I’m working on a very large post, and normally I would post it in sections, but it’s not the sort of thing that can be broken up. In the meantime, I offer some reflections of the joys of the season:

This morning — May First – out of the blue — our five-year-old son woke up and saw fairies everywhere. Everywhere. He was ecstatic, sitting in bed, watching the tiny things dancing on his blankets, dancing on his pajamas, dancing on his sisters’ heads. He laughed and laughed and laughed! He saw them at school, he saw them on the playground, he saw them at the dinner table… He whispered his secret into his best friend’s ear. “That’s so awesome!” said his friend. At dinner all the kids put a bit of their food into a bowl for the fairies.

Fairy folk are all around
In the trees and in the ground
Gods above we honor you
Be with us in all we do
Ancestors who’ve gone before
Wisdom from the other shore
Offerings we make to you
Fire, water, living wood.

Esmerelda’s weather witching this year has apparently led to a striking result. Look at this map, which shows temperatures for the month of March this year, alongside an in-depth look at the El Nino and La Nina phenomena. Notice in particular that while March 2008 was the second-warmest March ever (beat only by March 2002), and Europe and Asia in particular suffered amazingly high temperatures, North America (where Esmerelda focused her efforts) was pretty much dead-on average — even slightly cooler than average in eastern Canada.

Speaking of weather magic: since we’re deep into 2008 now, it makes no sense to keep offering the 2008 Almanac at full price. It’s now available at 50% off: $9.99 for the print version, $7.00 for the download. Happy Beltane!

After a long winter of silence, I’ve started posting again at the Word of the Day and Druid Journal Meditation blogs.
For the Word of the Day, I put up an analysis of the name Barack Hussein Obama, which was hugely fun to do and uncovered a lot of surprises about the names — and surprises about the man, as well.
For DJ Meditation, I posted a description of one of my daily visualization meditations — no analysis, no rumination, just what I experienced. See what meaning you can draw from it.
This winter I’ve been working on a major project for DJ Meditation, which I hope to unveil very soon. Stay tuned, true believers!

Tomorrow we will have Maypole dances for the small children at school, and this weekend we’ll be going to the big dance at Lady Tiana’s. Anyone else local headed out there?…

Oh, the green grass and the blooming trees! What greater joy??

In the previous post, I outlined a model of prestige and stigma which predicts whether a language or religion will grow or wither in a society. Now let’s take the prestige/stigma model and look at Neopaganism today. By these measures, Neopaganism is in trouble.

Stigmatized Neopaganism

Imagine trying to revive the Latin language. Imagine speaking it at home, teaching it to your children, seeking out Latin translations of modern works, and using it instead of English whenever you could. What would your friends and neighbors think? Do you think lots of people would jump on the bandwagon with you? Do you think that the revived Latin movement — “Neolatinism” — would have much of a future in your society? There are no celebrities speaking Latin on TV. There are no government officials speaking Latin in press conferences. Latin is stigmatized as a dead language with no future; why would anyone want to learn it?

If the analogy between religion and language holds, Neopaganism is in exactly the same situation as Neolatinism would be. (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of truth this holiday season. My oldest daughter is nine, and she still believes in Santa, bless her heart. The question is, do I?

I mean, think about it. I’m a pagan. I believe in, and have personal experience with, Apollo, Athena, Belanus, Cernunnos, Bridget, and various lesser spirit guides. Why not Santa?

Well, one reason is that I know quite well who puts those presents under the Solstice tree; our credit cards have the scars to prove it. On the other hand, where does the magic of the season come from — the magic in the children’s hearts and in our own — if not from Spirit? And why not call that Spirit Santa Claus? (Have any mediums out there tried to contact him? I’m asking this seriously!)

Take another example: my second daughter, who is 7, believes quite firmly that Thor causes lightning. (I’m not sure what my 9-year-old thinks — she may be agnostic on the point.) I personally believe in Thor. But as for whether he’s out there with his hammer when lightning strikes — well, I’ve never seen him, and there seems to be quite a bit of meteorological evidence that it has something to do with charged particles in the ground and the atmosphere.

Nastier questions arise when you start mixing up pantheons like I have (e.g., do I believe in Zeus? If so, who’s really in charge of lightning here?). Then there’s the issue of angelic visitations, “aspects” of the God and Goddess of Wicca, Christians with powerful religious experiences, and all that. I mean, it can’t all be true, can it?? How do you decide? (more…)

What does a druid do on the winter solstice? That depends on the druid.

If you’re a Reconstructionist, you don’t do much. There isn’t a whole lot of evidence that the ancient druids did anything to celebrate the two solstices and equinoxes; their high holy days were the four cross-quarter holidays (Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain). The solstices and equinoxes aren’t even marked in the Coligny calendar, for example, while there is evidence there for Samhain, Lughnasadh, and Beltane.

If you’re a Revivalist, you celebrate Alban Arthuan, the festival to honor King Arthur and the return of the light. Druids commonly gather in a sacred space and watch for the sun to rise, greeting it with the powerful “Awen” chant, and honoring it with ceremony. However, the Revivalists are not dogmatic, and traditions vary widely among them.

