Ahimsa Grove

Ahimsa Grove is a resource for vegan pagan living. It will include personal experiences and musings, recipes, shopping tips, vegan ethical and dietary considerations, and ideas for pagan practice including spells, rituals, and herbcraft.

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Leslie J Linder

Leslie J Linder

Leslie earned her Master of Divinity Degree at Vanderbilt University and is a Wiccan Priestess, Ordained Interfaith and seeking ordination through the Temple of the Feminine Divine in Bangor. Her column in SageWoman, “Child of Artemis,” deals with women and our relationship with animals. Leslie considers herself a cultural worker, dealing with issues of violence and oppression as they impact humans and other species. She has worked at a rural domestic violence prevention program since 2001 and is a board member on VegME, Maine’s vegan advocacy group.  
Room for Vegan Paganism within existing traditions

            I have come to think of Vegan Paganism as my own personal form of eclectic Neo-paganism. However, most of us study within or practice within broader traditions. I thought it might be interesting to look at the traditions I have come across that helped me in my eclectic Vegan Paganism. I'm sure readers will identify others.

 

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Neo-pagan and vegan ways to take part in the Easter fun

Now that the Neo-pagan holiday of Ostara is behind us, the secular/Christian celebration of Easter looms ahead. I know that many of us celebrate the mainstream holiday with the rest--especially as it has become a more secular event where all kids expect an Easter basket, and probably to take part in an egg hunt.

Due to our avoidance of eggs, we vegans have to adapt this holiday a bit more than other Neo-pagans. Here is an article that I wrote up about the season, and ways vegans can join in the fun. 

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Rachel Seiler
    Rachel Seiler says #
    My Mom pointed me towards your blog, and I'm glad she did!
  • Leslie J Linder
    Leslie J Linder says #
    Thanks for reading, Rachel! You and your mom.
In the season of Imbolc, change can be scary. Especially since it's Women in Horror Month!

As we move past the Sabbat of Imbolc, we feel its energy of new beginnings. As we have learned from the recent events on the American political and social landscape, change can be both a wondrous and a terrifying thing. In either case, it galvanizes our sense of purpose and moves us down the path of our chosen desires. Whether we are promoting a change or resisting it, the energy of Imbolc calls us to action.

The bat is a wonderful totem for initiation and transformation. When these little Goth mascots come flitting out of their night time sanctuaries, they symbolize rebirth. Again, they symbolize both the beautiful and the frightening within the archetype of transformation. They tend to be stigmatized due to their habitat and their nocturnal ways. Since we associate them with creepy haunted houses and dreary caves, we see them as symbols of death. In reality, bats are important pollinators. Their control of insects like mosquitoes also protects us from disease. I will go into the bat in more detail in an upcoming issue (probably issue 92) of SageWoman. For now, let's suffice it to say that the bat is a really good representation of the scary side of change.

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"I no longer steal from nature" -- An ancient poem from Aleppo

I'm not sure if it's realistic or not, but the New Year always fills me with hopes for peace. The Winter Solstice starts that process, and the cathartic idea of the new year follows up with an "out with the old, in with the new" type of energy. But sometimes, a voice that is "old" brings us "new" insights. 

With all the hub-ub about diversity, immigration, refugees, and religious dialogue, I thought it would be nice to share a poem from a very renowned, very ancient Syrian poet. His name was Abu 'L'Ala Ahmad ibn 'Abdallah al-Ma'arri. Not surprisingly, he is most often referred to only as al-Ma'arri. He was born in Aleppo, and lived from about 973-1057 CE.

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A Samhain Guide to Vegetarian(ish) Monsters

 

In the season of Samhain, the mainstream culture turns it's skittish eye rather apprehensively toward death. For many pagans, the cycle of life and death is more integrated into our daily understanding. But as a child of my culture, I have always adored "Halloween." And since I have always had a bit more than a streak of Goth in my personality, I wanted to celebrate the season by sharing some rather RomantiGoth poetry  and fiction from the vegetarian masters. For starters, there is Percy Shelley, who may have been one of the first to anticipate what moderns call the "straight edge vegan" scene after discovering the philosophy in 1813.

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Apples Eating Apples: A Vegan Pagan Mabon

 

Mabon is sometimes called the Pagan Thanksgiving. It is a harvest festival, as well as the time of the year when day and night (light and dark) are equally balanced. For the Vegan Pagan, Mabon gives us a chance to have a Thanksgiving Holiday that avoids modern connotations of colonization and genocide (when it comes to European relations toward Indigenous Americans) and also the association with eating turkeys. As I have mentioned in past posts, about forty-six million turkeys are slaughtered for American Thanksgiving each year. Information about this can be found at the Maine based project, https://46millionturkeys.com/. So perhaps you can already see why I think Mabon is the perfect Vegan Pagan Thanksgiving. We can make the celebration about a bountiful harvest of vegan foods like yams, corn, pumpkins, squash, acorns, chestnuts, blueberries, cranberries, and more. But perhaps the star food of the vegan Mabon feast should be acknowledged as the apple.

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Lammas: The Ancient Heritage of Grains

The harvest holidays of paganism are great times to celebrate the gifts that plants give to all of us in the ecosystem. Grains have been a mainstay of the human (and pre-human) diet throughout our evolution. Studies of the early populations in Africa as long as 105 000 years ago show a diet sustained heavily by sorghum. Plants have been found on the grinding tools of several Paleolithic excavations. Evidence of starchy grains on the teeth of Neanderthals has been found from the Mediterranean to throughout Europe. There is even evidence that these early proto-humans learned to cook these plant foods.

 

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  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Your mention of sorghum reminded me of traveling with my family as a teenager back in the 70's. We would sometimes stop at roadsi

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