Here is a handy spell for physical well-being as well as a self-esteem boost. For this witchy approach to preventive medicine, take a green candle on a Friday, dress it with clary sage oil, and speak the following three times:
My health is mine, under this moon divine. I choose to be well in this healthy body I dwell.
“Pride cometh before the fall” is a message I recall hearing many times as a child. The warning that, though there was the expectation that I would always do my best, it was not appropriate to express the positive glow of success and accomplishment. If one did not self-monitor humility, one faced the very real possibility of being “brought back down to size”. Messages that urge us to be humble, to keep quiet, to deflect compliments away are fairly strong. Having internalized these messages, there can definitely be a waft of distaste when we encounter boasting. We feel the wave of Ego come towards us and instinctively step back.
I accepted long ago that my friend has achieved a higher level of consciousness than I. But, seriously? No crushes?
“But when you were a teenager, surely…”
“Nope.”
It turned out the reason was not her high-mindedness, but her feeling that crushing on someone was unsafe, reviving an ancient, powerful fear of rejection.
That threw me. I crush early and often and am always vaguely ashamed of having done so. I certainly enjoy all the pleasures of a good crush, but I’d never considered that my crushes might reveal a belief in my own potential. Yet if a crush allows us to see the beauty in someone else, perhaps it also helps us see our own. At some level when we dream of someone, we also dream of who we can become in their eyes or at their side.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...