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Pretty much everything that you really need to know about paganism, you can learn from the novels of Rosemary Sutcliff.

Thanks to her, I—a little tow-headed kid in suburban 1960s Steeltown, USA—grew up knowing about Samhain and Beltane, Horned Gods and Kings who Die for Corn. Each year at Samhain, I pour to her hallowed memory.

Recently, rereading her novel The Lantern Bearers, I came across a poem in which a Woman of the Other Side, one of the Undying, the Lordly Ones, calls from That Land, the Land of Youth, to a mortal listener here in our world. In the haunting images and bright enameled colors of the Celtic Otherworld, she calls, and the birds of Rhiannon sing.

Song of the Woman of the Sidhe

To Oisín*

The apple tree blooms white

in the Land of the Living;

the shadow of the blossom

falls across my door stone:

a bird flutters in the branches, singing.

Green is my bird

as the green earth of men,

his song is forgetfulness.

Listen, and forget the earth.

Please join me in celebrating the Yule season. 

You are invited to two Fairy (Faerie) Yule events. 

4/2015*

The forest was evil. It held no beauty, power, or goodness; it never fed her cells when she walked in it.

A Faerie, she could perceive subtle energies. The forest was evil.

It hadn’t always been. But she’d secretly watched the change:

I used to think my huge anxiety, angst, and nervousness meant something was deeply wrong with me. Then one day the Goddess told me the intensity of those feelings stems from my wild, free spirit. I would’ve thought that was contradictory, but when She showed me the whole picture, it made sense.

Emotionally and spiritually, I’m in fairly decent shape. Am reasonably serene, given the pandemic and my statistically being at greater risk of dying in it. But anxiety visits. Sometimes, it overwhelms me. Right now, my stomach’s in a knot, but at least I’m not sobbing today.

It really helps when I remember that my abundance of intense feelings is appropriate and part of my passionate nature, and that passion is a gift I was given by the Goddess, and that I enjoy right down to my toes. Feeling passionate about life’s ups and downs of is part of my vitality—my life force expressing itself. I want to honor that.

Note: Websites tend to reduce photographs to make webpages load quickly. This often blurs details in the photos.

If you know me well, you’ve seen me use anything at hand for divination. Everything around me has an opinion. (May not always be a good opinion, but a lot of the time it is.)

Divination is part of my every day, throughout the day. I’m constantly trying to communicate with my Gods, whether  divining for myself or for clients in classes and private sessions. This oracular thread woven throughout my hours is one reason I love making divination tools. Making a deck or other divinatory tool and then using it inspires me and opens me to the Divine in new ways. 

Given my use of anything nearby for fortune telling, and my interest in making oracular tools, it’s no surprise that, after I’d spent a couple of years making a pen and ink alphabet (with some watercolors thrown in), it occurred to me to make the letters into alphabet oracle cards for myself. Or if you prefer, “Alphabet divination cards.” Are you asking, “What is alphabet divination?” The answer is: I had no idea what it was until I made the idea up. I’ll explain:

Once upon a time, in a land much like yours and mine, people said their princess was so neurotic and fussy that she complained about a pea under her mattress. 

Her father, the king, had explained to her that there couldn’t be more than a tiny pea or pebble under the mattress. 

But her back hurt badly and, raised to believe she could not overcome obstacles herself and must rely on a man instead, she vowed to marry the first fellow to solve her problem.

A worldly empire does not provide safety. There is only the Great Void. It is my safety. It is the Goddess’ nurturing and loving Self.

A possible problem when pursuing success, in business or your personal life, is a false sense that you’re building an empire in which you will find safety. There is no secure empire, there is only the Great Void. And it is the one secure Empire.