The soul and the soul alone

I’ve been returning a lot lately to the great well of wisdom that is Hindu scripture. It’s something I do when I’m going through rough times or just not quite feeling like myself. To return to these books is a reminder to focus once more on the true self, which is beyond all race, physical

Time moves differently…

in the woods. Oftentimes, I’ll take a long walk in the forest and when I return I’ll feel like three or more hours have passed. But when I look at the clock, I’ll see it’s only been an hour or so. I find this odd, as time usually feels slow when you’re not having a

The Monk Life: Can you be a Pagan and a monk?

In a previous post, I mentioned that I lead a life I call ‘semi-monastic’. That is: I don’t live in a monastery but the way I live incorporates a lot of aspects of a traditional monastic life. Things like daily rituals and contemplation, simplicity and having few material possessions. I’ll get more in depth on

Contemplative living in the world

I recently started reading The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living and in the preface I highlighted this passage because I find it captures the essence of what spiritual living can and should be: I haven’t come very far into the book yet but I love what I’ve been reading so far and

Panentheistic Polytheism: An Illustration

One of the biggest, and often most heated, discussions happening in Polytheistic circles is that of ”hard” versus ”soft” Polytheism; whether the Deities are all unique Individuals or whether They are aspects of a single Ultimate Deity. I’ve written a post in the past about how I believe the two are not inherently contradictory. To

Flow and silence: my spiritual practice

In a previous post, I wrote about the why of my spiritual practice. Today I’d like to write about the how and what I do day to day to keep my mind focused on the Goddess and on my personal role within the Wyrd. When I first started out in Paganism, I tried to have

Out of love and devotion: The why of my ritual practice

In the Christian denomination I grew up in, there were very little ritual. Even the Communion rite was practiced only once a year and only a select few actually got to eat of the bread and drink the wine. So, when I got back into spirituality after 5 years of atheism, ritual was not something

New horizons

Yesterday I spent most of the day in the only place I ever really feel at peace: the forest. I went there on that particular day to pray for blessing in a new writing project but it also gave me some time and much needed peace and quiet to reflect on where to go next

A throne in the woods

I returned to the ancient grave I found in the forest the other day to meditate on the ancestors, bring offering and ask for their blessings. On my way there, I took a path I hadn’t before and found what almost looks like a carved seat in a rock. A nice little spot to sit

Stumbling upon an ancient grave

This morning I went out into the forest to do some meditation and seidr, when I saw this large pile of rocks up a hill. There also seemed to be a worn down stone path leading up to it. I went up and looked more closely at this obviously man-made pile and wondered what it