I'm currently getting into the Yule spirit by reading a new Llewellyn title. The book The Old Magic of Christmas by Linda Raedisch is a collection of Christmas traditions that many of us may not be familiar with. Creatures such as elves, gnomes, and werewolves roam the wintry landscape and leap off the pages. Goddesses and witches also make appearances, which has helped me to look at the Christmas season in a new light.

Yes, this book focuses on historical Christmas traditions, but Raedisch posits that many of these traditions and tales have their origin in Europe's pre-Christian past. I'm inclined to agree.  This book really does explore the "old magic" of the season. For instance, there is an interesting tension between the feminine aspect of death and birth in many of the folk customs that are described. Much like the traditional Halloween, there is the juxtaposition of the crone witch with the young woman who tries her hand at fortunetelling for fertility, luck, and husband-seeking.

Winter Solstice is a perfect excuse to wind down for the year. It is happily emphasized since I am on Winter Break for school– hibernating more and going out less. For the last seven years and counting, I have held some sort of Winter Solstice gathering for friends and sometimes family. I have hosted sit-down traditional dinners and the more informal drinks and appetizers only fiesta. We have mulled spiced-wine together, played an old parlor game entitled, "The Minister's Cat," and lit candles. One of my favorite theme ideas was putting a spotlight on the sun: I served spicy Indian food for snacks and the soundtrack featured all songs mentioning the sun. There are a seemingly endless supply of these to choose from.

This year, I am taking some advice from an Indianapolis food blogger, featured in the current issue of Midwest Living. Her article, "Holiday Party Tips From Annie Marshall: Eat Drink and Be Merry," is a great approach to a more relaxed get-together. From hanging treats on an "edible cookie tree," to her insistence on serving a signature drink for the event that you can make a nice big batch of in advance, Marshall knows her stuff. Here is her recipe for Cranberry Margaritas:

Stir up a pitcher of these rosy margaritas for your next holiday bash. The Simple Syrup recipe makes enough syrup for 30 margaritas but is easily halved or quartered.

What is the place of charity in Paganism? Are we MIA or running cloaked? Do Christians have a monopoly on helping the poor or do our sacred stories enjoin us to help? But more importantly, what is the right thing for Pagans to do?

I love this time of year...though I could do without the single to negative digit temperatures.  A lot of my traditions haven't changed from what I did as a child in a Roman Catholic household but I do have some additions.  Below, in random order, I list some of my holiday traditions.

Mannaz - human- Again we have another reversed Rune presenting us with an opportunity to go deeper within. As Mannaz reminds us of the strength in human connection, the power of acting with All That Is, so it's merkstave position calls us to be aware of when we are not connected, when we don't feel part of the greater flow. Note that Mannaz is pictured upright, or bright-stave.

Last week, Eihwaz encouraged us to change, and Mannaz may be asking us to sit with the effects of that change.  It calls us to put down rational thinking and go with gut feeling, which for some may be frightening to do.

Likewise, as this Rune is about connecting with other people, its reversed position gives caution to the way in which we socialize this holiday season. Calling to mind community concerns, it may be helpful to tend the web, itself. It may not necessarily be about any personal need, but to be aware of our interconnectedness, and perhaps give a little extra to the care of our bonds.

Often when we think about the Empress card, we think of things pertaining to the springtime and fertility. The Empress can inspire fertility year round, though, through creativity. She is a very potent symbol of abundance and plenty. 

When I'm stuck for inspiration, I call upon Empress energy. This season, she's been working with me to help me very creatively make seasonal gifts for friends and family. That's the thing I've found with Empress energy; it works best when the creativity is infused with love.

Are you in need of a bit of inspiration, a bit of creative energy or some new ideas? Call upon the Empress to assist you in your endeavors. There are many ways that this can be done. If you keep an altar or a place of meditation, put an image of the Empress from a favorite Tarot deck there, where you can see it often and remember to focus on the task in hand. Perhaps you would prefer to put the image as a wallpaper to a computer monitor, tablet, or smartphone. Small tiles can be worn as jewelry, or a photo of the card carried in a wallet or purse. 

