In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Speaks with Artist, Herbalist, and Witch-at-Large

 Sarah Anne Lawless Concerning Her Ground-Breaking Print, Lord of the Beasts,

and Sundry Other Matters

Sarah, who is the Horned to you?

The Horned Ones to me are the great spirits of the wild lands and forests. They are not male or female, but both and neither. In the lore of animistic cultures around the world and through time there always seems to be a male or female spirit, or one of each, that is the guardian or protector of a particular forest or land mass and who is Lord or Lady of all the flora and fauna that dwell within it. Their horns are a weapon as much as they are a crown, and symbol of power and otherworldly knowledge.

Power Ink Recipe and Full Moon Spell - 

A simple recipe & spell to invoke your own power, and the power of the full moon as you manifest your needs and desires. 

I lay there on a chase lounger, in the backyard closing my eyes and listening. The air was cool, and the breeze subtle. I could hear the leaves of the giant maple tree gently rustling above me. The fire was crackling slowly eating away at the pine logs. The muffled midnight chatter of the neighborhood was somehow soothing as I lay there.

Although, my eyes were closed I could feel her rising above me. Displaying her silver silent power over my body, filling my mind with motivating energy. I was taken back to my childhood, when I would sneak out of my bedroom window to the back yard, where I would lay in the grass bathing in her silver light.

Because my response to PantheaCon and Leadership is so long, it seems worthy of its own blog entry.

Annika, the reason you found only older Pagans at the PWR meeting was because only older people came, not because younger folks weren't welcome.  Don Frew spoke about the history of the PWR because he had expected people unfamiliar with it to be the ones who came.  That turned out not to be the case, but for you.  Had I known it was going to unfold as it did, I wouldn't have needed to come.  I already knew most of what he had to say, and in fact have given talks on it to Pagans around the country myself.  Also, there were a few people there who were older, Pagan but not Witchen, new to interfaith involvement and who had never attended PWR and who came for that reason, to familiarize themselves with what it is and how it works.

On February 21, 2015 my second son, Galen, was stillborn.

I wrote out the whole traumatic story, then found myself reluctant to share it.  I wish what happened to me would never happen to anyone else.  So I'm not going to share the details in blog form.  Maybe in my next memoir.

Inherently, I don't like meditation because I feel like it's one long exercise of someone else telling me what to do.  If you've been reading me for any length of time, you know how well I respond to being told what to do except in very specific consensual contexts.  The second you tell me to close my eyes and make that mandatory and not optional, you've lost me.

Needless to say, this has been problematic in my budding yoga practice.  It is one of many problems with my budding yoga practice.  Almost everyone in my classes looks like a sexy yoga toned sex kitten who effortlessly flows from one movement to another.  I spend a lot of time in class wondering why non-waifs don't do yoga.  I also spend a lot of time in class wondering if I will ever be able to do half the movements being done as my boobs impede my entire life.  Every time I say this, it's like a revelation so I'll say it again.  If you are above a DD cup, everything is not awesome.  Everything is not awesome at all.  First, try spending less than $80 a bra if you are not in the Lane Bryant spectrum.  I get three bras at a time and I have to replace them every six months.  Yeah.  For reals.   Second, buying a bathing suit is like the fourth ring of hell.  Third, sexy nightgowns?  You are the hilar.  They don't exist for us.  My boobs never fit in the designated boob area.  Fourth, athletics are super difficult to do because you have two quart sized baggies of peanut butter hanging from your chest.  Fifth, good posture is a pipe dream.

In today's Airy Monday, we look to the realms of archaeology and anthropology, to see what wisdom the past has for today. A Jewish divine pair?; notable real-life Vikings; ancestor worship meets anthropology; Vikings and the Islamic world; Sheela-na-Gigs.

Did "God" (YHWH) have a wife? A new find in Israel lends weight to the concept.

Fans of the History Channel show "Vikings" might want to check out this short-list of notable Viking leaders.

A modern anthropologist meets ancestor worship in the modern world -- respectfully.

We're getting our dawns back.

At the latitude at which I live—44.9798º N—we lose our dawns during the winter. The Sun goes down; it's dark. The Sun comes up; it's light. But the rich, varied colors of Dawn—the roses, the ambers, the saffrons, the teals—go down into the Dark of the Year and are gone.

But now they're returning. Into the colorless world of winter, color comes flooding back.

The Dawn of the Seasons, the Dawn of the Year, approaches. For 6000 years and more, spring has been the special season of Dawn, ever-young goddess, and the many and varied dawn goddesses of the Indo-European-speaking world are known wherever those languages are spoken. In English we call her Easter.

Some have postulated a myth in which, through the dark winter, Dawn is held captive in the Underworld. And now she's coming back to us again, free at last.