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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in pagan festivals
Moon Cakes and Ale: Full Moon Festival

Here is a pagan ritual I have performed on weekends, when the full moon shines bright. Over the years, I have added many embellishments, such as astrological or holiday themes. This basic ritual, Moon Cakes and Ale, however, is a timeless and powerful classic.

Gather a group of friends either outdoors under the moon or in a room large enough for dancing, drumming, and singing. Have the guests bring a cake of their choice as well as a cider, mead, beer or juice to share. Place the offerings in the center, on an altar table. Then light a sage leaf and green and brown candles for home and hearth.

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If You Could Live in an All-Pagan World, Would You Do It?

If you could live in an all-pagan world, would you do it?

Of course you would. So would I. Any pagan would.

That's why I love pagan festivals so much. What they offer is the opportunity to live in that ideal pagan world, if only for a little while.

That summer, the festival was only 40 minutes out of town: an easy striking distance, one might think. Well, but I couldn't get the time off work.

I was waiting tables that year at a little jazz club cum restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. At the time, our cobblestone patio was the only outdoor dining venue in the area. We were packed every night. The work was grueling, relentless, nightmarish; only the money made it worthwhile.

Every night was all hands on deck. There was absolutely no way to take time off for a festival, because there was no one to cover for me.

So I decided to commute.

Every morning, I drove out to the festival and immersed myself in the nurturing waters of pagan culture. Then I'd drive back to town and deal with the teeming cowan masses.

“This is going to be the worst,” I thought.

But I was wrong.

There I was, every night, in an aureole of golden festival energy, my witch-fires stoked high. I was golden, I glowed: you could see the light from the next room. The cowans didn't know what hit them. Night after night, tips just rained down onto the tables. In my entire wait career, I'd never made so much money.

It should have been awful, but it wasn't. I danced my way through that week, elegant as hell and utterly unstoppable.

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Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Aline "Macha" O'Brien
    Aline "Macha" O'Brien says #
    Fantastic, Steven! I just got back from the Michigan Pagan Festival, where I was a presenter. A vibrant pan-Pagan scene, lovely

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
In Praise of Festival Romances

As summer festival season begins in the Pagan Northern Hemisphere, I sing in praise of Festival culture's magical child, the Festival Romance.

Festivals are magical, places of discovery: hotbeds of intensive growth, where Pagan Modernity recreates itself.

In so charged an atmosphere, people meet. How can they help but fall in love?

Here, in a place where time runs differently, how should a love not run its entire course—birth, consummation, and death—all in a few shining days?

There's love and love, as there's life and life. Life in the temporary pagan village is good; so too is life in community at home.

So too with festival romances. Some fruit into ongoing partnerships. Most don't, but there's no shame in that. A flower is no less beautiful because it bears no fruit.

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Every Day Magic: A Pagan Book of Days - Call for Submissions

Moon Books, the Paganism/Shamanism imprint of John Hunt Publishing, is accepting submissions for their 365 title Every Day Magic: A Pagan Book of Days. Deadline is September 15, 2016.

Editor Lucya Szachnowski invites you to write 80 words or less on pagan festivals, anniversaries, deities, practices, celebrated figures, observances, etc. Submissions can be spells, rituals, meditations, pagan prayers, aphorisms, divinatory techniques, recipes and craft projects. Be creative!

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Posted by on in Studies Blogs
Wisteria's Summer Solstice

For many years I would travel to Wisteria for Pagan Spirit Gathering.  From 2001 until 2008 I spent my Summer Solstice at Wisteria at PSG and loved it.  The community was phenomenal and the energy amazing; however, in 2009 PSG moved to a different location.  Ironically, just as I was going through a divorce it would seem the PSG also went through a divorce with Wisteria and the festival moved to a different venue.  I loved the sense of community that I felt at PSG, but I was also very much in love with the land at Wisteria.  It had a magical and mystical quality for me.

When my father died in 2004 I made a pilgrimage the following year to Wisteria's Faerie Shrine, a location at Wisteria that wasn't part of the PSG programming, and made an offering of my father's US Navy dog tag.  In 2008 I attended Between the Worlds Festival at Wisteria and while there I attended a ritual at the Faerie Shrine honoring our ancestors and sacred dead.  When I enter the Faerie Shrine I can feel my father's presence and the love he has for me as one of my sacred ancestors.  The Faerie Shrine at Wisteria always had an ethereal quality for me that added to the magical and mystical quality of the overall site.  My connection to the land is real and has meaning for me.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Celebrating the greening

In my part of the world the green returns somewhere between the standard Pagan festivals of the spring equinox and Beltain. It’s something I quietly celebrate, because the return of colour to the world, and the return of leaves is something I find uplifting. It’s not an event, and it’s impossible to ascribe a reliable date to it. The greening happens in response to light, temperature, and the mysterious whims of plants.

Underwood tends to leaf first – I’m seeing elder and hawthorn leaves. Weeping willows are in leaf, osier willows still have bare branches. Chestnut is underway, ash isn’t particularly. Each tree comes into leaf in its own time. Other plants all have their own unique relationship with the seasons – early spring flowers are going over, a new set of plants are flourishing, the woodlands are green with the leaves of garlic and bluebells, while the fields and hills brighten with new grass.

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Pagan News Beagle: Watery Wednesday, September 16

Witches gather in New York City in an annual street fair. We take a look at images of a Neolithic tomb through the ages. And Crystal Blanton considers the importance of maintaining a diverse and welcoming Pagan community. Today is Watery Wednesday, our weekly segment on news related to the Pagan community's past, present, and future. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

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