Category Archives: Wicca

Esbats: Celebrating Full Moons

Posted on by

Some people prefer to just celebrate the Sabbats. I see those as Sun holidays, since they are all determined by the solar calendar. The Esbats are Moon holidays, since they are determined by the moon. I think that celebrating both is important for a balance in my religious practice.

However, I had put off writing this article for a while because I never really celebrated these apart from a group. When I first started learning about Paganism in the form of Wicca, the only thing I knew to do to celebrate the full moon was to do a “Drawing Down of the Moon”. However, I had never progressed far enough in my Wiccan studies to learn how to do this, so once I started celebrating with a Circle that only sporadically celebrates full moons. For years, I didn’t really celebrate Full Moons. Sometimes I just forgot. Other times, I didn’t keep track of the full moons. Now that I am trying to revitalize my faith, I am trying to celebrate them. At the time of this writing, I still didn’t know how to do a “Drawing Down of the Moon”. I did some soul-searching and some research and this is what I came up with.

This is what this Esbat celebrates:

  • The most powerful time of the Lunar cycle
  • Most magically potent time of the Lunar cycle
  • The cyclic nature of life
  • Women’s monthly cycles
  • The Mother aspect of the Triple Goddess
  • Fertility and fruition

Here are some ways that I and others celebrate it culturally.

  • Dance under the full moon
  • Make some music: sing, play instruments, etc.
  • Walk outside
  • Bake moon cookies or crescent rolls
  • Make moon water
  • Do divination like runes, pentacles, tarot cards, etc.
  • Take a calming bath with candles, oils, or anything else that feels right to you.
  • Make a candle
  • Write poetry
  • Do something with the specific nature of which moon it is. Wear flowers for flower moon, eat strawberries for strawberry moon, etc.
  • Meditate

Here are some ideas for Full Moon rituals

  • Charge crystals, ritual tools, jewelry, or anything really
  • Write down any habits, fears, or anything else you want to get rid of. Burn the paper.
  • Ask the (usually female) deity of your choice for wisdom in a seashell. Hold the seashell to your ear to see what they have to say.
  • Consume moon water with ritual intent.
  • Do a purification ritual.
  • Any magical working that could use some extra power from the moon

Getting Unstuck – Pagans Restoring Their Path

Posted on by

I realized that working on improving my spirituality alone wasn’t doing anything. Sadly, even blogging about it wasn’t doing anything either. I decided to start a Facebook group: Getting Unstuck: Pagans Restoring their Path. I had debated starting it for a long time because I was struggling too. What was I supposed to offer anyone who was going through the same problems I was?

It was interesting. Most of the people had some of the same problems of time. Others had just not done anything in a while and felt a disconnect. It has been nice to discuss this with others who go through the same things. I had a few initial ideas for the discussion of just getting to know everyone, but I don’t know where to go from there. On the bright side, I have meditated 4 out of 7 days this week, so I am happy about that! I feel like I’m starting to get a small connection back and my intuition seems to be slowly returning. Even so, I wish I knew what to do with this group and how to help everyone!

My Blog was Noticed!

Posted on by

Apparently I somehow made the top 50 list of Pagan blogs. I find this interesting and amusing. First, they were incorrect in saying I only posted once a month — more like once a week. Second, it was interesting to see what they thought was important. No, I don’t have a twitter. I did decide to make a Facebook page. I should also probably update my description. They should probably update my images. Anyway, I think I’m like the 48th out of the top 50 Pagan Blogs. Yay!


Issues With Being a Mid-Level Pagan

Posted on by

Being a beginning Pagan was great! I read a bunch of books on Wicca, learned a lot, and did a fair amount of growth. When I felt like I learned all that books could teach me, I bought a bunch of ritual tools, set up and alter, and did a few solitary rituals. I felt very silly and ridiculous speaking aloud and doing the movements.

I found a teacher and some local new-age divination classes and learned some more. I participated in group rituals and stopped feeling silly every time I raised my arms to call a quarter. I learned Reiki and shamanic journeying. As I learned more, I realized I wasn’t just Wiccan. I started calling myself eclectic Pagan. Eventually, my relationship with my teacher went sour and she accused me of some pretty petty things.

I searched for a group to practice with for a long time. I was fortunate enough to live in an area that had access to several circles within an hour drive. The first one had a few red flags. They talked about nothing but cosmology, which is fine, but it didn’t interest me as much as it seemed to for them. But the biggest problem was they were showing photos from a festival they went to. There were several sky-clad people, which was to be expected in the Pagan community. Then they all chuckled about one woman who didn’t want her photo taken sky-clad, but they did it anyway, and were showing it to strangers. I realized these were not people I wanted to associate with.

