Last Journey to a Star The signal stirred Silvana suddenly into awareness in the dim interior of the ship.  There was the red of the forward sensor, glowing faintly to the right of its portal.  Angus tended it as usual, the throb of the glow bouncing off his angular cheekbones.  Through the port, still far ahead down the endless dark corridor of night, a single point of reddish light shone dimly.  Silvana rolled her facets and looked out the rear port.  There was nothing back there now, maybe the faintest suggestion of light, but no, really nothing.  The rear sensor was dead.   “It went?  When did it go away? …

One can’t be too careful about going through old clutter.   A guest was coming to do circle with me, so I went through some of the boxes stacked against the wall in what would be my dining-room if I had such a place.   One article that came to light was a lightweight secretary, just a black box with silver ornamented lines that opened at the top and had two small drawers in front.  I opened the top and there it was – the wallet.   This was my former former wallet, maybe older than that.  I was going to lunch one day in 1997 with my Syrian friend Steve and…

The mysteries of Eleusis were devoted to the ‘Two Goddesses,’ Demeter the grain goddess and her daughter Persephone, locally called Pherephatta or just ‘the Maiden,’ Kore.  These mysteries were organized by the polis of Athens and supervised by the archon basileus, the ‘king.’  For the Athenians these were the Mysteries tout court,  and  the literary prestige of Athens that ensured their lasting fame.  Inscriptions and excavations in addition to literature and iconography provide abundant documentation. The well-known myth depicts Demeter searching for Kore, who has been carried off by Hades, the god of the netherworld.  Kore finally comes back, if only for a limited period, to Eleusis itself; there the…

The Anglo-Saxon for a hedge rider is hægtessa.  In the Elder Edda (Havamal 155), Odin speaks of scanning them sporting aloft in the sky, having left their skins behind on the ridge.  “Scanning” here may mean something different from mere seeing.  If people in the so-called Dark Ages were able to see such things, we must consider what this means if we are to identify and locate the hedge itself. One possibility is that such things did occur, however rarely, and some people saw them.  They do not occur now because there are no more hedge riders to be seen.  Another is that Odin’s ‘scanning’ meant something different from mere…

The Ogham Tree Calendar and the Rune of Amergin: Saille through Coll     Here is the Ogham Tree Calendar, with the Rune of Amergin, as reconstructed by Robert Graves: Gaelic          English         from            to                Rune of Amergin tag Beth            Birch           12/25?        01/20          I am a stag of seven tines Luis             Rowan          01/21           02/17          I am a wide flood on a plain Nion            Ash             02/18          03/17          I am a wind on deep waters Fearn           Alder           03/18          04/14          I am a shining tear of the Sun Saille           Willow         04/15          05/12          I am a hawk on a cliff Uath            Hawthorn     05/13          06/09                   I am fair among flowers Duir             Oak             06/10          07/07                   I am…

The Ogham Tree Calendar and the Rune of Amergin: Introduction through Fearn The Ogham Tree Alphabet:  In the old time, when the children of Danu still lived in the East in their cities of Falias, Gorias, Finias and Murias, the Ever- living Ones guarded their four treasures and grew and prospered. “Ogma was the most handsome of the Children of Danu…To him fell the gift of honeyed words, of poetry and of languages, and he it was who devised how man could write in a form of calligraphy, which was named after him as Ogham” (Ellis, p. 27).  The following illustrates the Ogham script, which is thought by most scholars…

for Dawn The following verse developed from a daydream.  I imagined that just for a few minutes I was allowed to go back in time to pre-Christian Europe.  I found myself on a hill on a lovely blue afternoon.  There was an elm tree on the hill, and under it a little girl with two thick blonde pigtails was threading flower-bracelets.  I asked her what she knew about the world, about life and death and the Gods.  She answered me in a sort of sing-song, as if reciting a lesson learned (no doubt) from the local priest, and this is something like what she told me: A Pagan Credo: 1…

Witches’ Paradigms, Part Two: Following the Moon Following the Moon: While reverencing the Sun and the Earth, polytheistic witches identify the Moon as the special Goddess of witchcraft, a view borne out by that classic of the modern Craft, Aradia, Gospel of the Witches, recorded by Charles G. Leland and published in 1890.  Additionally, the witch Goddess (called the Lady and regarded by Wiccans as the personification of all Goddesses combined) has three visible aspects, corresponding to the waxing, full and waning phases of the Moon, known also as the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone.  She also has a hidden fourth phase, the Dark of the Moon, which corresponds…

Whereas non-pagans are guided by sacred books, pagans are guided by nature.  Nature guides us through the course of the seasons.  We take our moods, our goals and the way we pursue them, from the seasonal round, which is called ‘The Wheel of the Year’. Witches of our Celtic tradition follow three interlocking paradigms throughout the year.  The course of the Sun throughout the year is plotted by the Wheel of the Year.  The course of the lunar month is plotted by the phases of the Moon and their meaning.  And the sequence of lunar months through the solar year is plotted by the Ogham Tree Calendar and the Rune…

Rebirth from Chaos In the Craft traditions I’ve learned, Samhain marks the point in the year when the Lady retires to the Summerland for the winter, the Wild Hunt ranges abroad, the Holly King becomes the hoary Lord of Misrule and presides over winter celebrations, and the World, that is, the local cosmos, starts to return to its underlying chaos.  In the Ogham Tree calendar, as reconstructed by Robert Graves in The White Goddess, most of November lies within the lunar month of the Reed, and has the tag from the Rune of Amergin that proclaims “I am a threatening noise of the sea.”  Ngetal, the Reed month, is succeeded…