Pagan Voices: Kitsune, Theresa Reed, Laine Mardollsdottir and more!

Pagan Voices is a spotlight on recent quotations from figures within Pagan and Heathen communities. These voices may appear in the burgeoning Pagan media or a mainstream outlet, but all showcase our wisdom, thought processes, and evolution in the public eye. Is there a Pagan or Heathen voice or artist you’d like to see highlighted? Contact us with a link to the story, post, audio, or image.

I am deeply introverted. I crave time to myself, in a place where I feel safe, in order to recharge my social batteries. My home is my sanctuary. In a time of my training where I am feeling desperately out of control, it should not be a shock that a hearth goddess made herself known to me!

I believe deeply in the importance of sanctuary and safer spaces, and of keeping the hearth fires burning. I am grateful for the times I have been able to open my home to members of my community who needed a quiet space, a friendly ear, or an offer to put the kettle on (as we say in my family, “if tea cannot fix it, then it is a serious problem indeed”). If you need someone to sit with you in companionable silence, I’m your fox. — Kitsune, on their developing relationship with fire gods.

No, this is not all I do. I also clean my house, do my accounting, tweak my website, feed my family, take care of two demanding cats, write, read business manuals, talk to my attorney, attend meetings, exercise, market my business, do readings via email in person and over the phone, scrub toilets, shop, counsel my children, check in on the neighbor, reach out to friends, attend conferences, teach, answer every email that lands in my inbox, watch Game of Thrones, and take out the garbage. Is your “day job” all that you do? –Theresa Reed, from Ten Things to Never Say to Your Tarot Reader.

From photographer Greg Harder [2016 NAIN conference held in Guadalajara, Mexico]

More and more I’ve internalized the metaphor of pet-based polytheism, as my experiences seem to follow that pattern. I know there are places where it doesn’t quite fit my experiences (and likely less so other peoples’) but it helps me to understand the position that I’m in in relationship to them. I’m an independent human with many relationships with other humans, and as I said, I don’t think we quite need them to survive (though there are those of us who feel that we would not still be alive had it not been for their intervention). — Laine Mardollsdottir, Cats in a Library: Feline Polytheism

To embark on the future, it’s a good idea to learn about the past. When you know where you’ve been, and where the ones who came before have been, you know what needs to be changed or addressed, and what can be left behind as you move forward into the future. Inevitably your future becomes someone else’s past, and what we learn with that is that we are also part of the pattern of life, with our choices and messages having influence. Whether the people who come after will continue to carry or discard those choices and messages is up to them, but what is up to us is to decide what legacy we really, intentionally want to leave. –Taylor Ellwood, How my Ancestors Liberated me

The alternative to allowing politics and heathenism to mix is to try to separate religion and politics- which means that we are left with a religion that we don’t allow to have any bearing on the deep questions of our time. By taking that route, we are guaranteeing the slow death of heathenism as a religion. It is unreasonable to cut off a religion from the life-ways of the people who practice it and then expect it to be able to survive. –Ruth Morong, Heathen Family Values

Last week, we reported on a controversial posting released by new leaders of the Asatru Folk Assembly. While many bloggers took to their keyboards in reaction, here are quotes from just two responses that represent different perspectives on the issue.

It’s entirely possible for the AFA to endorse heteronormality and not ban homosexuality. It’s possible for the AFA as an organization to want to see traditional families prosper, and not go around bashing single mothers. It’s possible to say having children is a good thing, while not bashing childless couples. Just because they endorse one thing does not require them to hate everything that is different. –Jön Upsal’s Gardener, Did the AFA just ban gays?

I shouldn’t have to explain why this is an issue. It is 2016, this shouldn’t even be an issue, we should be living in a more enlightened world. Unfortunately, ideas such as Mr. Flavel’s still permeate the underside of Asatru and thus need to be addressed. First, let me be clear: Mr. Flavel and the AFA have a right to their opinion and a right to state it openly. The first amendment guarantees their right to be wrong and even hateful. I do not, nor does Heathen Talk, embrace a no platform policy. We do, however, want to take this moment to embrace our right to publicly and vociferously disagree — and perhaps even mock — the small mindedness that brings about these opinions. — Josh, The AFA: It’s that time again. on the Heathen Talk blog.

That’s it for now. Please continue to recommend voices or artists that you’d like to see featured here!

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