Michaelmas

Here is an informative post on Michaelmas and its connection with its perhaps pagan past. In our coven we still use the Christianized names for some of our rituals, like Candlemas instead of Imbolc. Also in our coven we use the Archangel names at the Watchtowers. And I have worked with Michael in ceremonial magicke also. I like the symbolism of the cauldron being upturned to represent the womb of summer becoming the tomb of winter. Enjoy and Blessed Michaelmas!

Pilgrim's Way

Michaelmas time, Michaelmas time,
Time is turning under the plough,
Under the stars, under the signs,
The ploughman toils with deep furrowed brow.

He turns his thoughts against the cold,
Buries his fears ‘neath earth’s deep mould,
Frost like fire burns white on the blade,
Of his iron share that red fire made.

(Source unknown)

Positioned at the threshold between summer and winter, Michaelmas (the 29^th of September – modern calendar) heralds the turning point of the year, a pivot upon which the see-saw of the seasons teeters and topples, this time towards the dark, colder months.  It is one half of the axis, which along with Easter cuts the year exactly in half.

When I think of Michaelmas I can’t help but think of Blackberries, after Michaelmas the devil is said to piss over them, others will tell you he fell on the bramble, cursing them in the process…

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Serpent’s Links 28 September 2013

Image from multiple sources on www

connected with the Year of the Water Snake

Here are some interesting links on magick and witchcraft I found recently.

First from the Albion Calling blog an Interview with Dr. Robert Mathiesen in which he discusses his career and some possible pre-Garderian witches in various esoteric organizations and solitaries in America. To quote from the post:

“Today here at Albion Calling, I am interviewing Dr. Robert Mathiesen, an American Medievalist, Slavist, and renowned historian of Western esotericism. Now Professor Emeritus at Brown University, Rhode Island, where he has worked since 1967, in recent years Dr. Mathiesen has turned his attention to both the textual evidence for witchcrafts in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, as well as the work of folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, who himself played a significant role in the development of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft. We talk about Mathiesen’s life, research, and thoughts about the future of the field.”

There are lots of links in that interview but the one i found most fruitful was to Michael Howard’s The Cauldron download page at which are 8 free PDFs (hit the > Arrows to access and then the > More button on the bottom right) of various interesting occult subjects. I have just skimmed through these articles and plan to read them in detail this weekend.

Enjoy! BB/93

Used with email permission from Source

Mysteria Misc. Maxima: September 27th, 2013

Every Friday Sarah Veale at the Invocatio blog releases her “Mysteria Misc. Maxima is a weekly feature which brings together links on religion and esotericism from around the internet.” As always there are lots of links to interesting stories. This week I especially enjoyed the articles on Mongolian Shamanism called  Former herder reveals perils of being a shaman in atheist China and a great article on the Goddess in ancient Crete called A New Glossary for Crete: The Power of Naming and the Study of History by Carol P. Christ and an excellent list by Donald Michael Kraig of the Nine Theorems of Magick. Thanks again Sarah for doing all this work for us and letting me share it with others!

Trailer for a film by Olivia Robertson of the Fellowship of ISIS

As I have written before, I just Love this lady, Olivia Robertson (check of the link at the bottom to the full test of her Call to Isis) one of the founders of the Fellowship of ISIS. Here is the link to their blog where this video trailer is feathered, and i have embedded the video below. Enjoy and Blessed Be the Goddess in all her many forms, and long live Olivia!

Equinox by Threefold Music

See, you Can balance an egg on a stone on the Equinox

Here is a really nice balanced song called Equinox from the album “Turning Of The Wheel” (2008). Threefold are Les Miles and Tim Rock. I found this at the Los Perspective blog, which looks fairly new but interesting. I tried to find the lyrics at various Lyrics search sites but was unsuccessful. I plan on doing a short ritual outside sometime this afternoon and may add a picture later. Until then, Blessed Autumnal Equinox!