Time is money, so they say, and I seem to be more on the "money" side of the equation this month.  Money to buy gifts for loved ones and strangers, but the act of earning it has left me very short of time for the other important things, like wrapping gifts and writing blog posts.  So here's a few quick ideas about using time or money to prepare for Giftmas in all its forms, since few of us have both:

• Wrap presents with string instead of tape.  Save some plastic and add a layer of wonder to even the simplest gift.
• Open a bank account for someone who often comes up short.
• Make some wassail to lure in carolers, or show them how it's really done.
• Cash in the change jar for a gift certificate to a restaurant.
• Quit smoking and invest the difference.  Next year celebrate the difference in your finances with a big party or a smaller mortgage.

That's it for now, and two of my paid jobs and several people who want me to take on additional volunteer obligations are all awaiting my attention.

"Beauty is like an ingredient we all have. You have yours, I have mine, in different measures according to what’s treasured in our society, or what eyes are seeing us. No one else can carry your beauty. Society turns against us if we use it to our advantage, we are cunning or deceitful. Its just an asset, like any other. Assets are meant to be taken advantage of, no?

If you don’t believe that you are beautiful, I ask you how can you trust your impression of yourself? You are unable to see yourself entirely at once. You can see parts, you can see pieces in a mirror, you can see photos. How can you trust your flawed description of yourself as “not beautiful” when you can’t even look thoroughly? How can you correctly define yourself as “not beautiful” when your definition of beauty came from modeling agents, or the media, or your crush who only liked athletic blonds?

Let’s widen our definition of Beauty, shall we? Let’s define it for ourselves. Let’s divorce it from its cruel spouse: Perfection."

via Beauty Politics | The Lure of Beauty.

Season's Greetings from the Geekomancer's desk, everyone! 

Now, I know this season is not always holly-jolly for everyone, sometimes thanks to religious issues or philosophical differences, sometimes due to more practical or emotional concerns.  That's why I thought it might be helpful to show you how this pop culture witch celebrates the Winter Solstice, in hopes that it will assist you in finding new and innovative ways to deal with this, the most (expletive) time of the year.

As some of you may know, I am a former Grinch/Scrooge/whatever.  I used to have a very hard time with the holidays, and only by the grace of a very persistent friend with diabolical cookie powers am I able to now enjoy the Holiday Spirit without flinching.  That being said, I'm still a very non-standard pagan, and my witchcraft is unorthodox even to other witches.  So, it took me quite a while to find (really, build from semi-scratch) a way for me to relate to and celebrate the season.

 The origins of our holy day icons are significant, though it's easy to get ensnared in what symbols you "should" honor, what they're "supposed to mean," who gets to claim them, and understanding what they really mean to you. For that reason, in this exploration of seasonal totems I offer the entire Internet for you to peruse and learn about the symbols that have the most meaning to you at this time of year. My hope is that through sharing the seasonal totems that mean the most to me, that others are encouraged to cull out the holiday symbols that move them, connect with their power and bring them more deeply into personal holiday celebrations.

Totems, for most shamanists, are largely revered as soul animal kindred, though those who know me recall that I work extensively with plant and elemental spirits. Bear in mind as I explore the possibilities of holiday power allies that when I refer to totems I include animals, plants, minerals and elements. Generally speaking, totems are complex symbols that move us in some way. For me, the power of totems extends through several layers. I greet them as archetypes -- collective traits found through the particular species, as spirits of nature, as an energetic manifestation specifically visiting me, which some refer to as "Unverified Personal Gnosis" (UPG), and as creatures of the wild, drawing from study of the totem's behavior, habitat and anatomy.

