Read this book, please! LeGuin’s Lavinia

I first read Ursula K. LeGuin as a child, when I discovered the Earthsea books, and I still have the same three paperbacks I read before the age of twelve, the Bantam editions with the mostly grey covers and the little woodcut drawings at the head of each chapter.  I’ve been reading LeGuin for most of my [...]

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Names, teachers, images, and the Work

I was baptized Methodist and confirmed Episcopalian.  I discovered paganism when The Spiral Dance was published and waffled back and forth between Christian and pagan for the better part of twenty years, until I began practicing a form of Hermetic magic that pointed me to Buddhism, and I took refuge.

I am an Anglican, a Druid, a witch, [...]

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Remembering Little Gidding

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow [...]

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Inventing traditions

In response to my post, “Between the darkness and the light”, my good friend Kivrin recommended a book called The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissbaum.  I tracked it down to a shelf in our Social Sciences & History department here at work, read it, and discovered that, as far as history goes, I was [...]

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Six random things: a meme

Nettle has kindly given me my entry for today by tagging me to tell my readers six random things about myself.
1) Along with Nettle, I am reading The Tree of Enchantment by Orion Foxwood.  I’m also reading Diana L. Paxson’s Trance-Portation in tandem with it.
2) I never had a bird as a pet until I [...]

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Sovereignty

The word “king” comes from the Old English word “cyning”.  It is related to words “kin” and “kind”.  The King is the one who is our kind, who represents our kin.
The Latin “rex”, the Sanskrit “raja”, the Gaulish “rix”, the Irish “righ”, the Old English “rice” (pronounced “ree-chuh”), and the German “reich” all have the [...]

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Skating the edge of the political pond, again

Politics is *not* my topic here chez Urban Druid, but I feel compelled to pass on this meme from Diana L. Paxson.  It’s both pagan and non-partisan, and seasonally appropriate all round.

As you call on the ancestors this Samhain, pay some extra attention to our American heroes and heroines, who fought for liberty and justice [...]

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Another turn of the wheel

The urban druid looks around and realizes she has something new to confess.
If I had any reliable pagan cred, I would hesitate to say what I’m about to say because it would endanger said cred, seriously.  But having been Anglican/Buddhist/Neopagan/too creative for religion/a Trekkie humanist, I might as well confess it:
I’m not a fan of [...]

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Standing under the tree again

I never saw many Disney movies as a child.  For one thing, my childhood fell in that long dark teatime between Disney’s classic animated features such as Cinderella and its resurgence in the 1990s with Beauty and the Beast and other new films.  For another, however, my father hated Disney.  He always said that Disney, [...]

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Discovering Imbolc

I have a confession to make.  It’s a terrible, embarrassing confession for anyone who’s a Druid or any kind of Celtic Pagan.  Please don’t judge me, I can’t help myself.  Here it is: I don’t celebrate the goddess Brigid at Imbolc.
Ever since I first became interested in Druidry and Celtic Neopaganism, I have tried to [...]

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