The next circle looked more promising. I liked the people, but there was one woman who brought down the energy of every single circle. She was vegan, which wasn’t a problem with me, except for the fact that she would break down crying every single circle because the rest of the world eats meat and they can’t see what she sees. And it eventually became a problem. It was also clear she was missing key nutrients (there are plenty of healthy ways to eat vegan, she just wasn’t following them). She was bone-thin, her skin sagged, and she looked sickly. There was also a heavier member of the group who clearly envied her body and spent all her time plying her with questions to better follow her diet so she could be that thin. It was just an odd dynamic.

I found some other people who I really liked, but they wanted to start a Goddess-only group. Again, I don’t have a problem with Goddess-only worshippers, but for my particularly path, it seemed as one-sided as only worshipping a God. I personally feel that there should be a male/female duality in my particular practice.

I gave up looking and went to a local Shamanic Journeying meetup and some meditation classes. After a few times, I started chatting with a guy there who introduced me to his circle. That ended up being my current circle. The members are already trained and mid-level, so we just worked on different concepts each time we met. And I loved it — at first. Every year we would discuss what we needed and plan rituals based on that. I had Tyr contact me through another member of the circle. I didn’t know what to do with that or about it. It wasn’t a teaching circle.

Time went on. I ended up working in a Catholic School, so I retreated DEEPLY into the “broom closet”. I moved further away and attended circle less often. I had my son and was able to attend less often. They all live an hour or more away now and it’s tough for me to find the time to go. I love them all and respect them very much. When I do attend, I have to wrangle a toddler or spend even more time without my son (yes, it’s a no-win situation). I am still in the “broom closet” for fear of losing my job where I am very much in the public eye. Probably half of the town already knows me by sight, even though I don’t know most of them.

Now, I really struggle to find time to do anything Pagan-ish. There are no real classes for mid-level Pagans. I have been having problems finding the time for spirituality with a very mobile toddler. I can’t find the magic and excitement I once felt. I know I should be doing or thinking something daily, but I don’t even really know what to do to regain the feeling I once had in my faith when I first found it 20 years ago. I feel like there isn’t a whole lot out there for mid-level Pagans — that most of it is just meant for beginners Does anyone have some recommendations?

** Please note, this is an old post. I continued my education and at the time of this edit, I found some classes, completed my second degree, and am in the process of working on my third degree. **

To Those Who Discriminate Against Pagans

Posted on by

Dear Discriminator:
If you ever dropped a friendship because you found out your friend was Pagan, if you ever fired someone (or encouraged someone else to fire someone) because they wore a pentacle to work, if you ever told your kid not to play with someone because your family were witches, if you ever yelled at a stranger for worshipping the devil because they had a “my other car is a broomstick” sticker on their car, if you every called someone a witch, this letter is for you.

I don’t know what it is that you believe and I don’t care, because it is my opinion that religion does not make a person a good person. That seems to be where my beliefs differ from yours. Many folks seem to believe that your religion makes you a good person and if you are in the wrong religion, you are a bad person. That, and I expect that you don’t know or understand anything about Paganism. You probably just heard “pagan” as a bad word priests and pastors tend to use for non-believers. You probably heard the section of the bible that reads “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. So all you knew from this was that Pagans and witches were bad. They were people to avoid.

Most Pagans are not like you. They just want to worship how they want to worship and be left alone about it. They don’t want to convert you. They aren’t interested in anything other than acceptance. Unfortunately, acceptance is difficult to come by. There are so many Pagans, myself included, who have to hide what we are from the world because we are afraid of some very real repercussions. I have been fired twice for being Pagan. I know parents who have had their kids dropped by friends whose parents don’t want them playing with a Pagan. I have had strangers see my pentacle and yell at me for being a devil worshipper (back when I used to wear it in public). I just want to be myself and be left in peace. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t seem to be possible for people like me.

Pagans, in general, believe in multiple deities and are nature worshippers. The deities vary from one generic Goddess and one generic God to all of the gods from a pantheon (such as Greek, Norse, Celtic, Egyptian, etc.) Is that really that scary? Sure, some cast spells, but it’s really just focused prayer. We can’t turn people into toads. We just feel like a prayer is more likely to manifest if we do it with candles, incense, and crystals.

Pagans, in general, arrange their own worship. We are our own priests and priestesses. We don’t have churches and prefer to be out in nature. We are really very harmless. Most believe in the rule of three (everything you do comes back to you times three), similar to the Golden Rule (do unto others what you would like others to do unto you).

