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Pagans around the world prepare for the annual festival of Samhain. Polytheist.com considers the role of household gods. And Jewish witches explore their own path in the aftermath of Sukkot. It's Watery Wednesday, our weekly news segment on the witches and Pagans community. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

What role should magic play in our lives? Were there ever female druids? And just what does the future hold for polytheism? These are among the questions we try to address in today's Watery Wednesday, our weekly take on news about the Pagan community. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

As I sit here and bleed I am relieved, I am releasing, I am relaxing, I am cleansed.

When you're a kid, being a grownup seems very glamorous. But after the 400th toilet scrub and 7th trip to the DMV, things can start to seem a little less magical and a little more like drudgery.

...UNLESS you're proactive about it. And here are 10 ways to be just that.

1. When you're brushing your teeth, consider what a gift you're giving yourself. Think of freshly growing mint, and shimmery pearls. Remember that the mouth, in Chinese face reading, symbolizes the place where blessings and abundance enter your life, and clear the way for goodness.

2. When you're waiting in line at the bank, consider the rapid and immense flow of money that surrounds you. Soak it in and feel your energy field being drenched in the energy of affluence. Bless the money in your own account, and give thanks for it, seeing this gratitude naturally multiply it in your mind's eye.

3. When you're driving, trip out on this: you're maneuvering a huge, horseless carriage wherever you want to go. How powerful are you, sliding around paved roads at this super human speed?! It's like you're an astronaut. It's like you're living in a sci-fi novel.

4. When you're folding clothes, unabashedly inhale their freshness like a lady in a detergent commercial. Congratulate yourself for your cleaning efforts and feel that wherever you go, you are spreading fresh, sparkly light throughout your home. Fold light and love into the clothes so that whomever wears them (even if it's you) feels this glowing energy of love.

5. When you're working, no matter what type of work you are doing, remember that you can change lives and spread love simply by the energy you exude. Something as simple as an authentic smile or compliment, fueled by love and acceptance, can create lifelong, extremely positive changes within a customer or coworker that ripple out everywhere, forever.

6. When you're preparing food, think about all the glowing sunlight, fertile earth, and flowing water that went into these ingredients being here now in your kitchen. Then think about all the helpful people that contributed to harvesting, packaging, transporting, and making it available in the store. Oh, and the precious pollinators! Truly: what a miracle, this food. What an invaluable, delicious miracle.

7. When you're grocery shopping, think of a cave man or woman. Then notice that from their perspective, the grocery store is a most magical, glowing forest of edibles, all safe to eat and ripe for the picking. What an amazing, luxurious thing humans have created, this grocery store! And what a gift to be able to shop in it!

8. When you're taking a shower, remind yourself that you are in an in-between time. When you're in the shower, you can't check your email, tone your glutes, make financial decisions, or advance your career. So give up on worrying about all that stuff, and just enjoy the feeling of the water and all those negative ions literally bathing you in positive energy. Let yourself revel in the sensual pleasure of it all. After all, there's nothing else to do!

9. When you're vacuuming, aren't you in luck! What a wonderful invention, this broom that powerfully sucks everything up into a bag, making a clear and sparkling floor where before there was dust. If you have a carpet, what could be better than those lines the vacuum makes? It's like raking the sand in the Zen garden that is your home.

10. When you're sweeping your doorstep, clear the way for blessings. According to feng shui wisdom, the entrance of your home is the place where you define what type of energy enters your home. So clear the decks, sparkle it up, and let that sparkling energy flow in.

image: flickr.com/AlicePopkorn

When I think of Nashville, I think of country music and the Parthenon. I probably never would have associated the spot with meditation and summer magic, even after I visited the town, if it weren’t for a lucky chance. I attended a writing conference in Nashville a few years ago, held at the gothicly beautiful Scarritt Bennett retreat and conference center.  That was the last year the conference was small enough for that particular venue, and if I’d attended a year later, I never would have discovered the peace and beauty of the labyrinth that waits in Tennessee.

I’d never walked a labyrinth before, and when I stepped out of my on-site dorm to discover the familiar pattern of the Chartres labyrinth laid in the grass in front of the building, I got incredibly excited. There’s already something magical about wandering around a facility that feels like a Southern Hogwarts in the purple gloaming of June, but then to spot that mystical shape, complete with dancing fireflies, completes the sensation of having stepped into another world.

Magic is multi-dimensional, and metaphysical awareness spans many levels simultaneously.

This means that when we think we want to manifest happiness, for example, what we really want - deep down - might be more complete self expression. At first, this might mean letting our sadness out, and feeling the full range of our pain, as heart-wrenching as it may be. Then, and only then, would we be free to experience the longed-for happiness that sparked our desire to work magic in the first place.

Before you were even conceived, the burning times had terrorized your soul. But you can reclaim your Pagan power. 

During the European persecutions, thousands of women were killed as witches. Accusers would sometimes wipe out almost all the women of a village, along with some of the men.

I believe the burning times traumatized our DNA. This following shows how I picture it happening.