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Spot – Our Magical Cat: The Story She Wants Me to Share Spot was our very special pet.  She came to us from out of the wild in the spring of 1995 when she was about a year old.  We decided that May 1st was her birthday.  She had a very playful and inquisitive nature.  For a couple of months when my husband, Mack, and I would walk to the nearby restaurant down our street, often on the way there and back we would become aware of the presence of a little black cat following us.  We would turn to look and she would scamper into the shadows of trees…

January is Hot Tea Month Tea time is a good way to draw back in your energy after the rush of the day. The simple act of sipping a hot drink forces us to pay attention to what we are doing in the moment. (Basically, trying not to burn ourselves!) You can chug down a soda while walking from one place to another, but you won’t find it easy with a hot cup in your hand! There are many wonderful books on the subject of medicinal/magical herbs and teas. Even Peter Rabbit’s mother knew a bit of chamomile tea was in order after Peter’s encounter in Mr. McGreggor’s garden. All…

Sonnets Last month, we wrote rhyming couplets and quatrains. We will be building off of that skill this month as we explore sonnets. There are two types of sonnets, the Elizabethan Sonnet and the Italian Sonnet. They have different rhyme schemes and different numbers of lines. The sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, but we will not concern ourselves with something that technical. The first sonnet we will tackle is the Elizabethan Sonnet (aka Shakespearean Sonnet). It has fourteen lines made up of three quatrains and one couplet. The whole poem is to set a scene or tell a story; each quatrain should be able to stand alone, but must…

January Assignment During a group astral travel exercise, we were all instructed to meet at a picnic table in the mountains. The table was made of red wood and there was a small creek nearby. The sun was shinning and the arm was comfortably warm. Most of the group made it and we were pleasantly surprised to see a parrot, two cats, and three dogs. The next day when we all reported our experiences, everyone mentioned the animals that were there. Two of the dogs were mine and the parrot’s name was Marley. The other animals went unclaimed but were, of course, completely welcome. Many of us speculated that the…

At a time when sport, which can be HIGHLY over-rated, is paying its so-called ‘stars’ a FORTUNE every week, and fashion, which is NOT necessary, despite what designers say, is doing the same for its ‘supermodels’, young men and women are fighting for other people, and for their own lives. HOW have we permitted our exquisite planet to become so FAR out of balance? I am sitting in front of my computer, in a reasonably warm, lit room, and, somewhere, a mother or a father is scrabbling in parched earth to try and find something on which to feed their children. You and I can turn on our taps and…

Pagan Theology:  Democracy What is the relationship between democracy and Pagan religious practice?  I’m not talking about political democracy.  In this column I’m talking about democracy in our religious practices and traditions.  We know that Pagans gave rise to Western democracy through the Greeks, and many Pagan cultures had democratic political practices [1]. But how far do we go in practicing democracy, and all that it implies, within our groups and covens?   What obligation do we have to operate democratically?  How does democratic practice affect the way we run our groups? This is an interesting question, one that goes deeply into the concept of teacher/taught, elder/junior, and mystery/initiation.  For us…

New Year’s Greetings, I started this blast as seen below a couple weeks ago complete with 2011 calendar of events and then decided to add a reflection. This is New Year’s I know and it’s the 2nd New Year I recognize as Oct 31 is the witches New Year and I clean house then as well but I reflect in a Spiritual way rather then the mundane. Now is also a time I clean the house from top to bottom and I look at my resolutions from last year to see what I’ve accomplished and I look towards the future to see where I wish to be in another year.…

Herbs: marjoram, holy thistle, nuts and cones Colors: brilliant white, blue-violet, black Flowers: carnation, crocus, snow drop Scents: musk, mimosa Stones: garnet, onyx, jet, chrysoprase Trees: birch Animals: fox, coyote Birds: pheasant, blue jay Spirits:  gnomes & brownies Deities: Freya (Norse); Innana, Sin and Antu (Sumeria); Saravati (Hindu); Hera and Irene (Greece); Ch’ang-O (China); Felicitas; Janus, Pax and Venus (Rome) Power Areas: Sluggish, below the surface, beginning and conceiving, protection, reversing spells, Conserve energy by working on your own personal problems that involve no one else. Time to work on new goals.

CAILLEACH Winter has come.  Bringing along its snowflakes, whistling winds, and darker nights. Causing all living things to feel the need to hibernate against this bitter cold, only to return again in the spring refreshed and new.  Cailleach governs all of this. She is a Celtic winter goddess, as well as creation and transformation deity.  She is in the rocky mountain tops and hills. Her blanket of snow rests quietly over all that lives beneath its preserving grasp. She is a death goddess, who lets die out what is no longer needed (in nature and within ourselves) but she also plants the seeds for new life to grow. A very,…

General Curtis E. LeMay The Man Who Most Likely Knew it “All” General Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990) was a four-star general in the United Staes Air Force  and the longest  tenured  commanding officer of any independent command in the United States military. He is credited with designing and implementing an effective, but also controversial, systematic strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific Theatre of Operations of The Second World War. During the war, he was known for planning and executing a massive bombing campaign against cities in Japan. After the war, he headed the Berlin Airlift, then reorganized the  Strategic Air Command  (SAC) into an…