Paganicon 2023, Day Three: Workshops, A Panel Discussion on “The Future of Paganism,” and My Devotional to Veles

We’re well into the night as I begin typing this entry. My heart feels weighed down with melancholy. It’s hard to believe that this amazing weekend Pagan conference experience has ended. I couldn’t imagine driving back 7 hours to get to my Illinois home this evening on the heels of another intense day of learning, of appreciating the power of our community, and of holding space for the raw emotions that came up during this afternoon’s panel discussion on “The Future of Paganism.” Hence I am very glad I had the sense to stay here another night and process my experiences through my writing.

I am thinking of what Kristoffer Hughes mentioned in his Mythology workshop yesterday on how all of us are tasked with going on The Hero’s Journey. This conference experience has felt like such an archetypal journey, layered on top of the literal physical journey to get here. The most important and daunting lesson for the Hero after the mission has concluded is to reintegrate the lessons they gleaned in the Otherworld with the life they lead in their community going forward. I know I will need time to decompress and continue to process this amazing Paganicon 2023 experience. I’m sure my long drive home tomorrow will have my Deep Mind busy at work as my Alpha Mind pays attention to my vehicle’s GPS. At any rate, here is my summary of the wonderful things I saw and did today.

Farewell, Beowulf the Cat

This painful year is book-ended by horrific losses to me: my father’s sudden death in January, and on this last day of the year, my beloved animal companion of the last 15 years and 3 months, Lord Beowulf, is dead.

A Blessed Mothers’ Night to All Celebrating!

From Oak & Aconite Coven to all of you, have a blessed Mothers’ Night and a bright and joyful Winter Solstice!

The Morrighan and Hekate: Musings on Some Parallels

The older I get, the more I do believe that time as a construct has less to do with linear development and more to do with a cyclic or spiraling unfoldment: our spiraling life journeys may bring our ever-evolving consciousness once again into contact with influences we thought we had moved “past,” only to discover we’re at a higher octave of the “present” moment meant to present us with a new awareness, one that could not have been possible at the previous turn of the spiral. Make sense?

As a contemporary multi-trad or -Pantheon Polytheist, I find that my relationships with various Deities echo that pattern. Case in point: The Morrighan first soared into my life quite unexpectedly when I was living in Hawaii in 2004. My spiral dance with Her regained new levels of intensity in 2010 and especially in 2014, when my co-ritualist and I were leading a women’s-only 13-moon initiatory experience into cultic worship of various “Dark” Goddesses. After a peak of devotional activity lasting about a year, I perceived The Morrighan’s obsidian wings to be loosening their grip on my selfhood…until this past Samhain, when She ascended on a higher curve of our spiral dance and She has become quite the Omnipresent Divinity for me lately. She’s vocal/eager to communicate, too, as are the frequent sightings of murders of crows on my property, a welcome and astonishing sight all of a sudden after heartbreaking years of a drastic decrease in their population due to West Nile virus.

I’ve been thinking about how the Morrighan’s energy spectrum or whatever inadequate words one can use here appear to be on a parallel wavelength, if you will, with One of the Other Dark Goddesses Whom I have had a longstanding and steady devotional relationship with, One of the Main Powers I pledged lifelong service to at my Fellowship of Isis Priestess Ordination ceremony exactly 10 years ago: Hekate.

Án Mórrígan: My Praise Poem/Ritual Invocation to the Great Irish Goddess of War and Prophecy, Samhain 2022

This is the most spiritually significant time of the year for me, Samhaintide. For many weeks I’ve been pondering the overlap in calendrical calculations of seasonal shifts as well as cultural customs between the ancient Celts and the Slavs. Any Celtic linguist as well as any modern Witch will tell you that the Gaelic Samhain denotes “Summer’s End,” and the time to honor the dead and prepare for the trying season of Winter occurs in early November.

Happy Fall, Y’all

We’re nearly three hours into the Autumnal Equinox from my Northern Hemisphere vantage point in Chicagoland. Fall Equinox, or Second Harvest, is one of my favorite Sabbats to celebrate. I honor my Holy Powers in this gilded season and watch the foliage of my local treescape transform from green to gold. The dying year is prepared for its final resting place in Winter’s embrace. With every falling leaf, I submit to Divine Mystery and ask for the guidance of my Goddesses and Gods to see me through the season of lengthening shadows, while I remember with thankfulness all the forms of abundance my Holy Powers have bestowed upon me.

Oak & Aconite Coven May Day 2022 Ritual

This is one of my favorite times of the year! I cheerfully wish those celebrating May Day / Beltane tomorrow in the Northern Hemisphere and All Hallow’s / Samhain in the lands Down Under wonderful festivals! May your Gods and Spirits gladden your hearts and guide you at this powerfully liminal turning o’ the tides (made all the more potent by a Taurus New Moon eclipse!). For me and for my Slavic forebears, early May marks the beginning of Summer (in the Serbian calendar, it’s the fixed date of St. George’s Day, May 6).

It’s a time of honoring the fructifying powers at work in the land; in particular, it’s a time of cultivating right relationship with the Fair Folk / the Fae / the Vile (pronounced VEE-lay) and demonstrating through your ritual actions that you know how to be a courteous and hospitable neighbor to Them. I’m looking forward to doing my solitary Walpurgis Night ritual tonight, where I honor the Lady of Elphame, and I’m giddily looking forward to celebrating May Day tomorrow with my coven that my dear friend Adam and I formed late last summer. After a winter gestational period of figuring out what to call ourselves and detailing our coven’s brand (yes, I have a background in marketing!), the name came quite suddenly last month while meditating on our Divine Patrons, Hekate and Pan: Oak & Aconite Coven!

The Mantle of Brigid: An Imbolc Prayer for Protection

After stirring “in the belly” (what Irish Gaelic “Imbolg” literally means) of a fallow season, we undergo birth pangs to extricate ourselves from winter’s constricting force. Fueled by the Goddess/Saint Brigid’s sacred fires of hearth, head, and heart that warm, inspire, and heal; and cleansed by Her holy waters of renewal, we stand assuredly in Her might.

Let us pray:

In Loving Memory of My Father (1940-2022)

It breaks my heart to announce that my father died today, two months shy of his 82nd birthday. He had greatly suffered physically the past four years from his Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and psychologically the past year from his advanced dementia, but it was neither of those things that killed him.

My Year-Wheel Tarot Reading for 2022

Happy New Year! Here we are, trucking into year three of the global pandemic experience, but as Ifá revealed to me years ago, don’t let calamities in the outer world interfere with your Sacred Work of receiving your Ori- and Orisha-given blessings. Ashé! And so I abide by my annual tradition of detailed Tarot divination via my Zodiacal 12 Houses/Wheel of the Year spread. Come join me and peer betwixt those goodly pillars of Boaz and Jachim for some wise insights…