-
The In-Between: Accepting Where You Are to Get to Where You’re Going
I have tried a dozen times to sit down and write this article for Into The Gloaming. My chief difficulty wasn’t having nothing to say. If anything, I have too much to say on a wide variety of topics that are somewhat irrelevant to what I have designated this space for. No, the root of…
-
To Begin Again: Lessons in Surrender and Gratitude
There was a time in my life when I treated any sort of mishap as a personal insult or punishment from the Universe. I spent years asking “why me?” and not “what can I learn from this experience?” I felt the need to willpower my way through life as if everything were a challenge and…
-
Witchy Everyday Carry: What’s In My Priestexing Bag
For years, I carried a small version of a full ritual setup in my bag, just in case I was called upon for an urgent matter such as a hospital visit, death call, or emergency ghostbusting and house blessing service. But I realized that during those sorts of calls, I didn’t seem to need much…
-
Even If Your Voice Shakes: Courage in Uncertain Times
I have been out and proud as a Queer person and a Pagan for over twenty years. I couldn’t go back into the closet if I tried – and the thought of trying routinely occurs to me because I need to protect my home, my family, my employment.
-
Deferred Maintenance: Rebuilding A Spiritual Practice
One of the things I had to do as my mind began to recover was to become more aware of the capabilities I have now – at 42 years old – instead of holding myself to the same standards that I did at 32 or even 22 years old.
-
The Hippie Witch Life: An Apprenticeship In Retrospect
There’s a certain glamour about the hippie witch life that the uninitiated gravitate toward. The carefree, commune-dwelling, love-and-peace aesthetic is alluring. In the mind’s eye, the garden is always flourishing, the animals never get sick, the well pump never breaks, and the outside world is always accepting.
-
Healing and Protection: The Two Essentials in the Craft
Marcy Young was my very first witchcraft teacher, and one of the things she taught eighteen-year-old me was that I always had permission to work magick for healing and for protection – as long as I did it in such a way as to not infringe on the free will of the person I was…
-
Traditional Wicca, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Process
Traditional Wicca is a priesthood. Initiates are empowered to make direct contact with Deity and become Deity’s agents in the material world. That’s it. That’s the religion.
-
The Death of a Dream: Churches, Seminaries, and Other Uphill Battles
It was a long struggle for Taz and I both to realize that we, by ourselves, didn’t have the resources available to support the sort of infrastructure that we were trying to build.
-
Abracadabra: Having the Courage to Create What We Speak
Speaking up, speaking out, speaking aloud, speaking confidently is an act of will, an act of magick.