Living

Column: Look at Everything That’s Come and Gone

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Pagan Perspectives

A few years ago, I attended a bonfire celebration in South Florida for Midsummer, complete with drinks and drumming. It took place close to the beach, so there was a constant breeze, and it was held later in the evening, so the thunderstorms had passed over and the mosquitoes were full and satiated.  The air was thick and accented by night-blooming flowers.  But it was also bearable. The night takes no toll like the day. That year, a few friends interested in Paganism asked to join. They let the drums lead their bodies and thoughts.

Living

Column: Rituals for Grieving Change

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Pagan Perspectives

Ritual gives words to the unspeakable and forms to the formless. It brings the non-physical into physical form so we can see it, touch it, feel it, and process it. -Terri Daniel
In our exploration of grief, we have looked at the impact of grief on us as individuals and as communities when loss happens. While there are many types of loss, we have focused in our last two columns on the loss of a person. This is the most common loss we talk about within society, and we often do not see other types of loss with the same level of priority.

Culture

Column: the Mainstreaming of Pride

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Pagan Perspectives

June saw events around the world commemorating the LGBT+ Pride celebration. (LGBT+ refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, “plus” other nonheteronormative gender and sexual identities.) While on the surface these seem to be happy affairs, awash in rainbow colors and set to the thumping beat of dance music, their history is one marked by oppression and bloodshed. Commemorating the June 1969 Stonewall Riots that sparked the birth of the LGBT+ equality movement, modern-day Pride celebrations have for years struggled against an onslaught of hatred and persecution in the United States and around the world. But as society continues to make its snail’s-pace march toward genuine equality, one unexpected – if problematic – ally has emerged: capitalism. What began solely as a human rights movement has now also become a viable market.

Living

Column: Peregrinautika, or Learning to Love Legislators

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Pagan Perspectives

For any pet owner, having a beloved companion get lost or simply disappear is a worst-case scenario for that relationship. To many Pagans and polytheists, those relationships can take on spiritual or magical significance, making the pain of such a loss cut even deeper. In those cases where the animal’s fate is never discovered, questions and guilt can linger for years. This is the tale of an heroic cat, one whose fate would have been untold but for the gods. I: The Mists of Myrlyn
Myrlyn was a scrappy and strong cat, the sort of cat who thoroughly enjoyed human care and comfort but could easily slip into the wild, never to return.

Living

Column: an Essay in Five Hammers

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Pagan Perspectives

Hammer the First
She hands me a tiny white box. I look at it, the gold lettering of the logo for Pathways, our local metaphysical shop, glimmering in the candlelight. It is the night of my first-degree initiation into my family’s coven, and now that the ritual is over, we are gathered around the coffee table altar in the living room of the house where I grew up exchanging presents. I slide the top off the box. Inside, resting on a pillow of spun fibers, is a silver sigil attached to a slim black cord.