Jeff Lilly

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This week: melt.

Jeff Lilly is a druid, linguist, and author of one of the most popular druid blogs, much to his surprise. He writes about druid things -- meditation, relationship with Spirit, soulful fulfillment in scholarship and art, reconnecting the ancient with the modern, creating beauty, and healing the world. He is a member of a number of druid organizations, including AODA, OWO, and OBOD, and does ritual rather ineptly but earnestly in the Pittsburgh, PA area with the Sycamore Circle. He lives with his partner Ali and her cat Cu.

Fire and Water

Is fire a living thing? How about water?

When Bridget’s holiday comes, I always think of bright sunlight on water edged by snowy banks. She is the goddess of fire and water, fire on the water, fire that cracks the ice and brings the frozen world alive again.

Fire

The ancient Proto-Europeans apparently had two words [...]

Year 2010

Year is originally from way back in Proto-Indo-European, yer, meaning “doer”, i.e. one who does something or makes something.  It became jæram in Proto-Germanic, and gear in Old English, before softening to year in modern English.  Energetically, year packs a lot of punch; it’s a forceful, powerful, high-strung burst.

2009 definitely packed a punch.  A lot of folks I know had a [...]

Obama’s Best Speech Never: What the President Should Have Said

OBAMA’S BEST SPEECH NEVER
Obama’s speech at Ft. Hood, honoring the dead in the recent shooting, is being hailed as a masterpiece of rhetoric.  Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic (http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/the_best_speech_obamas_given_since_the_inaguruation.php) says:
(blockquote)
“I guarantee: they’ll be teaching this one in rhetoric classes. It was that good. My gloss won’t do it justice. Yes, I’m having a Chris Matthews-chill-running-up-my-leg [...]

The Coligny Calendar

The Coligny calendar was discovered in Coligny, France (near Lyon) as little more than a pile of bronze fragments in 1897 – most likely smashed by Roman authorities during the suppression of druidic practice – and painstakingly restored piece by piece. It was originally the size of a rather cramped doorway. Less than half [...]