Popular holiday totems today are mostly of Western European origin and influence, such as mistletoe, fir tree, reindeer, the Yule log, doves, geese, holly, ivy. More recent imports are the Mexican poinsettia and Middle Eastern persimmons and pomegranates. Most of my holidays totems happen to be among the fairly well-known; however, my reasons for including them may be a bit lesser common. Also, a couple of them aren't typical at all.

I dreamt of becoming a cartographer when I was young, positioning my body amongst a multitude of maps spread across my mom and dad’s living room floor, tracing the colourful lines with my tiny fingers. The mind dreamt into stories of the people who experienced Life along those routes between the small hamlets and major cities. As a student at Penn State, I chose to spend quiet time in the Map Room, nested within the behemoth library on campus. It was a quiet sanctuary which provided salvation amongst the congested intersections of a very full university experience. While living on the Florida coast, nautical charts captivated the open spaces of my mind in the years before my daughter came along.

A quick search on Wikipedia lists the definition of Cartography as, "…the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively." My favorite aspect of this definition is almost every word of it! This soul sings and loves to shape and mold beautiful realities for the self and others. And while I did not "grow up" to be a cartographer per se, I am delighted to learn, at least according to this definition, I am still somewhat on the right path of creating, shaping, and directing the routes from "Point A" to "Point Present Moment". I would like to imagine us all as cartographers of the soul. This is an absolutely delightful thought on this quiet morning!

The Edge of Her is dedicated to our Edge of Creation and so, of course this woman is becoming more comfortable with spending time on her own edge. This is truly a brilliant, engaging, and exciting time for sure. And while I am feeling more vibrant and more creative than I ever have in this lifetime, am I feeling fear? Yes. At times I certainly do. Am I fatigued? Yes. At times I certainly am. But the momentum of accepting the invitation to explore new routes is so potent, that I just simply cannot deny myself the opportunity. New realities are begging to be modeled.

Every religion is both a product of its times and, to the degree its vision takes hold of practitioners, transforms those times.  Ours is no exception. I think Pagans interested in our larger significance within American society as a whole will want to take a look at my new book, Faultlines: the Sixties, the Culture War, and the Return of the Divine Feminine, published last month by Quest. 

It was as a guest at a NROOGD Midsummer Sabbat many years ago that I had my first and most powerful encounter with the Wiccan Goddess. After that encounter my life existed in a context I had not even imagined possible. It would be years before I began to grasp how different.

At first the Pagan world differed only in the most obvious ways.  We dealt with different deities, and more of them and had different sacred days.  Often we had more fun and were rarely on time. But the longer I lived within our world the more I realized it opened me to insights far deeper than these relatively minor ones.

In my previous post, I explained how literacy is an institution, and how a literacy of magic would be an extension of the institution of literacy, in the sense that a given institution typically determines who is or isn't included in the institution and also establishes what constitutes institutional legitimate actions vs actions which don't fit into the institution. I explored why I felt literacy is a loaded term and why it can be problematic to apply it as a concept to magic. I also explored how trying to define magic as a literacy would inevitably end up excluding certain people or practices because of the institutional aspects of literacy. In the 2nd post to this series, I'm going to explain why the literacy of magic isn't the same as the practice of magic and why it is more useful to examine magic as a practice instead of as a literacy.

Literacy, as it applies to magic, would seem to deal with the ability to read, write, and design magic, which could include among other things the ability to read, write, and design rituals, spells, and other associated magical activities. However, once again we are left with a question: Who determines what the literacy of magic is, and what is their agenda for defining it in the way they have? An additional question that is useful to ask is: "What activities, techniques, etc., are left out of the literacy of magic?" I'd argue that a variety of activities, techniques, etc., are left out if we look at magic as a form of literacy. Now some people might argue that I'm being overly literal by exploring magic as a form of literacy and perceiving it in terms of what are considered traditional activities of literacy, but I think that we need to be particular about the words that we use when trying to define a concepts such as magic or literacy. When we conflate these two concepts together without being particular, what results is a lot of theoretical confusion and armchair arguments that do little to substantively advance the discipline of magic.

