Book Review: Queer Rites: A Magickal Grimoire to Honor Your Milestones with Pride
Queer Rites is an incredibly accessible book. After going through the basics of what makes up a ritual, the book is broken down in ritual types - “Personal Rites for Identity Exploration and Affirmation”, “Rites for New Experiences”, “Rites for Release and Healing”, and “Celebrations” - making this an easy-to-use reference book for finding what you need. The book also offers a critical reflection on what it means to be “queer”.
New Moon Ritual: December 2024 Black Moon
We’re ending 2024 with a Black Moon, which somehow seems appropriate. What is a “Black Moon”? Well, you may have heard of its counterpart the Blue Moon. There are a handful of meanings for the term “Blue Moon” but one of the most common is a bit of modern American folklore* - the second full moon in a calendar month. A “Black Moon” then, in this understanding, is the second new moon in a calendar month.
Book Review: Chronically Magickal: Navigating Chronic Illness with Witchcraft
Danielle Dionne’s recent book, Chronically Magickal: Navigating Chronic Illness with Witchcraft, is something I wish I had ten years ago. As someone who identifies as a witch, pagan, and disabled person with a chronic illness this book spoke to so many aspects about both my daily life and my spiritual practice.
New Moon Ritual: December 2024
It was night. The forest was blanketed in snow. The trees were bare. The air was still and sharp with the cold. There was a pervasive silence, the type of muffled hush you only get after heavy snowfall. The only light came from the stars in the sky, reflecting back from the frost. This was an empty world, devoid of life and motion.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Thomas Morton and Merrymount
Morton was a much more liberal leader than his contemporaries. In addition to making anyone who resided there free men he also maintained close relationships with the surrounding indigenous communities. In 1627, Morton made the decision to commemorate the renaming of the colony by holding a May Day celebration and erecting an 80-foot high pole, covered in garlands and ribbon, and topped with deer antlers. During the several days of celebration men and women from the local indigenous communities were invited to join. Some accounts claim the residents danced in a manner evocative of Ganymede and Zeus, figures that were often used to represent same-sex coupling.
Book Review: An Apostate’s Guide to Witchcraft: Finding Freedom Through Magic
This book is a brilliantly written exploration of personal liberation through witchcraft. Moss is vulnerable in a way not many folks are, and his experience of leaving a Christian cult and reconciling his identities as a queer man and a witch are seamlessly woven through his exploration of witchcraft. Much of what he shares about his approach to spirituality and the craft is rooted in his relationship to the Welsh countryside.
New Moon Ritual: November 2024
And then we would hear them. Wolves in the distance. Their howls breaking through the false security of our camp, rousing within us the memories of what we were running from and, more importantly, what we were seeking in the first place.
In a panic we uprooted our camp, barely better off than when we stopped that first night, and continued marching on.
New Moon Ritual: October 2024
Irene Glasse, a friend and local pagan leader, speaks a lot about how spirit communicates to us using images and metaphors that will make sense to us. The more we read, take in art, or engage with other forms of media, the larger the “vocabulary” spirit has to work with as they shape messages out of sensory memory. All to say, props to whatever spirit was rooting around in there and decided to dig out a scene from the 2004 Spider-Man 2 movie with Tobey Maguire.
Behind the Scenes: New Moon Ritual
Sometimes we forget that social media is a heavily curated space. You generally see the best take, or the result of hours of editing and mixing. When witches or pagans share their experiences they tend to be the most revelatory or transcendent, or the spells that exceeded all expectations. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, mind you, I just think it can set up unrealistic expectations for others, especially folks new to witchcraft or paganism. And, when their own spells, rituals, or experiences don’t work out it can lead to a sense of defeatism.
To that end, I decided no to just skip this month’s New Moon Dream Ritual, but to share that it was a total flop. Some of that is probably due to some formulaic tweaking which did not have the intended results. Before I can talk about what I changed, however, we have to talk about what the ritual is and how it came to be.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire
While at NecronomiCon this year I attended one of two sessions about zines and weird horror/fiction. The session was about W.H. Pugmire, and artist, author, and zine-maker I’d never heard of before. Before the session was even done I’d ordered three collections of his short stories.