A month ago I stood atop a long barrow on White Horse Hill, with the grass covered chalk walls of Uffington Castle behind me, the galloping Uffington White Horse below me, and pondered a question for which there is no answer. What makes a landscape sacred? Is sacred the right word? Mystic perhaps. What makes […]
The hammer of the gods still ring out at Wayland’s Smithy, a long barrow chamber tomb nestled in a secluded grove in Oxfordshire
The chambered tombs and long barrows of Britain have long tickled the imagination, and perhaps none more so than Wayland’s Smithy. Perhaps it’s the stand of beech trees enclosing it which makes it feel more intimate, more hushed. Unlike West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury, sitting exposed to the wind and the rain, high on […]
On pagan sexuality, getting laid in the seventies, the great god Pan, the Marquis de Sade and the mating habits of goats
Top: Statue of Pan, The Eagles Nest, Northport, Long Island Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.Marquis de Sade I credit my parents with instilling in me a love for pagan sexuality. Not intentionally – they didn’t advocate any kind of sex. It’s something that was only mentioned a couple times […]
True witch legends from southern Illinois … giving Carmi’s Cato the witch the last laugh on her neighbors, and an insight into folklore and history
There’s a difference between folklore out here in the prairies of the United States, than say, the folklore of Britain. When people starting collecting the unwritten tales of small rural communities across Britain and Europe in the 19th century, our ancestors were just getting here, bringing their folklore with them. There was no folklore to […]
On paganism and the naming of gods … “Will the real god please stand up?”
Today I found myself listless, without direction. My sails were up, but there was no wind. The albatross was still around my neck. It has begun to stink. Then someone mentioned starting a religion and I thought, “I’m game for that.” My goals in life have been achieved, there’s nothing left but starting a riot […]
For the love of witches
MY FIRST MEMORY OF THE WORD WITCH happened when I was young, maybe five or six, though it’s likely I’d heard of witches in fairy tales before that. _______ We were riding through the country at night, southwest Indiana, a very German part of the state, attending a German festival in St. Wendel. My grandfather […]
