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The Halloweenification of Black Cats
As the proud kitty mama of my own feline void, we are going to discuss the associations that black cats have with witches and more especially, Samhain. Black cats are most often associated with Halloween, Samhain or witchcraft. In most Western cultures, black cats have typically been looked upon as agents of misfortune. In a lot of other cultures, black cats are seen as lucky. Bringers of prosperity and happiness. So just how did cats become so intertwined with witches? A number of Pagan deities hold the cat in high esteem. Bastet tops the list with being pictured as a being with a woman’s body and a black cat’s…
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Book Review – Witches and Wizards: The Real-life Stories Behind the Occult’s Greatest Legends by Lucy Cavendish
Book Review Witches and Wizards The Real-life Stories Behind the Occult’s Greatest Legends by Lucy Cavendish 178 pages I cannot begin to tell you just how much I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I read it from cover to back in one sttiing in an afternoon. I was captivated and enchanted by these stories. The book is beautiful. It is a hard bound book with a ribbon for a bookmark (so helpful, don’t you wish every book had this feature?). It is illustrated with images from Flickr, Shutterstock and Lucy Cavendish. The images help the characters come to life. The beginning chapter is devoted to Merlin, the well-known wizard…
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Book Review – The Mythic Journey: Use Myths, Fairy Tales and Folklore to Explain Life’s Mysteries by Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke
Book Review The Mythic Journey Use Myths, Fairy Tales and Folklore to Explain Life’s Mysteries by Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke 240 Pages This lovely collection of myths, fairy stories and folklore is brought to us by Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke, who collaborated on The Mythic Tarot. It appears to be a re-working of the book originally published in 2000. The tales included continue to inform our psyches today as the authors see with the eye of the mythic imagination past form into the heart of being. The stories included in the book come from many cultures and traditions: Buddhism, the Old Testament, ancient Greece, Minoan Crete, Maori…
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Modern Yuletide Tales
**This is an excerpt from my first book, A Modern Celt: Seeking the Ancestors. The Winter Solstice has always been an incredibly magical time for me, despite not being (as far as we know) typically a Celtic festival. Here are some of my more mysterious experiences during the shortest day and longest night. My most precious memories of the winter solstice all seem to be of going to a specific lakeside on the longest night. I remember it always feels later in the day than it is, because despite it only being early evening it is already pitch black, and once you move away from the roads there…
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Book Review – The Initiatory Path in Fairy Tales: The Alchemical Secrets of Mother Goose by Bernard Roger
Book Review The Initiatory Path in Fairy TalesThe Alchemical Secrets of Mother Gooseby Bernard RogerTranslated by Jon E. Graham308 Pages “Once upon time” immediately places the reader in a mythical, magical world. Like other often-used phrases, storytellers use it to transition to a place where anything is possible. Classic as well as little-known fairy tales are ripe with hermetic teachings of alchemy and Freemasonry. In this book, The Initiatory Path in Fairy Tales: the Alchemical Secrets of Mother Goose, Bernard Roger, provides an exhaustive analysis to prove his point and deliver what the title promises. Translated by Jon E. Graham, Roger demonstrates how hermetic ideas can be found in…