Thus I don't think it's useful to define magic as a literacy. If anything, I find literacy to be too confining and limiting in terms of describing what magic seems to be or what one can possibly do with it. At best a literacy of magic can describe certain activities and how those activities are performed, but even in that case the above questions should be asked.

It's finals time, folks, as well as being one of the most intense Yule seasons that I can recall in a very long time. I"ve been swimming in work both academic and spiritual and so I must apologize for not posting as much here. That will change, I am sure, with the turning of the year. 

In the meantime, so y'all can see I'm not quite as much of a slacker as it may seem ^_^ I'm posting a recent interview that I did with Magical Musings podcast. We covered some topics that I think are tremendously important to the polytheistic community as a whole and Heathenry in particular and while the interview was close to two hours (not sure what the edited version here ended up being--I wasn't involved in whittling it into shape for airing) I had a hell of a good time. 

So take a listen here, folks, and I"ll be back soon with a few articles on Mani. 

You don't know Jung ... and it's his own fault.  Jung concepts are frequently misunderstood by Pagans, both by those who love him and those who hate him.  Part of the confusion surrounding Jung is due to his choice of terminology.  Jung chose terms that -- at least when translated into English -- are commonly used to mean something very different than what he intended.  In this series, I discuss six Jungian terms which are easily and commonly misunderstood: psychic, energy, self, individuation, symbol, collective unconscious, and archetype.  In this part, I will discuss "collective unconscious".

I had intended to discuss "archetypes" next, but I realized that it is impossible to discuss archetypes without first explaining the nature of the collective unconscious.  It is common for Neo-Pagans and New Agers to speak about the collective unconscious like it is some kind of mystical group mind.  But there is nothing mystical about the collective unconscious.  It is simply that part of our unconscious which we have inherited through the evolutionary history of our brains.  It is distinct from the personal unconscious, which is a product of our personal experiences.  For this reason, Jung often called the collective unconscious the "objective psyche".

Series: The Erotic Pagans

Titles: Beltane Fires, Samhain Shadows, and Yuletide Temptation

Publisher: Naughty Nights Press

As a product of the counterculture, I tend to mistrust and avoid institutions.  I suspect this is a common attitude among “first generation”^[1] NeoPagans in the U.S.  We found existing institutions, be they religious, educational, or governmental, to be oppressive, unfulfilling, and irrelevant to the conditions of the world in which we found ourselves.

Let’s face it: established religions such as Christianity in its many forms, were created and gained ascendency in other times and places.  There was no threat of nuclear annihilation, no looming environmental degradation, no water shortage, no organ transplants, no vaccinations against such diseases as smallpox and polio.  Those religions addressed the concerns of the peoples in other times and places.  Further, few of these religious institutions adapted to changing circumstances.  Nowadays some are trying to be more relevant, often by adopting practices, such as involving lay people in their rituals and dancing during worship. 

In the years since Paganism has become visible, particularly in academia and interfaith, we have gained credibility in the wider world, and although we remain a religious minority,^[2] we have not done much in the way of establishing lasting institutions.

For this months shadow card, we find ourselves working with the Hierophant, being represented by the Teaching card from the Snowland Tarot.

In this particular card, we see an owl standing before an open book resting on a tree stump.  His audience of forest animals seems attentive as he shares his wisdom while the snow gently falls around them.

After having spent a lovely weekend in Glastonbury with a dear friend, I noticed that there is a lot of focus on the triumvirate of Maiden, Mother and Crone. Walk into any shop and you will find this triple goddess littering shelves, books about these aspects and people talking about where they are in relation to Her.

The winter festival time can be stressful, even for Pagans. Some honor their family’s holiday traditions with a bit of discomfort. Others are caught up in the responsibilities of cooking, baking, gifting and visiting like everyone else.

Whatever you celebrate this time of year, tarot can help you make it more joyful, more inspiring and more fun.

All you need are the Four Aces.