PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form
Recent blog posts

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 Black Phillip: The Real Story Behind the Breakout Goat From 'The Witch'

 

Once we dwelt in the fertile plains. Beef was our food, the milk of cows our drink.

Then we were driven out.

Into the rocky, unfertile hills we fled, which cannot sustain a cow.

We became a people of the goat, for whom the Horned wears caprine horns and hide.

 

Like goats, we witches are survivors.

That's why it can't help but seem to me something of a moral failing that I don't like goat's milk.

Oh, I've tried. “This chèvre has a nice, lemony tang to it,” I say hopefully.

But in my heart, I understand that it's really myself that I'm trying to talk around.

 

Maybe it's just a matter of what I'm used to.

Maybe I'm secretly longing for those fat days of our onetime freedom.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Happy the Cat Left the Earth

Happy got to experience rain, sunshine, and moonlight on the weekend he died. I spent all day Sunday with him, carrying him around and petting his beautiful black fur with its thick, light gray undercoat, and white spots on the neck and belly. Coincidentally it was the day Catholics dedicate to their cat saint, so when I lay in bed petting my napping kitty and checked social media there were an unusually large number of cat related posts. I spent a lot of my time speaking softly to Happy. I also internally spoke with Freya. She told me I couldn’t save him, and that she would welcome him to her field and her home.

That evening, he was in my bed and meowed for me to do something. I was not sure what. I carried him to his water; he didn’t want water. I carried him to his food; he didn’t want food. I carried him onto the back porch. He rolled onto his back and gazed up at the moon. The white spot on his belly nearly glowed in the moonlight. I let him sit in the moonlight and checked back on him later, and discovered he had made it back inside the cat door by himself, and camped just inside the flap. When I picked him up I noticed the tip of his tail was wet. He got to trail his tail in the pool one last time, which he loved to do. He had made it all the way out to the pool deck and back, but now he was ready to be carried again. I put him back in my bed and curled up around him. I petted him and we fell asleep. He died in the morning before I woke up.

...
Last modified on

 When Should You Use The Delicate Setting On Your Tumble Dryer?

 

Dear Boss Warlock:

Always check pockets first.

So: a pen got into the dryer and now there's ink all over the dryer barrel. I fielded suggestions from the coven about what to do about the ink, but here's my question for you: how many chickens should I sacrifice?

Unlucky in Utica

 

Dear UU:

It is a wise witch who understands that there are no purely physical issues.

Annoying as the problem may be, on the grand scale of things, the situation sounds to me to be pretty well contained. In my estimation, one chicken should do the trick.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Conchomagia: Sea Shell Magic

Shells have been casting spells of fascination and enthrallment for arguably all of human history. The earliest known example of jewelry is a set of thirty-three sea snail shell beads uncovered in a cave in Morocco, dating back around 150,000 years. That’s quite a tenure for conchophilia, or the love of shells. Within that time, in different cultures around the globe, shells were valued for many uses, even currency.

A step beyond the love of shells, conchylomania is the madness for collecting sea shells. And deeper still are the mystic and esoteric uses of shells – conchomancy, or divination with shells, and a new term I have coined: conchomagia, or shell magic. Not that the use of shells in magic and ritual is new, simply this specific name that fits in nicely with the other Latin-root terms and uses.

Crystals are wildly popular across spiritual practices and more mainstream than ever, but their cousins, seashells, don’t get quite the attention in this context they deserve. As discussed previously in “Conchomancy: Messages From the Sea”,

Just like the myriad spectral crystals that grow deep in Mother Earth’s flesh and bring us healing vibrations and messages, so too do the similarly composed shells that grow in her blood, the oceans…

Calcium carbonate, the primary compound in seashells and pearls, is also found in its more stable form, calcite, in rocks and crystals…

This scientific fact alone interestingly mirrors the nature and energies of these two different Earth treasures – the broader, original compound comprising the shells that
 move within the moving element, and its most stable polymorph making up the grounded, much-less-moving crystals.”

