Pagan Holly

I thought it would be good to talk about what’s on my altar, which necessarily means talking a bit about my devotional practice. Both the altar and the devotional practice are works in progress. Writing about them will undoubtedly help me think of ways they can be improved. I’ll start with the altar itself: it is a small, roughly cube-shaped cabinet I bought at Goodwill for like $10 when I was a teenager. It’s particle board with a glass door. There’s a glass shelf inside, giving it two layers of storage space. I have trouble picturing a standard household application for such a short cabinet but it’s just the right height for use when I’m sitting on the floor, and since I like to sit on the floor when I’m doing ritual or magical work, it’s perfect. I’d be open to upgrading it to something higher-quality and more attractive but any replacement would have to be equally functional. Inside the altar are extra altar cloths, extra candles, extra matches, a couple crystals, the box for the “...

Autumn is in full swing: the leaves have changed colour and are starting to fall, the skies are often grey, the air is cool, and nights are becoming long. I love fall. But is it my favourite season? I’m not sure. I decided to examine the pros and cons of each season and try to rank them from favourite to least favourite. Some context: I live in southern Ontario, Canada, where seasonal change is pretty extreme. Winter is long, dark, and freezing cold. Summer is long, hot, and humid. Spring and fall encompass dramatic changes in day length, temperature, and the natural world. It’s not unique in this regard, and there are certainly places where seasonal temperature variation is much greater (Siberia, apparently), but I think it’s fair to say that every season in this region is kind of a lot. I’ll start with fall since it’s the current season. Pros of Fall The weather is cooler (eventually). Autumn brings cooler temperatures around mid-October. I can finally open the windows after many mon...

I weeded the garden yesterday. After doing hardly any gardening at all in 2022 and 2023, it felt good to put in some work and see some pretty dramatic results.

Have you ever woken up with a bruise or cut you didn’t have when you went to bed the night before? If you’re a light sleeper, you might be certain that you didn’t get accidentally smacked by your slumbering partner or stepped on by the cat during the night. So how did it happen? I’m sure there’s usually a mundane explanation, but when it happens to me, I always wonder – only half-jokingly –  where I went in my dreams and what I got up to. I’ve been interested in dream interpretation for as long as I can remember. I’ve gone through phases of writing down my dreams first thing in the morning so I could remember and analyze them. As a teen, I’d check dream symbolism books out of the library. I moved on to interpreting dreams using literary analysis techniques. When I joined a mindfulness and meditation club, I learned a new dream interpretation method that I now like best for interpreting most dreams. If you want to interpret your dreams, you will need to record them while they’re sti...

I wanted to start blogging again, but as I forced myself to draft something, all I could think was, “I can’t see how to get where I want to go.  Opportunities are passing me by. I’ve lost my connections to things that used to sustain me. I feel old and worn out. I don’t want to feel old. I can reconnect to things that are important to me, right? There’s no way I’ve missed all my chances. It’s okay that I can’t see the way forward. I know I just need to start, but it’s so hard. It seems as though I keep dragging myself back to the same starting line.” That didn’t sound like much of a blog post, but it immediately put me in mind of a song I’d forgotten . The song says exactly what I was thinking far more eloquently than I could. I particularly like the line, “Forget the ghosts that make you old before your time.” I don’t think I qualify as “old” yet by any reasonable standard, but when I’m troubled by memories from the recent past, I can’t summon enthusiasm or hope, and the “before t...