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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Magic of Place

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

“No longer am I only hearing my own voice
but instead I co-exist in a world where
No photo description available.everything speaks with  its own unique, quirky, gorgeous personality. Every berry has a little  voice, every grass stalk makes itself known. I become surrounded by a  community of living Earth, and this entire community is willing to play  with me in this changing game of life.”

—Day Schildkret (Morning Altars, @morningaltars)  

What is waiting for you to notice it?

Do you have time to play in this changing game of life?
  

As we enter the flourishing of spring, I have a practice-based audio meditation to share based on Day Schildkret's book Morning Altars. It is a Place Meditation.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

A couple of weeks ago, I started working on a blog post titled Nine Great Yule Reads. In it, I list nine different books—both fiction and non-fiction—that constitute, in my opinion, some of the best Yule reading around.

It's the kind of post that tends to get a lot of attention. People look to see if their favorites are listed, with the added benefit that you may come across something new and worthwhile.

I haven't finished the post yet—who knows, it may still happen—but, looking over the list that I'd drawn up, I was struck by something both unexpected and profound. With one exception—which I'll get to later—the Land itself figures prominently in each narrative, sometimes to the extent that it could even be considered a major character.

What makes this fact profound is that it's not just a statement about pagan literature; it's a statement about virtually all paganism. All paganism is local. A paganism that lacks relationship to the Land is an incomplete paganism.

In every single one of these books, both fiction and non-fiction—again with that one exception—the story takes place against the backdrop of a particular landscape, and in fact takes place as it does precisely because it is located in that particular landscape. If any of these stories took place other than where they do, they would be different stories.

Any realized paganism is, of necessity, a religion of Place. Anywhere else, it would be a different paganism. You can't practice Hopi religion in Minnesota. Pagan religion is religion that grows out of relationship with a particular place.

As for the exception that I referred to above, Place does not really figure as a character in the same way that it does in the other books because the story is set in an imaginary place.

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  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    That book that you know is set in an imaginary place. If you were not certain that the place in really imaginary; for example tha

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

I have a postcard on the window frame above my computer. It's an artwork of a small iconic mountain in Northern New South Wales and the road that leads into the town. This is the view you see as you drive into town. The postcard has the words coming home written down the side of it. The sunset sky behind the mountain, the greens leading up to it and at its base, the black road with the white dividing line - they tug at my heart. I have it there to remind me, to let that mountain and that view of home call to me.

But that's not where I live. I haven't lived there for years. I live a thousand kilometers to the south, in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Even though I adore Local Magic - both the concept and the living engagement with it - I've hesitated to make a commitment here, to this land. I spent three years living on the edge of the city, next to the ocean and felt a wild belonging to the sea and the air that didn't seem to feel the need to be tied down. But since I've been living on this vast plateau, in the last year, the land has called to me.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

We walked through an avenue of flowering tea-tree, small clustered white stars that formed a processional way. As we kept descending we met them singly, these scrubby but momentarily beautiful trees placed occasionally by the path or at turn below us on the hillside. By the pool the waterfall tumbled into there were another two tea-trees, guardians that greeted us as we stepped from the path onto the rocks around the pool. It was close to Beltaine and the flowers seemed a celebration of that. My son and I were discussing the girlfriend issue; how this was missing in his life.                                                                                                                                   ...b2ap3_thumbnail_Tea-tree-flowers.jpg

In magic sometimes we raise power deliberately; for healing, change or to charge a specific intent. Another way of working with energy is through the inherent power of places we’re connected to. By spending time there and getting to know special places sometimes we may find or access an energy not so much raised by us as granted to us, at least in that moment.

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  • Susan B. Chandler
    Susan B. Chandler says #
    Wow. Beautiful, simple, profound. Thank you.
  • Michelle Simkins
    Michelle Simkins says #
    What a beautiful story! I too have experienced moments of spontaneous magic like this, and they've always been in a place near and
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    This is lovely, Jane. Blessed Be - to you, your son and his lady.

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