Third Wave Witch: Feminist Spirituality, Spiritual Feminism

Third Wave Witchcraft explores the intersection of feminism, Witchcraft, Goddess Spirituality, and feminist activism. A place to explore how to make our spirituality more feminist, our feminism more spiritual, and our world more just.

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Susan Harper

Susan Harper

Susan Harper is an eclectic solitary Feminist Witch from Irving, Texas. She is a professor of Anthropology, Sociology, and Women's Studies, with a focus on gender, religion, and sexuality. She is also an activist, community educator, and writer. When she's not making magick or fomenting social change, Susan is the head soapmaker, herbalist, and aromatherapist for Dreaming Priestess Creations. She shares her life with her partner, Stephanie, five cats, and two guinea pigs.
Full Moon in Scorpio: Great! Another F*cking Opportunity for Personal Growth!

It's been an intense week as the Scorpio Moon approaches, Beltaine is in the air, and seemingly all the planets (well, ok, just four, but Mercury's warming up to do his own tap dance next week) doing the backwards boogie of retrograde. Saturn, the King of Karma, has been dancing backwards for a few weeks, bringing to light all sorts of things that we thought were long ago dead and buried. Mars retrograde has many of us feeling extra combative and raw. The Scorpio Moon asks to us focus unwaveringly on our target, our object of desire, and through that focus, draw our desires to us. And the Sun moving into steady Taurus means we may be torn between the known, the status quo, and all that which we truly desire even it obtaining it means shaking our world to its foundations.

As a former therapist of mine once said, Oh great. Another fucking opportunity for personal growth. Or, to put perhaps a more positive spin on it, What an opportunity to really heal some old shit.

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  • Susan Harper
    Susan Harper says #
    Thanks for stopping by! I'm so glad I add a little laughter and magick to your Full Moon!
  • Natalie Zaman
    Natalie Zaman says #
    Brilliant. And you made me laugh too which was much needed today. I'm printing this out so I can write out my answers... thanks an
Weekly Goddess Inspiration: Kali Ma

Sex and Death! Sex and Death! 

That's the running joke whenever anyone in my circle pulls Kali Ma from one of my Goddess Oracle decks. Kali evokes a sense of simultaneous awe and revulsion, devotion and recoiling, from many people. The Hindu Dark Mother embodies so much that seems paradoxical -- endings and beginnings, creation and destruction, nurturing and punishment, love and hate, and -- yes -- Sex and Death. Her fearsome visage, her girdle of severed arms, her necklace of skulls all draw on our darkest fears. And yet the ultimate lesson of Kali Ma, it so often seems, is for us to be willing to find beauty in the horrific, to find the love in the dark nights of the soul, to find the new beginning in the fiery ending. 

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Weekly Goddess Inspiration: Haltia

One of the things I love most about the Goddess Inspiration Oracle by Kris Waldherr is that it includes many lesser-known and even obscure Goddess alongside those that are familiar to me. I appreciate the chance to learn about Goddesses who may have been overlooked in my mythological education, and to find connections with Goddesses from pantheons or cultures I may know little about. 

This week brings the Baltic Goddess Haltia, Goddess of the Hearth and Home. She has much in common with the Estonia Goddess Holdja, and with Hearth Goddesses more generally. Honored among the Baltic Finns as the guardian of the hearth and hearthfire, Haltia lives on today as a general name for the house faeries or spirits who guard homes, water, graveyards and other places where humans dwell and carry out our daily activities.

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This month's Full Moon brings us a lunar eclipse as well, and arrives hot on the heels of the Spring Equinox. Known variously as the Worm Moon, the Sap Moon, or the Crow Moon, March's Full Moon calls us to seek out the areas of balance and imbalance in our lives. It is very much in harmony with the overall energies of the Spring Equinox -- the time when we begin to turn from the inner work of the Winter to the outer work of Spring and Summer, when we move from contemplation to action. This Full Moon propels us to action, but gently so -- inviting us to examine the areas where we are still in need of nurturance and healing, where we have gotten out of balance and harmony with ourselves and our world. 

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This week, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, wisdom, music, arts, and learning comes into our lives to serve as guide. Beautiful Sarasvati appears when we are on the cusp of enlightenment, of new learning, of finding new ways to express ourselves. If you have set creative, spiritual, or intellectual goals for the coming Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere), Sarasvati has come to tell you that you are on the right path. 

b2ap3_thumbnail_sarasvati.jpg

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Welcome Spring! Ostara Blessings!

Ostara Blessings to those of you in the Northern Hemisphere. May the coming spring and summer bring you much joy, love, and abundance! 

My Ostara gift to you is a piece I wrote for MotherHouse of the Goddess, a wonderful portal for Goddess Spirituality. 

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A Priestess Year

One of the four magickal goals of a Witch is "to be silent." I've been feeling my silence on these pages over the last few months especially, as my own inner monologue has turned up and as I've been increasingly called to both give voice and hold silence in my day to day and spiritual lives. When I chose the word "Priestess" as my power word for 2016, I don't think I fully realized what that would do -- the things it would shift, the ways it would test me so early, the ways in which I would need to grow and stretch all while holding space for others to do the same. 

In many ways 2015 was the beginning of my Priestess year. I actually chose the word "Emerge" as my power word for last year, and even now I am realizing the ways in which I both emerged and am still emerging. The past 8 years for me had been something of an Underworld journey, as I navigated the exit from an abusive marriage, an acrimonious divorce, living on my own as an adult woman for the first time, a increasingly difficult and toxic academic job market, and all the change and growth and pain that comes when you essentially shake the Etch-a-Sketch of your life and start anew. It's also found me sailing the uncharted and exhilarating waters of new and healthy love, a career change, deepening spirituality, and stepping into a calling I've resisted for the better part of my adult life.

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  • Molly
    Molly says #
    Looking forward to hearing more and sharing your journey!

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