I had mentioned in my last blog post that would be pulling one rune a week to learn more about them.  My first rune was Perthro, Peorth.  A rune of mystery and change.  Which was the perfect rune to begin with, I was starting out learning and studying the mysteries of these runes.  It was a beginning for me, a beginning full of mystery. 

A mudra that links Star Trek, Orthodox Jewish liturgy, and the god of witches.

Fascinating.

The “Vulcan salute” premiered in 1967 during Star Trek's second season. Series creator Gene Roddenberry felt that the words of the newly-invented Vulcan greeting needed some sort of physical gesture to go with them. Actor Leonard Nimoy held up his hand, palm facing out, thumb extended, fingers divided between the second and third fingers. In that moment, a pop-culture icon was born. Live long and prosper, folks.

Nimoy knew the gesture from his childhood. Six times a year in the Orthodox synagogue that his grandfather took him to, the kohanim—men from priestly families—would face the congregation, raise both hands before their faces making the same hand-sign, and pronounce the ancient Threefold Blessing:

The year ends with a baby.

For those who may not have heard, a ceremonial guard on duty at the Canadian National War Memorial on Parliament Hill was shot and killed this past week.  The shooter claimed to be a Muslim and in support of ISIL, but there is no evidence he was working with any sort of organized group, and it seems as though he was mentally ill.

As a symbol, he could not have chosen a better target.  It was our National War Memorial.  The ceremonial guard was a young man who didn't even have any bullets in the gun he was armed with.  His companion tried to chase the culprit down.

I live in an area where the winters are long. And cold.  And snowy.  Sometimes it seems like spring will never come again.  So 5 years ago I started making corn dollies out of corn husks and cotton embroidery floss, cotton twine or jute twine.  But these were not just ANY sort of corn dollies, these are SPRING corn dollies.  

How do you purify a desecrated symbol?

Some friends of mine who own a Baltic imports store had just come back from a buying trip to Latvia. “Come see this,” said Sean, when I walked in the door. “It's very special.”

He was right. The Thunder brooch was beautiful, bronze, big and solid enough to heft in the palm of a hand. A Sun Wheel, but this was a Sun filled with lightnings: Sun and Thunder in union. “It's a wonderful piece,” he said, “but I can't put it out on the floor.” I was on the verge of asking why not when suddenly I saw why not.

What’s the difference between a pentagram and a pentacle? Aren’t pentagrams satanic? Why do some Wiccans wear pentagrams? Do I have to wear a pentagram to be a Wiccan?

A pentagram is a five-pointed star, usually depicted as interwoven, or with the lines used to draw it overlapping. A pentacle is a pentagram with a circle around it. Pentagrams and pentacles have long been symbols of protection and warding off evil, and they are used for that purpose by many Wiccans today.

A Little History

Pentagrams have been used for thousands of years and appear in ancient Greek, Roman, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian art. They have been used by Christians, too—perhaps most famously by Hildegard of Bingen, who, along with other twelfth-century Christian scholars, associated the number five with the five senses and the human body (one head, two arms, and two legs; it reminds me a bit of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man), and saw it as the symbol of the microcosm, or the divine reflected on earth. The symbolism of the pentacle plays an important role in the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and of course it is also associated with the Christmas star and sits atop the Christmas tree in many Christian homes.