I have called myself Reconstructionist on this site several times, but honestly I’m not quite sure about that. (more…)

Whether you call it the Law of Attraction, Intention Manifestation, Calling Upon the Gods or just plain Magick, the advice is the same:

• Don’t use negatives. Phrase your intentions positively for the best results. Don’t say “I don’t want to be alone”, say “I am with Bob”; don’t say “I don’t want to live in the ghetto”, say “I am living in a comfortable home.”
• Be specific. Avoid generalizations like “I want everyone to have what they want”; it’s much more effective to list out the individuals and their particular desires.
• Don’t live in the past, don’t live in the future. Phrase your intentions as if they were already taking place now.

You can see all these laid out along with a bunch of other great tips, in this article. I can attest that my personal manifestations work better when I follow these guidelines.

But… Why? (more…)

Last week I was surprised and delighted to get an email from a high school student who is curious about Druidism. In particular, for a school project, she wanted to know about the relationship between Christianity and Druidism, and what factors led to the rise of one at the expense of the other. She sent me a list of questions and asked whether I might be able to answer them for her.

The questions were:

1. In your personal experience, has anyone of Christian belief or other religion told you your belief system was bad?
2. How did you discover Druidry? Was it easy to find information on it?
3. In your opinion, do you think Druidism being replaced by Christianity so many centuries ago had to do with the religion itself? Or was it caused by other factors?
4. Why is Druidism your chosen faith? What do you like the most about this belief system?
5. And finally, what is your opinion of Christianity? Do you personally think it’s a good religion? If not, what weaknesses within the faith can you point out?

I found something remarkable about her questions. Some of them were good, solid, and straightforward — like (2) or (4). These were the sort of questions that might be used to spur discussion on an interfaith forum. But others were more daring — like (3) and (5). These are questions that few people ask, because they go beyond simply “asking about Druidism” and get into the thornier area of relationships between religions. They are perfectly natural questions, and they deserve answers; but they’re also dangerous and insightful, because they skirt close to the questions at the heart of religion itself: why do some religions rise, and others fall? Is there such a thing as a true religion — and if so, could it be pushed off the world’s stage by a false one? If Druidism is a true religion, how come Christianity replaced it? And how do you, as a Druid, feel about that?

So I was delighted to answer her questions; and she graciously agreed to let me turn our little dialogue into a blog post. (more…)

The Deep Questions about Religion.

In this post I’d like to start exploring religion from a different perspective, using language as a metaphor. I’ve been pulling together my thoughts on this for a couple of months now, and I’ve found that looking at religion in this way resolves the fundamental issues I talked about in my last post on this topic, The Search for Truth, and explains a number of other puzzles about religion such as:

• What is the purpose of religion?
• Does it make sense to ask whether a religion is “true”?
• Are some religions “better” than others?
• Is it possible to predict the future development of a religion — whether it will grow, change, or wither away?
• How is the development of a religion changed by contact with other religions?
• In what ways can religions vary? Are they infinitely variable, or are there limits?
• Why are the older religions of humanity (shamanism, paganism, etc.) quite similar all over the world, while the newer religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, scientific theories) so different from one another?
• Why is it that children seem to be natural born pagans?
• And of course: how do you go about choosing a religion that is best for yourself?

(more…)

I have spent a fascinating morning discussing polytheism with some great folks over at Songs of Unforgetting. Check it out! Thank you, Kay, for kicking off the fascinating discussion, and James, Bernulf, and Hrafnkell for all your insight.

This past Samhain, my family and I went up to New Hampshire to attend a festival thrown by the Spiral Scouts of Peterborough. The Spiral Scouts are a sort of Boy/Girl Scout group for non-monotheistic children, and the event, to be held in the Unitarian Church, was geared toward all ages, with crafts, music, drumming, a costume contest, storytelling, and ritual. We figured it was the perfect opportunity to plug into the local Pagan community and meet some other families with children that we can build relationships with.

We succeeded; but I have to say we were also a little disappointed. There were clearly over a hundred people in attendance, but only a dozen of them were children. Four of those were mine. (more…)

Lughnasadh (pronounced lune-ah-sah) was a summer festival of the ancient Celts, celebrated around August 1. My understanding is that it is known that it was celebrated at either the full moon or the new moon closest to the midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. Since the midpoint is on August 6th, that means that this year, Lughnasadh falls on either July 25 (the new moon) or August 9 (the full moon). We celebrated the new moon this year; for the reason why, see the footnote below.

Legend has it that the god Lugh established the holiday in honor of his mother, Tailtiu. Traditionally, it was celebrated with trade festivals, fairs, and bonfires. In the modern Druid Revival tradition, Lughnasadh is the midpoint between Midsummer and the fall equinox, one of the eight primary holidays of the Sun Path.

For some reason, the company I work for, which builds dictation software, has not yet established Lughnasadh as a company holiday. So we decided to celebrate on Sunday, the 23rd, instead. (more…)