I’ve written before about the sea change in the world religious scene. Religion is becoming something you have to seek out, instead of something you’re born into.

But it’s an ancient pattern, really. In the oldest times, you generally stuck with the religion of your tribe, simply because you never heard about any other ideas. But as tribes began to interact more, they would often exchange religious beliefs. A popular god could spread from community to community across a continent, each new tribe grafting the deity into their existing mythology. There was usually a priesthood that facilitated contact with the Eternal, but individuals had patron gods or spirits, and each person did their level best to maintain a good relationship with the Otherworld and its denizens. And it was not uncommon to see someone’s altar populated with idols or symbols from a variety of traditions. After all, it was best to be on the safe side.

But then came the Revealed religions, with their sacred texts and strict ideologies. If you were born into one of these, you had your religion handed to you, no questions asked. In some of them, a personal relationship with the Eternal was encouraged, but in many it had to be mediated with religious authority (which was often also government authority, coincidentally enough). And these religions spread so widely, swallowing up surrounding indigenous religions over such broad areas, that soon, for most people, there might as well have been just one religion in the world.

Now that’s changed again, of course. No matter what religion you’ve started out with, sooner or later you start hearing about all the other options out there, and if you’ve got any particle of curiosity in you, you wonder what those other religions are like, and what they offer their believers, and whether the religion you have been given is really the perfect one for you…

Erin Pavlina is a medium who is spiritual, but not religious. She did not have a strong religious upbringing, and never identified herself as Jewish, Christian, pagan, or anything. Yet she’s always had an interest in, and talent for, occult and psychic phenomena — a talent that has blossomed hugely ever since she focused her life on it at the urging of her guides. At her blog, she discusses psychic phenomena and psychology with a gentle, loving, yet down-to-earth and practical style, and her one-on-one Readings are always in high demand. Her connection to Spirit is strong and getting stronger, and that connection has given her a powerful perspective on the spiritual forces molding this planet.

So I’m delighted to present this interview with her, in which she discusses ways in which we all can foster a greater connection with spirit — in ourselves and those we love — and what we’ll discover out there when we do.

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Adam Alexander over at adamspeace.com has a beautiful article up about why he blogs. It’s a moving story about the trauma of his childhood, his attempts as an adult to deal with it, how he found his life’s purpose, and how his blog fits into that. He wrote on the topic because he was “tagged” by another blogger. The idea, it seems, is that you get tagged with a topic by another blogger; then you blog on the topic, and then you tag another blogger.

I’m delighted and honored to be tagged by Adam in this way, since I take it to mean that he enjoys my writing and wants to see more of it. The feeling is definitely mutual! I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find some topic I can tag him with…

I think Adam’s reason for blogging is a lot more moving and inspirational than mine — although my reason might be a bit more odd. Simply put, I’m blogging because Apollo asked me to. Read the rest of this entry »

As I described in this previous post, one of the requirements of the Magic Spiral in the candidate year in the AODA is to learn about magic through reading and meditation. The books I selected to start with were three on “neurolinguistic programming” by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. I started with Bandler’s book, Use Your Brain for a Change, which is an edited set of lectures from the 1980s, and The Structure of Magic I & II, which were written in the 1970s. Use Your Brain for a Change especially comes highly recommended. As a linguist, I was very interested to see how linguistics would play into these techniques. I’ll lay out some of my thoughts below. Read the rest of this entry »