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It's one of the witch's most important powers.

Glamor.

Glamorie, glamory, glamorye: n. The art (and craft) of making others see what you want them to see, and (by implication) think what you want them to think.

In common usage, the term implies “...making others see what isn't there.” “She's got him glammed,” we say.

But in fact, the term is neutral. Glamor can be the lie that tells the truth. Ask any artist. A painter can take a piece of stretched cloth and some paint and make you think that you're seeing a landscape.

If you want to learn glamor, watch those that are good at it: make-up artists, actors, demagogues.

As a storyteller myself, I can tell you for certain that narrative works a very powerful glamor.

This beat-up old knife may not look like much, but if I tell you that it was Sybil Leeks athame, well...it sure looks different than it did a few seconds ago. Glamor = resonance. In some ways, the history of the modern Craft is a glamor: a worldwide glamor now several million strong.

“Eating the first corn, cutting the first ripe tomato, grilling fresh fish in the open air: if done consciously,  these can become rituals of love and thanksgiving to the earth that sustains us.”

–Patricia Monaghan, The Goddess Companion

It's the question always asked of the witch.

If your magic is so powerful, then why are they hanging you?

When things go wrong in your own life, you may well have asked yourself much the same question.

If I'm such a powerful witch and all, then why is my life such a mess?

Well, as they say, sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't.

But that's to miss the point.

When they gave us the Craft, the gods never promised that life would be easy.

They never said that there would be no hardship.

In fact, they gave us the Craft precisely because they foresaw that there would be hardship. Hardship, alas, there will always be.

When I first became a forum admin on the American Asatru group several years ago, I was invited to do so because the group creator liked my book Asatru For Beginners.  I said yes because I had just had a bad online experience in a different group and wanted to help create a space that would be better. I wanted to create a troll free space where heathens could talk about their heathen religious stuff free of mockery by trolls and safe from online harassment and stalking and other internet ills. I wanted to create a group which would be a supportive religious community where people could find friendship and advice about life in addition to religion. I envisioned a space where there would be fun things to do, and which would be especially supportive toward creators such as authors, artists, and musicians. The group became that.

Before I joined the management team, the American Asatru Association group was already a space that screened membership applications to keep out neonazis and white power gang members and other such undesirables, in addition to keeping out trolls. It was also already a group that welcomed heathens of any sect, not just Asatru, and from anywhere in the world, not just the Americas. It welcomed universalist, tribalist, and folkish Asatruars, and was a Loki-friendly group. Those policies stayed the same while I was adminning under the original group owner, and I plan to keep them in place. 

I’ve had a bit of writer’s block the past several weeks. I was doing fine till just before Beltane, and then…nothing.

A few weeks ago, as part of my summer solstice celebrations I was fortunate enough to be part of a private midsummer ceremony at Stonehenge. We slept a few hours on the drove-way, a small track that passes within a few hundred yards of the stones, and at a sleepy 3.00am took a slow walk across the sacred landscape to join a pilgrimage procession to the stones from the visitor’s centre, as the stars were still bright overhead, and all but us and the owls were lost to dreaming. Stonehenge is not just the stones you see, there is a whole ritual landscape around it stretching for quite a distance with barrow mounds and the mysterious cursus- a rectangular earthwork enclosure 1 and ¾ of a mile long. Predating the stones by 500 years it’s aligned to the equinox sunrises. There is also the likely procession route of the avenue between Stonehenge and the river Avon, surfacing on land again to ‘woodhenge’- Durrington walls henge and settlement just a couple of miles away. Everywhere you go all around the area you step on sacred ground.

Minneapolis, the capital city of Paganistan, has the great good fortune to be home to two sacred waterfalls.

The better-known of the two is Minnehaha Falls, on Minnehaha Creek as it approaches the Mississippi River. This year for the seventh year running, the local pagan community will process to the Falls and make the traditional offerings to her as we kick off our annual Pagan Pride celebration.

The other is the falls on the Mississippi River in the heart of what is now downtown Minneapolis. (In fact, the city of Minneapolis was originally sited where it is precisely because of the falls.) This is the Mississippi's only waterfall; it loomed so large in local lore that in Dakota the Great River itself is known as Hahawakpa, “the river of the falls (haha).” In the whirlpool at the waterfall's foot lived Wanktehi, god of waters.

In 1682 Belgian explorer and missionary Louis Hennepin “named” the falls for his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. They've borne this imposed name ever since.

Well, it's time and high time to lose this imperialist name, which has absolutely nothing to do with the falls themselves.