A lot of modern holidays were based on Pagan ones. Halloween was based off of Samhain, the Pagan celebration of the dead. At Christmas the wreaths, decorated tree, the jingle bells, the candles, and the gift-giving came from a number of Pagan holidays from Yule to Saternalia. Easter egg dying and chicks and bunnies came from Pagan holidays welcoming the spring. Sure, most modern Pagans have a few other holidays that also focus on the seasons of the year, but our holidays focus on what is going in nature at the time. Many also follow the moons and celebrate either the full or new moon.

So in conclusion, Pagans aren’t people to be feared, we are pretty harmless, we just want to be accepted. For those of you who have a faith, please do what your faith would consider to be right. If Jesus could accept and hang out with prostitutes, you can accept and hang out with Pagans.

If you have any questions about a Pagan in your life, please ask them rather than shun them.

Brightest Blessings,
Autumn Stoneflower

Learning Tarot

Posted on by

I had gotten my first degree of Correllian Wicca from witchschool.com back in the day. Since I was trying to improve my spirituality, I decided to go for my second degree. I was a little disappointed to find that the first lesson after the introduction (which I failed) was on tarot. I was hoping for maybe some advanced techniques in energy use, improving the chakras, how to do advanced things like draw down the moon, learn more about the Gods or Pantheons, etc. However, there was just this lesson about the history of tarot and how to use them for divination. I was disappointed, but decided to go with it.

As someone who owned one set of tarot cards that have maybe been used 5 times in the past 10 years, I decided to do what I could. I always understood tarot to give pictorial messages, so I went with it. However, there were specific meanings given to each card by witchschool, which I was trying to learn. So I did a spread like this, read through the witchschool version, read through the booklet that came with the cards, and then attempted to read the pictures to see what stood out at me. The witchschool versions were difficult to decipher. The booklet seemed to indicate that things would go well with buying our house. However, my brain was too muddled from the first two, I really couldn’t concentrate on figuring out what my intuition told me. I will keep working on the tarot cards, but these are not my strength. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to get better though!

Does anyone have any hints about learning tarot?

Tidying Up: Step 4 – Komono – Spiritual Items

Posted on by

Since I started this blog as a spiritual journey, I figured I would tackle the spiritual items first. Since I moved, these were scattered in various locations throughout my bedroom, cluttering up everything. I made a pile intending to take care of it right away. However, I ended up letting it sit for a week instead. My altar is an old TV stand, so it just has two shelves to hold everything. In the past, I had a whole drawer elsewhere dedicated to divination items. I had my drum, incense, and various other articles located on my bedroom bookshelves.

My pile of spiritual stuff. I daresay many people would have a bigger pile than I do!

I made three piles: one of items that I LOVED. One was stuff to give away or throw away. The third had items I wasn’t sure about. I was thorough. I took all of my seashells out of their container and went though them. I took all of my gemstones out of their container and went through them. The majority of the items I wasn’t sure about ended up being kept, but I am happy and proud to say that everything now fits underneath my altar now, even my drum!

Imbolc With My Family

Posted on by

As I think I have stated before, we are trying to celebrate the Pagan sabbats (holidays) more as cultural holidays. For Imbolc, we planned to do a thorough cleaning of the house, to purify it, and have a dinner with my family with Imbolc-appropriate foods. My husband and I spent the first half of the day dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping our house. Even though there were still several areas that needed work, the areas that had been attended to (clothes, books, and papers) were starting to be happy areas amid the rest of the chaos. I was actually starting to be happy with how our house was looking!

Afterwards, we all went to go see two houses that were for sale in our area in our price range. Our price range was low and everything was in a “fixer-upper” category. We’ll see how the process goes!

We got back later than expected. I was going to make cheese pull-apart bread and my husband was going to make sugar-free brownies. He was also going to make homemade cheese curds for poutine (french fries with gravy and cheese curds). He did make the fries from scratch though. They were delicious! Everyone but me had iced cream for dessert.

In talking over the holiday with my mom and step-dad, they seemed to think that there should be something more to the holiday than they saw. Not being Pagan, I expected them to just want to eat dinner with us. However, I guess they wanted some weird Pagany stuff. I told them that divination was common and I could get out my tarot cards if they wanted (I’m really very bad at them, but I’m working to get better). Luckily for me they declined. Lighting candles is a big part of Imbolc, but I couldn’t figure out what we were going to do after those candles were lit! Although at the end of the evening, I realized story telling was also a good idea, so maybe we will try that next year!

Freedom of Religion?

Posted on by

I’m going to start this post by stating that I live in the U.S.A..  This is relevant because here we supposedly have freedom of religion.  Basically, The First Amendment to the “United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which respect an establishment of religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion….”  There is also a clause preventing workplaces from discriminating on a number of factors, one being religion.  The exception is if the employer is a religious institution. 

