Homemade Hand Cream It’s planting season, and your hands are chapped and sore from exposure to soil and sun. Contact with the soil is inevitable, no matter how careful you are , but washing your hands soaps away the skin’s natural protective oils, making it to dry out. The following recipes contain ingredients that soften and smooth, such as beeswax and lanolin. The first recipe uses fresh herbs while the second uses essential oils. You may wait till you have grown them or purchase the oils from the store and make more before Fall harvest time. To test for possible allergic reactions, place a small amount of the ingredient in…

A Pax on Both Their Houses Pax is a Roman goddess whose name means “peace” or “Spirit of Peace”.  The Romans “adopted” her from the Greek pantheon where she was called Eireen (pronounced eye-REEN).  As the Goddess of Peace, she was born to the god Zeus and the goddess Themis and she was the sister to Dike (meaning “justice”), Eunomia (meaning “law” or “order”) as well as the Horae (meaning “season” or “hours”, where we get our modern word for “hour”).  As the Greek Eireen, she helps us replace worrisome thoughts with a sense of faith that “this too shall pass”.  When she is called upon, a sense of peacefulness…

Beltaine, also called May Day by many Christians. This Sabbat celebrates the fertility and union of the Horned God and the Goddess. At this time, life is renewing itself. Birds and animals are mating. In the fields, newly planted seeds are beginning to grow. Great fires are lit honoring the fertility God Belenos. Some leap the fires to show the exuberance of the season. A Maypole is erected and bright ribbons are hung on it. The Maypole, a phallic symbol, represents the masculine. The soft colored ribbons are the feminine. The union of the two symbolizes the union of the God and Goddess. This is the time to fertilize your…

Silence. Only the sound of my breathing breaks it. Stillness. Only my fidgeting disturbs it. No stars are visible tonight. The moon covers its face with a tattered curtain of cloud. Ah there it is, flashing briefly in the distance. Wrapping velvety blackness around me like a cloak, I step out into the night & begin to walk. I am one shadow amongst many, & yet… isolated. I glance upward again. This time I fail to find it. I feel as far away from my goddess of choice as I do the hiding moon. I’ve been a self-dedicated priestess of artemis since roughly 2005. It should be easy for me…

The Faerie Cross By Kat Cranston There are two gemstones claiming the name of the Faerie (or Fairy) Cross or Stone.  How do they differ and how do you choose which one you want to use?  Let’s investigate the candidates. Staurolite Known in the greater part of the literature available as the “Faerie Stone” or “Faerie Cross,” legend says the tears of faeries formed the crosses when they heard about the death of Jesus.  Many believe the stones protect the wearer against witchcraft, sickness, accidents and disaster. We derive the name Staurolite from the Greek words stauros (cross) and lithos (stone).  Crystal twinning occurs when two separate crystals share some…

SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME OFF THE PHYSICAL PLANE? The physical plane; the ethereal plane; it is all relative to who we are as souls, spirits or whatever name resonates with you. As connected as we are to the universe it can seem obvious that moving between the two is easier than once thought and can often deters us from the purpose of this particular life. Let us take a step back… When we consider that reality is determined by our own perspective it creates an endless array of definitions for reality; approximately nine billion. So when hearing the term ‘come back to reality’ it is difficult not to smile. Taking…

Well it is that time of year when allergies abound and everyone is running back and forth to the Dr. and the Pharmacy and with all that, often either find no relief or suffer through worrisome side effects. Well there is another way… And that is to look to nature… After all Nature has given us most of the Dr. prescribed medications we use today, however, even with the natural ingredients they have added man made substances that in my opinion do little more than create other symptoms. That being said, this column will give the reader a holistic alternative (through remedy and recipes) to cure many of the ailments…

Courtesy of Orion Foxwood Pagan Pages (PP): How did you come about writing the book, what was the inspiration behind it? Orion Foxwood (OF): I have been working with the spirit world all of my life. I grew up in a very agricultural community in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, which is an area rife with folklore and practices. My family is known for having the “veil”, which is a folk term for the “caul”, a placental sheath that falls over the eyes of the newborn indicating a propensity for “the blessing” also known as the second sight or ESP. My sister and I were both born with it. Please…

Bastet Mysterious, intelligent, independent, needy, curious, adorable and whimsical. These are a few of many adjectives used to describe an animal. Particularly an animal that thousands millions even, own or are owned by worldwide. That animal is the closely watched and regarded with great suspicion sometimes. None other than feline domesticus, the common cat. Cats are most often accused as being a witch’s familiar or too darn smart for their own good. Aside from that black cats especially are thought to bring about bad luck and ill news. Some cultures believe that if a cat goes near a corpse or jumps over one, that person will return to life as…

Pagan theology: You are it Off and on over the last few columns I have been talking about various ways of explaining magic.  I divided the ways of talking about how magic “works” into three broad categories:  systematic, individual, and theistic.  In previous columns I covered a variety of systematic explanations, all of which essentially use a set of rules to explain magical effects through some sort of cause and effect relationship.  Systematic explanations say “you do this, the effect will occur.”  These systems can range from scientific to just plain made up. Now I’d like to talk about individualistic explanations for magical effects.  Here, instead of a “system” or…