Essentially, seashells can be used in the all the same ways as crystals. But seashells have another element to them that crystals don’t; the fact that they are made and grown, almost magically, by living creatures. They have powerful life energy in this respect. I have been experimenting with shells in multiple ritualistic applications for some time and so far it seems that, like kyanite and citrine crystals, they are self-cleansing. In the case of shells, I attribute this to their inherent connection to water. Though literally rinsing them in water, more than smudging, is the best way to cleanse them if needed. This is one of many methods and practices that can be determined intuitively by the individual practitioner and might vary from person to person.


Read the full article here 

Last modified on
Reveling in Love and Lust: A Beltane Tryst

Beltane is the sexiest high holiday for witches and one that is anticipated all year. I always look forward to having a joyful “spree” every May. Witches begin to celebrate Beltane on the last night of April, and it is traditional for the festivities to last all night. This is a time for feasting, dancing, laughter, and lots of lovemaking. The Celts of old made this day a day of wild abandon, a sexual spree, the one day of the year when it is okay to make love outside your relationship. On May Day, when the sun returns in the morning, revelers gather to erect a merrily beribboned Maypole to dance around, followed by picnicking and sensual siestas.

Ideally, celebrate outdoors, but if you are stuck indoors on Beltane Eve, pick a place with a fireplace and have a roaring blaze so celebrants can wear comfy clothing and dance barefoot. Ask them to bring spring flowers and musical instruments, including plenty of drums! Place pillows on the floor and serve a sensual feast of foods from the following list, under the title “Oral Fixations,” along with beer, wine, ciders, and honeyed mead that you can make or obtain from a microbrewery. Gather some of spring’s bounty of flowers—roses, tulips, and my favorite, freesias, in your favorite colors, or whatever is blooming with the most vitality where you live. Set out candles in spring colors—yellow, pink, red, green, white, purple. With your arms extended, point to each of the four directions and say, “To the east, to the south, to the west, and to the north,” and recite this Beltane rhyme:

...
Last modified on

 How to Replace a Toilet | DIY Toilet Installation Guide | HGTV

 

"So, what have you been doing lately?"

I haven't seen N in quite a while. Foolishly, I ask the expected question.

“Thank Goddess, I finally got the new bathroom finished,” she can't wait to say.

Woe upon me, she whips out her phone and, finger-jabbing, speaks the dreaded words.

“Want to see some pictures?”

 

The definition of a bore is someone who says the same thing to anyone. (Interesting people discuss topics of mutual interest.)

No N, I don't want to see your pictures.

No one wants to see your pictures.

 

Gods, clueless pagans.

She'll show me three pictures of the toilet—from different angles, of course—three of the sink (same), then the shower. Then, if I'm really lucky, maybe I'll get to see some close-ups of tiles and grout, too.

And that's just the beginning. She'll stand here, rapid-scrolling, with running verbal patter, for just as long as I'm fool enough to play the polite.

Sorry N, you're committing a major breach of hospitality here. I understand that you've worked very hard and are proud of the results.

Seriously, though: how could you possibly think that anyone else would be interested?

 

Boorishness, meet dishonesty.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 Match wits with Cattubuttas the druid.

 

In the days of king Cú Roí, Cattubuttas the druid—said to be the wisest druid in Ireland, though he had not then a single gray hair in his beard—sat in a grove with his students, and this is what he said.

“As to foods, my children,” he told them, “the gods have denied us nothing, not even the flesh of the fleet-footed horse, noblest of animals.

“But know this also,” he added, raising a finger of admonishment: “that should it so happen that you do eat of horsemeat, it is thereafter geis upon you to enter into a chariot for the span of some twenty-seven days; for twenty-seven days thereafter, you may not enter one.

“Thrice nine days,” he told them again. “Remember it well, my warriors.”

So spoke Cattubuttas the druid to the young warriors in the days of Cú Roí the king.

And indeed, we still remember.

 

So: why 27?

In the martial society of Iron Age Ireland, such a prohibition—its memory preserved like a leaf in amber in Old Irish literature—would indeed lay heavy upon a warrior; it would, in effect, ban him from the field of battle for nearly a month's time.

The logic of the prohibition is not difficult to follow: it is, in effect, a breach of hospitality. Why, though, one wonders, specifically a period of twenty-seven days rather than, say, a full lunar month?

If Cattubuttas the wise, cat of battle, in his wisdom, knew, I for one do not.

Here's my guess, though: that it's numeric.

Last modified on

Additional information