The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/category/living/page/10)
As summer draws to a close, there’s a quiet, almost melancholic shift in the air. The golden days of warmth, laughter, and endless sunlight are slowly fading. With each shorter day, the night seems to creep in earlier, reminding us of the approaching autumn— a season that, like life, is marked by change and the bittersweet passage of time.
Whatever you think of the taste and its position in the culinary hierarchy, parsley’s role in folklore and magic is significantly more dramatic, bringing together life, death, love, and demons like the very best of operatic metal albums.
But of all the Witchy items I’ve acquired over the years, the go bag is by far the most useful. Like all my favorite tools, it seems frivolous and self-aggrandizing until it is suddenly vital.
It’s always a fraught moment when somebody recognizes my necklace, which I realize is strange – the point of wearing a Thor’s Hammer is to publicly identify oneself as a Heathen, after all – but I’m still caught off-guard every time it happens. I’m forced to make a swift evaluation of my surroundings and my social context. Who is this person? What assumptions are they making about me? What assumptions do they think I will make of them?
To sacrifice takes courage. In our ethics, to put others or our values above the desires of the individual means to appeal to the better parts of our nature. How often do we teach our children or say to each other that we should “do the right thing”? How often do we applaud words or deeds that demonstrate this higher form of sacrifice precisely because it is so difficult for many people and it is not what most might do if we were in that same position.