I found Nyx in a poster.
Kaye, ‘The Cosmos — Void — Night — Radiance’
Who knows what I thought,
a child, as I saw her floating,
all good things edging
along her body as she drove
her nightfall over the Earth.
I really enjoyed this post on ritual and sacrifice in Hellenismos. One quote I especially like from the article is, “We can base our practices off of the ways of the ancients, but household worship is intimate, personal, and routine. That routine you will find yourself, and it will change through the years. What matters most is that it follows the basic steps of ritual, and that it’s conducted with the beauty and greatness of the Gods in mind.”
Our word is the most palpable thing we have in a devotional practice. Nothing binds us more than it.
Sara, ‘On Oaths and Promises to the Gods‘ on Lightning Struck
Another post from Kaye on Kallisti, this time on terminology and identity. Because I link to Kaye rather frequently on this blog I figured it would be remiss of me to not include ‘A Positional Statement on Some Recent Twitter Things‘.
Are we persecuted? In some form or fashion, isn’t just about everybody? I’m not convinced witches and pagans have a corner on that miserable market. That doesn’t make it right or OK by any means. What persecution can do, however, is spark in us a commitment to have compassion for whatever (whoever) the “other” is for us.
Marthy Kirby Capo, ‘The Persecuted Modern Witch‘ on Agora (Patheos Pagan)
Is that possible? In some cases, no. I could list exceptions but I think most of us can figure out what they are on our own (and some of us don’t need to figure it out; we know from excruciating personal experience). Some persecutions are truly unforgivable. And yet, can compassion be an outlook that informs our actions even as we do not forgive? I actually think that’s doable. Not easy, but doable.
Here’s a short post by Steven Posch, which has a lovely evocative line: “For the witch-hunters were right about this much at least: the Sabbat demands everything. The Sabbat demands your soul.“
We need to return to an ancestral way in which nature is not an Other, but an Us. If we truly love nature, if we consider ourselves friends to the animals, then we need to know nature itself, through books and observations, through science and questioning. We need to know the rest of nature as well as we know ourselves.
Lupa, ‘Our Deadly Lack of Nature Literacy‘ on Humanistic Paganism