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Oh gods, it's Posch being outrageous again.

An important part of learning to think in Pagan is what I'm going to call Paganonormativity.

The presumption of Paganness.

There's no need to say, “This song is sung only at Samhain and at pagan funerals.” It's enough to say, “This song is sung only at Samhain and at funerals.”

“Pagan funeral” is redundant. (Hey, we invented them.) All funerals are presumed to be pagan unless otherwise specified.

Thinking in Pagan, gods is normative; "God" gets quotation marks.

In human history, paganism is normative. Non-paganism is the aberration.

Facing death, inmates create art to reflect their spiritual outlook. A Jew talks about what the formation of his identity. And an explanation of some of the principles behind so-called Chinese "alchemy" (which is, in fact, quite different from Western alchemy). It's Faithful Friday, our segment on faiths and religious communities from around the world. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

If your love life is lacking, if your wallet is empty, if you need a pure straight shot of luck, there is no one who can fix your situation better than Lakshmi.  That doesn’t mean she’s standing around with her purse, desperately hoping to give you everything you ever wanted.  Your mom doesn’t do that, Lakshmi doesn’t either.  She’s known for her capricious nature and she’s fiercely independent.  She also appreciates hard work, modesty and bravery and she’s known to bounce when you start slacking off.

Churning and Churning and Churning

“My love, we share the measure of the scales and we have danced in this embrace of veiled and light may times before. My time of command over this space of harmony is nearing its end and soon I will pass into a light that is darker and more intuitive in its work. But, tonight we move closer to one another, I am a blind lover in your darkness and you the holder of the key to that love.... “

Read more of Act One here…

One of the symbols of the American West, the jackrabbit lives in open areas such as grasslands and deserts. With his strange ears, this hare is one of the animals of the American West that people will often remember.  The biggest, fastest, and flashiest of this Family of Hares is the antelope jackrabbit, who can outrun run everything except the antelope (i.e. pronghorn).

The antelope jackrabbit is the source of jackalope (horned rabbit) legends. One joke that Westerners play on new people is to tell them about the jackalope (a large jackrabbit with deer horns). This legendary animal is often seen by people who have had too much to drink.

Since I began describing myself as a Quaker Pagan, I run into people who are suspicious of my claim to be both Quaker and Pagan. To these folks, Peter and I look like spiritual cheats, trying to sneak fifteen items through the clearly labeled Twelve Item Express Lane of a spiritual life.

“Cafeteria spirituality,” I’ve heard it described, expressing the notion that my husband and I are picking and choosing only the tastiest morsels of either religion, like spoiled children loading our plates with desserts, but refusing to eat our vegetables.

This isn’t the case. The term “cafeteria religion” implies imposing human whims over the (presumably) sacred norms of religion.  But Peter and I are both/ands not out of personal preference, but because we were called to our religion… twice.  By two different families of Spirit.

I can explain this best through my own story.

Deborah Castellano and Gordon White talk ritual, death customs, learning magic by doing magic and -of course- glamour in the twenty first century.