiritual...
View ArticleJ is for Jesus
A strange choice, perhaps, for the pagan blog project, but bear with me. There are a lot of people in the world who have been hurt to one degree or another by the Christian faith. Here in Ireland, the...
View ArticlePrayers & thanksgiving
Michaela and Michael over at the Asatru Ring Frankfurt & Midgard have put up a series of online shrines to various heathen gods (and one for the honored dead). It’s well worth a visit; I took some...
View ArticleK is for… Kissing the Hag by Emma Restall-Orr
Hag is not a nice word. Yet there comes a time in every woman’s life when nice is tedious, when nice is insipid, seeping into the soul like souring milk, warping the mind. Indeed, nice can, at times,...
View ArticleL is for… Lammastide
Being so staggeringly behind on my Pagan Blog Project means that I can write about Lammas in a timely fashion — for the season, if not the project. Lammas (Anglo-Saxon Hlafmas, “Loaf Mass”) is the...
View ArticleM is for Mardöll
Freyja has many names, and this is the cause thereof: that she gave herself sundry names, when she went out among unknown peoples seeking Ódr: she is called Mardöll and Hörn, Gefn, Sýr. - Gylfaginning...
View ArticleN is for The New Age Movement
The subculture that became known as New Age was a Seventies off-shoot of the counterculture of the Sixties. Nevill Drury’s 2004 examination of the topic in his book ‘The New Age: Searching for the...
View ArticleO is for Óðr
Óðr is another obscure Vanic-related deity, referenced by Snorri as Freyja’s husband and the father of Gersemi and Hnossa. There’s very, very little written about Him and most of what is, is...
View ArticleRethinking Vanatru
In the great Norse cosmos, there are three pantheons. The Aesir, headed by their shaman-King Odin, is steel and thunder — a fierce, conquering wolfpack who wear an air of civilization that is barely...
View Article