Just because the laws say there shouldn’t be any discrimination against religions, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.  It just means that employers can’t mention your religion when they fire you for it.  I’m pretty sure I have been fired for my religion at least twice in my life.  It could have been more than that, but when I get fired because I’m “not a good fit” with a school district, yet they kept a teacher who literally held a student forcibly against a wall and lied about his knowledge of the subject matter he was supposed to be teaching, it’s pretty clear there was something off about their explanation of my firing. 

Why is this coming up now?  I was chatting with my husband the other day.  He couldn’t understand why I enjoyed watching The Good Witch.  I explained that not only is it the most accurate portrayal of Paganism that I’ve seen on TV, but also that I have a dream of one day of moving somewhere and finally being accepted for who I really am, Paganism and all.  My husband flat out told me that it would never happen.  I held back my tears and told him I needed time to myself.  He assumed it was for another reason and I let him.  When I got there, I cried.  I cried for all of the times that I have had to move.  I cried because he had almost dashed my hopes that it was possible to be accepted in a small town for being Pagan. 

While I have gotten good at hiding it from my employers over the past 5 years or so, my son will be starting pre-K in the district I work in before I get tenure.  I had a choice.  I could hide my religion from my son or I can live my truth at home and hope that when the time comes, I will have been there long enough that they will overlook it.  I refuse to hide who I am from my son, so that’s the option I’m going for right now. 

Having to hide who I am in order to get (and keep) a teaching job really hurts.  It’s not like I would ever teach my students about my religion.  I just want to be able to wear a pentacle to work without worrying about being fired.  I want to be able to take my holidays off of work without fearing that I will lose my family’s sole source of income. 

It really pisses me off when I see some of my Christian friends complain that there is a “war on Christmas” because people say “Happy Holidays”.  Really!?  Christmas is a national fucking holiday!  Or when they complain that they’re being discriminated against because they can’t pray in schools.  Uh, actually, the students can.  They just can’t have it be led or required in any way by the school or any adult.  Not to mention if I had a dollar for the number of times someone on the Pagan Parenting group that I’m part of complained about the promotion of religion by someone at their school, I would be rich. 

I’m just sick of feeling like this.  I’m sick of hiding who I am.  I’m sick of worrying about losing my job if I do anything to even hint at being Pagan.  The gays had their chance at rights.  They’re working on transgender rights now.  I just wish there was something that I could do.  But there’s already a law that’s supposedly protecting me.  It just doesn’t.  Please comment and tell me that there’s hope.  I want to know that there are some open Pagans out there — preferably in small towns and teaching positions, that are actually accepted for who they are. 

Santa Claus Alternatives for Pagan Kids

Posted on by

I have mentioned before that I am working on starting family traditions while my son is still young.  He’s 16 months old, so I figured now is the perfect time to figure all of this out.  My husband and I both want to celebrate Yule, but our families both celebrate Christmas.  In no other religion that I know of do you have to create new traditions when you join.  One of the things I love about being an Eclectic Pagan is is that I take whatever works from whatever religion I like.  I like it because there are so many good things in so many religions worth “stealing”.  However, when it comes to figuring out how to celebrate holidays, it makes things tough.

My husband and I had the “Santa Claus” talk.  I was in favor of telling not telling our son about Santa, he wasn’t.  His argument had nothing to do with “the truth” or getting to participate in the “magic” of it and everything to do with how our son wouldn’t know about Santa when he entered school.  Because of this, I started researching some options for our family. Here are some options of Santa Claus alternatives for Pagan kids.

 A depiction of the Holly King

The Holly King – In Celtic traditions, there is a story of the Oak King and the Holly King. The Holly King rules the cold part of the year with the height of his power being at Yule. At the equinoxes, the power switches hands. The Holly King also looks quite a bit like Santa Claus.

Mother Berchta –  She rides her goat with a sack on her back full of foods.  She goes to houses, roasts the goat and gives the food.  The bones go back in the bag and out jumps the goat good as new!  One time a child purposely broke one of the goat’s bones and she put the child in the bag and took then away.  So now she brings gifts to good kids and takes the bad ones.  

Odin – Odin had a lot of characteristics of what we think of as Santa Claus now. His name in Old Norse even has the first syllable of “Jul” ( pronounced Yule in English).

Odin on Sleipnir

The Yule Lads –  It’s a Scandinavian tradition (in Scandinavia, they still call Christmas, Jul) where the kids leave their shoe on the windowsill for the last 13 nights before Yule.  If they were good, they get a treat. If not, they get a rotten potato. 

A depiction of some of the Yule Lads on a Scandinavian milk carton

This is also a great article about some lesser-known festive traditions!

What does your family do? Tell us in the comments below!