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New Year– New World For the past two years I have been consumed by the Witch Goddess Hekate. The journey of writing Her devotional was exhilarating. I learned so much about Hekate and those who are devoted to Her. She has been by my side through thick and thin, I could not ask for a better Goddess to be by my companion is this bewitching world. From out of the Shadows She has risen, shining Her holy light upon the world. Hekate is awakening many to Her mysteries, the Gates of Enchantment have been opened for those who wish to seek and move beyond this mundane world. A new dawn…

Spiralled Edges – Learning to Honour Yourself As we go through life, how often do we do things not because they honour who we are, but because we think it is what is expected of us? This year, things came together in such a way that I had the opportunity to spend Christmas and Boxing Day on my own. My younger children spent the holiday with their father, giving me the opportunity to choose for myself what I wanted to do, for me, over the holidays. I had options, plenty of friends and extended family who would have offered me a place to go so that I would not be…

                              Welcome ______________________________________________________________________   In This Issue… We feature two Great Book Reviews:     Pagan Portals: Kitchen Witchcraft by Rachel Patterson and   Ariadne’s Thread by Laura Perry     Learn all about Germanic/Scandinavian Goddess Frau Holle in She Who is All – Goddess of Ten Thousand Names.     Make a Delicious Yule Brew in WitchCrafting: crafts for witches.     And….Heirloom Holiday Cutout Cookies in our newest column The Kitchen Witch!!     Ever hear of Witch Balls?  Learn all about them with Tink in her column, Tink About It.   ______________________________________________________________________   We are always looking for…

Time to return to the Aces, those unique members of the Pip cards. Aces are different from the other Minor Arcana cards, as they are seen as being the seeds of their suit and element, rather than the manifestation of their suit and element. Aces are not material, and there is no measurable manifestation of their effects until they become the Two. Aces are tendencies that are the foundation of the manifestations of their suit; thus the Ace of Wands, our card for this month, is not Fire, but a tendency to become Fire! Let’s begin our process of breaking down this Ace. The Ace of Wands is a Minor…

We started out completely captivated by the dance of the Lady and the Horned God. Our hearts beat faster, life spinning with colours! A homecoming! Then as the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months and years we tried to go deeper into the Mysteries of our awakening. The Divine is immanent; God and Goddess are alive intertwined within the Sacred Earth. The question we asked ourselves was how can we go deeper? First we studied the books, any books, excited by the smell of incense in the Occult Book stores. We learned how to cast a circle, how to connect with the Elements, how to call them…

Pagan Portals: Kitchen Witchcraft by Rachel Patterson The phrase ‘Kitchen Witchcraft’ conjures up brewing potions and hanging herbs, and while this of course can be the case, the experienced witch knows the kitchen can be the beating heart of their home, where the material and the mystical meld to create magic. Rachel approaches this topic with just such a theory in mind, and makes no assumptions about the level of skill or experience of the reader. It’s important to bear in mind that as part of the Pagan Portals series, this book is intended as a brief introduction to Kitchen Witchcraft. Having said that, for such a slim volume, Rachel…

Ariadne’s Thread by Laura Perry “The myths of ancient Crete, her people, and their gods twine through our minds like the snakes around the priestess’s arms in those ancient temples. They call to us across the millennia, asking us to remember. In answer to that call, Ariadne’s Thread provides a window into the spirituality, culture and daily life of the Minoan people, and commemorates the richness of a world in which women and men worked and worshiped as equals. In these pages, the glory of Crete once again springs to life; the history, the culture, and most of all, the intense spirituality of these fascinating people and their gods can…

  Her reverie was disturbed as Kiara tossed and turned in her sleep. The girl was fighting the drugs and she wondered how much longer she could avoid the trouble that she could sense was coming. Had she been able to see Kiara’s dreams she would have been very concerned. The girl settled and she returned to her memories. A very different character had appeared after about a month. The creature looked quite human, although still rather small. She wondered how he had harvested the corpses to create the quite believable facade, but decided against asking. She had been dozing in her chair and the sound of coins spilling on…

The Rites of Death for Celebrating the Old Ways in New Times I get to pick the topic this time! It is one that addresses a major rite of passage, and perhaps the one that is most frightening and painful. Death. Over the course of human civilization, beliefs as to what happens to us after our bodies die have changed drastically. Many favor the belief that upon death, we go to a beautiful place and are reunited with loved ones. This is certainly what I like to believe. Not everybody has seen it that way over the years, and we all know monotheistic faiths tend to favor a belief in…

Frau Holle/Hold/Hulde (Photo Credit: www.udagen.de) Frau Holle is a Germanic/Scandinavian Goddess, who is celebrated at the Winter Solstice. The wonderful Maria Gimbutas believes that Frau Holle pre-dates most of the Scandinavian pantheocon. It is said that Holle lives in a cave nestled in the mountains or at the bottom of a deep well. She is Maiden. She is Mother. She is Crone. As an Earth Goddess, she represents fertility and growth, as well as being the feminine spirit of the woods and plants. Her special plants are in the evergreen family, such as mistletoe and holly. Her tree is the Elder, which is called “the medicine of the common people”,…