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PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Will Pagans Reclaim The World?

There is a rising movement with Pagan communities, to regain the respect and adoration Witches and Pagans once knew. Are you a part of it?

All over the world Witches and Pagans are working to reclaim the respect of Witch, Pagan, and Wiccan. From the coast of California to small towns in Pennsylvania, and even as far away as Pakistan; Witches are rising up to reclaim the value of our faiths and sacred titles. 

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  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Thank you for your insights. I am also a very public witch, out of the broom closet even in the Christian denomination in which I
My Recounting of Pagan Spirit Gathering, 2015


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A Spoonful of Sugar – Can Pagans Be Kinder?

Our intrepid Editor, Anne Newkirk Niven, once told me: “Just write what you want to write. It’s virtually impossible to figure out what will resonate with readers—or what they’re interested in reading”.

And, if you think about it, just about anyone can fill a Symbolism blog with inventories of universal signs and archetypes—and what go-to authors of symbolism books list as accepted interpretations.

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  • Angie C
    Angie C says #
    Wonderful article. Thank you so much. I hope people read it and take it to heart. And not just pagans, this is important in all ar
  • Janet Boyer
    Janet Boyer says #
    Thank you so much, Angie. The more I thought about, the more I, too, realized that rudeness and vitriol is a universal communicat
  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Thank you. It is a gift to read your writing - and now I am humming Mary Poppins myself
  • Janet Boyer
    Janet Boyer says #
    Bless your heart, Lizann. (I can't get all the Mary Poppins songs out of my head! LOL! Probably will be that way for weeks... )

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Rising of the Moon

We're all born pagan.

Anything else, you have to be made into.

The end that those who look to the end of days see is their own.

But we were here before, we've never gone away, and after, we'll still be here.

Pagan.

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  • astra
    astra says #
    brilliantly worded! thanks!

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Time for melancholy

In theory Pagans honour the dark half of the year as well as the light, bright growing times. However, in practice we spend autumn talking about harvest, and while we do acknowledge the dead at Samhain, midwinter tends to be more about the return of the light than the deep darkness. There are many things the wheel of the year doesn’t give us much space to honour and explore. Loss, misery, nostalgia, regret, and despair don’t really find a place.

Of course it’s tempting to focus on the ‘good stuff’ in life – what seeds are you planting this spring, where’s your fertility for Beltain, what have you harvested, and lo, the sun is reborn and round we go again! However, if you don’t have a lover, and your health is poor or your plans aren’t working out, then these are tough things to celebrate and it can feel like there’s no room for your experiences amongst everyone else’s cheerful optimism. The wheel of the year encourages us to look forward in hope, not fear, and not to look back except when we can be pleased by the results.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Earth Our Mother

[I have revised one of my posts from Awenydd of the Mountains to share with SageWoman Blogs and Pagan Square  for Earth Day. May you celebrate consciously and joyously!]

b2ap3_thumbnail_Earthday.jpg

As with Terra and Gaia, Earth/Hertha/Nerthus is a Goddess. I think civilizations have always acknowledged her as Mother. We keep calling her by Goddess names, even in monotheist eras.

I find it a little odd that we also call soil “earth”. Mother as the sum of her parts – the physical matter of her body, but reduced to the rocky sediment. But really, ocean is as much “earth” as soil is. Air, lava, and living organic matter are, too. You and I are “earth”.  So this wording from our language draws my eye to the separateness and stage-set attitude of Western Civilization being “on the earth” rather than “in the earth”. On a ground or stage, rather than deep within the biosphere… itself deep within the universe. Above, on top of, dominating, walking on… Planet as mostly inanimate prop to play out the lofty human drama, instead of the reality that Pagans know of planet as living home and community to which we belong and mother from which we emerged… inseparable from ourselves.

I see soil as deep and fecund, and the ground as a lot more than a simple surface. From spinning core and ever-shifting mantle creating a magnetosphere to shield us from solar winds, to rich medium that produces and nourishes all life as well as storing and transforming organic and inorganic matter, to ancient mountains and ocean rifts, to the symbolic shamanic lower world we can descend into for knowledge and experience. It is the fire and the cauldron.

Part of my spiritual work is to bring this vital, communal, and immersive sensibility back into my culture’s relationship with Earth. It is currently and for so long has been sick with

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  • John Halstead
    John Halstead says #
    Lia, thank you for the shout out! But it's ecopagan.com, not ecopagan.org. Can you correct that? Thanks, John
  • Lia Hunter
    Lia Hunter says #
    Oops! Fixed now. Thanks!
  • John Halstead
    John Halstead says #
    Thanks. Just yesterday, I wrote eco-pagan.com instead of ecopagan.com -- and in a press release no less.
  • Lia Hunter
    Lia Hunter says #
    Aww! To err is human!

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Naked for Beltain

I’ve read it so many times in books and blogs – now is the season for making love out of doors, jumping naked over Bel fires and generally doing your Paganism in a carefree, unclad sort of way. It is warm enough to be barefoot outside, I grant you, but far, far too cold for nudity. A traditional British summer brings more rain than it does cavorting options. The naked dancing Pagans are either far tougher than me, or don’t actually do as much of the cavorting out of doors as they imply.

As a species we obviously didn’t start out wearing clothes, but have got into the habit over thousands of years. It’s allowed us to extend our habitat far beyond the balmy zones our hairless and not that blubbery bodies could otherwise tolerate. So the trouble with viewing nudity as natural, and thus desirable, is that you aren’t budgeting in what we’ve been doing for a long time purely because we can and do wrap up.

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  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Thank you! Lovely and practical. I am one of those people who has gone barefoot enough to have "Hobbit soles" so I usually do mo
  • Christopher Blackwell
    Christopher Blackwell says #
    Much like here in Southern New Mexico. [Grin]
  • Travis
    Travis says #
    In Texas, the weather is typically warm enough for this, but the mesquite thorns and rattlesnakes make skyclad ritual a sort of "a
  • Sable Aradia
    Sable Aradia says #
    I like to try to get naked for Beltane if I can. But I live in Canada, so often I can't. I also light my candles with a Bic. I
  • Carol P. Christ
    Carol P. Christ says #
    If Gerald Gardner had not been a nudist, would nudism be part of contemporary paganism? I don't think we have to feel being nude

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