Stop stealing from your fellow pagans!

I found a link at The Wild Hunt the other day to this blog and advise on how pagan artists and writers can TRY to protect their own works and the works of others on the internet. Please click on All the links in the post and after it to learn some great techniques. i for one wish every artist and photographer would have the software to put a watermark of copyright on their works, not necessarily blocking out the whole image, but maybe at the bottom (though of course someone can always download then crop that off later). I and most bloggers i follow seems to try VERY HARD to give credit where credit is due. But over the years i have amassed files of images and do not remember where i got them from. One technique i learned here is if you kept the title the same your can put the image on your desktop then drag it over to a Google image search and often find the artist. But if you changed the title that does not work so well. And you can also paste in a search for some lines from your poem or post to see what other sites out there may have stolen them from your blog. Being able to reblog on WP works great but reblogging a Blogger site to WP all you can do it paste a link, not the whole text, though i will sometimes put in a short quote in parenthesis and italics as a teaser (usually from something written at Wiki or YT). I am also in the practice to ask permission to do that, and even ask people if i can reblog their post and give them a few days to respond yes or no and if they say no then i just delete the reblogged post, or if they do not respond i just reblog it as they will be notified that way anyway. So like this article says, please lets respect the copyrights of others, as most of you already do, and i vow to redouble my own efforts to always source any pics i use in a post. The one place on the www where i see the most abuse is on Tumblr or Flickr picture sites where pics are sucked off and posted with no source at all. Though many of these sites will say straight on their intro page “if this image belongs to you please let me know and i will remove it ASAP”, which is laudable.

Pagan Activist

One of the recent dust-ups which have come up the greater pagan community the last few weeks has been the issue of copyright. In this round the trouble has included people posting content which is not their own as if it were as well as Facebook groups with unauthorized pdf copies of books freely available for download. In case any of you may not be sure, these acts are not only unethical but illegal.

There are already plenty of posts online explaining the basics of copyright. My friend Jennett (a fellow librarian) has a post about copyright and pagans here and Fire Lyte has an excellent post here. Go read both of them after you finish here.

In my professional life, both copyright and ethics are interests. I’m a supporter of Creative Commons and other alternatives to current copyright because I think the laws have become draconian thanks…

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Captain Kirk watches Miley Cyrus performance

I saw this posted at the Karmapolice blog the other day, and being a lifelong Trekie it gave me a laugh watching the Star Trek crew’s reaction to the VMA video. Enjoy!

Reblog – “The Man in Black” – by Sarah Anne Lawless

Public domain woodblock print

Here is a well written and researched article on the Witches Coven’s Man in Black posted by Sarah Anne Lawless the other day. It is entitled The Man in Black and goes through that mythical yet real figure in history past and present. I never really thought about the MIB as representing Hades and the Queen of Elphame representing Persephone together in an old coven, but it makes total sense now. Enjoy and Blessed Be!

Seasons and Memories

I found this a very relevant quote by Yoko Ono at the Metal Gaia blog and wanted to share it. Blessed Be.

Metal Gaia

 

‘Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.’
~ Yoko Ono

Image: Tree of Four Seasons by Josephine Wall (josephinewall.co.uk)

(This post was originally done by the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids on Facebook)

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Reblog – Breaking Tradition, or, How the Death of Modern Witchcraft is a Myth

What i call the Dancing Dryads – source Igor Zenin

At the Sarah Anne Lawless blog she recently wrote this post called Breaking Tradition, or, How the Death of Modern Witchcraft is a Myth. It is a well thought out and well written article that came out of a conversation she had with a good friend who is an elder Wiccan of the traditional path, contrasted with the newer growing more shamanic eclectic form of Witchcraft which is probably closer to the source, and how the two paths sometimes do not work together and sometimes do. And there are already lots of interesting comments, including my own, on this subject after the post. Enjoy and Blessed Be!

What i call the Lone Blue Wolf – source unreadable