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FAQ: I want to be a good heathen and honor ancestors but my ancestors were bad people. Who can I honor?

Related FAQ: I'm going to be attending a sumbel in which there will be a round toasted to the ancestors, but I was adopted and don't know my ancestors' names. Who can I honor?

My answer: One can honor Askr and Embla, the first man and woman according to heathen mythology (made by Odin and his brothers.) One could also honor any gods that appear in one's family tree. According to heathen mythology, everyone is descended from Rig, whom most Asatruars consider to be an aspect of Heimdall, thus, anyone could honor Heimdall. There might also be other gods one could include among ancestors, depending on one's family line. I have honored Lollus as an ancestor.

You don't have to honor your literal biological ancestors to be a good heathen. When the sumbel horn is passed in the ancestor round, you can honor the mighty dead whom you admire whether you are lineally related to them or not. You can honor your personal heroes, the elders of your path, a writer who influenced you-- that's my personal hope of ever being remembered, since I have no children. You can honor the founders of your nation, city, profession, or art. Honor your spouse's ancestors. Toast your favorite childhood teacher, the composer of your favorite song, or anyone with whom you have an emotional connection.

Blue Moon Creation Myth

Peeps! It’s the Sag Full Moon on June 17 at 1:31 am PDT. Time to close your eyes, go within, get centered and then pick a card below from my handpainted Elfin Ally & Lefty Oracle decks. The Reveal is below. Blessed Bee!

Sagittarius Full Moon Reading by Kathy Crabbe

Altar or alter? Censer or censor?

Pagans being people of praxis, our vocabulary generally references ritual rather than belief. When it comes to writing, though, homonymy can be problematic, and with homonyms, Spell Check can't help you.

Why should you care? Credibility. If you get the small stuff wrong, why should we trust you on the large?

Here as elsewhere, the ancestors knew what to do. With a mnemonic—what French would call an aide-memoire—you can remember anything.

Here's mine.

While I've never actually sired any children myself,* I have had the good fortunate to help with the raising of several of our coven kids.

The first of them was maybe a year old when we went to the store one day.

The cashier smiled.

“He looks like his father,” she said.

Really, there was only one possible response.

“Yes, he does,” I said, smiling back.

*The world's oldest gay joke:

 Goddess of the sacred pause
 please grant me the courage
to lay aside swiftness
and take up slowness,
to embrace limitations as learning,
silence as stabilizing,
waiting as worthy,
and sitting as divine.
Goddess of the sacred pause
help me to know stillness as strength,
patience as powerful,
and healing time
as holy necessity.

I fell down hard this week and injured my ankle pretty badly. It has been hard to go from the magic of mobility, to spending time in bed with my leg elevated and an ice pack on. As is common to note when dealing with an unexpected experience, I am noticing how very much I took for granted my own swift movements through the day, the everydayness of being able to easily get myself where I need to go.

Considering its fame and (literally) iconic status, it's absolutely incredible that there is, in English, no good, general book about the Gundestrup Cauldron.

Absolutely incredible.

Oh, there are scads of specialist articles, and a few of general interest. There's one academic monograph that attempts to read the Gundestrup Cauldron as an early redaction of the same Keltic tale told in the Táin Bó Cualigne. (Since the scenes depicted on the Cauldron differ from the Irish Táin in several notable ways, the author contends that it represents an earlier form of the tale instead. Mmm: sounds circular to me.)

So I figure, I'll write it. Beautiful plates, and everything we know—or can guess—so far. The finding, general trends of interpretation, how it fits into its time, etc. There will, of course, be a chapter on its (massive) impact on contemporary paganism, as well as one on the solid gold Gundestrup-style cauldron (but with original art) that the Nazis commissioned (I kid you not). (It was discovered by divers in the waters of a Bavarian lake in 2001.) Honestly, you couldn't make these things up.

Well, I'll need a travel budget, of course—Denmark and Bavaria at the very least—and naturally I'll have to talk to the experts. Six months to research, six months to write. I figure I could probably do it for under 40 grand. In the book industry, that's nothing.

They say that as a writer, it's your job to write the book that you'd like to read.