I think everyone knows what it’s like to not feel magickal when you truly want to feel magickal.

Jason Mankey, ‘Dirty Witchcraft Secrets‘

John Beckett has a post on boundaries and roles within Paganism and Pagan traditions that I found to be useful in some of its framing.

We often talk, in the Pagan community, about not taking our Gods for granted, about not only coming to them with requests and seeking help.  And while I have seen the topic of watching the tone in which we speak to spirits discussed, it is much rarer to see a discussion about making sure all our relationships are balanced and go both ways.

Kylara, ‘Ethical spirit work‘

I enjoyed this post, on Agora, about considering what we spend our time worried and preoccupied with. Not exactly the most novel of topics, but one that is best returned to again and again. Especially in this season.

Sometimes, in order to hold onto our core beliefs and keep them authentic, we learn to build walls in our minds to separate us from the other systems, which often works very well. The only difficulty is that the walls often take on a life of their own.  They become powerful entities in themselves if we are not constantly vigilant, that can narrow our understanding and move us toward becoming dogmatic and isolated. The main way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to begin to learn about other traditions and religions, connecting with what is aligned with our ideology and leaving the other behind.

Om Prakash Gilmore, ‘How Many Religions Can You Speak?‘

Thenea on Magick from Scratch wrote a short post questioning the appeal of dangerous deities.

Finally, some self-promotion, for a post I wrote on Patheos earlier this week: Preparing for Unsafe Gods.

When you start demanding respect, simply for existing, there tends to be a severe erosion of trust for that same individual. Perhaps, this is where we tend to have the issues that tend to arise in Pagan leadership.

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In our Pagan communities, it seems that the leadership is more concerned with keeping power than practice the art of compassion and seeking to grow others to be leaders for the future.

Tommy Elf, ‘With Respect and Trust‘

Tommy Elf also has another post about leadership and what leadership looks like within Paganism.

A post from Keen about Feast Week (back in September), a fun weeklong ‘festival’ of meals relating to Tolkein’s Fellowship of the Ring.

Jason Mankey made a list of ‘5 Ways to Make Your Paganism Better‘. I found all of his points worth consideration and adopting to my own practice (where I wasn’t already doing them!), but apart from that don’t have much to say except ‘go read it’.

John Beckett wrote a post on house cleansing, a topic that I feel is rather underappreciated within Paganism and polytheism. Often we find ourselves focusing on establishing sacred space for certain rites and can neglect our greater home. The importance of having a physically clean space shouldn’t be ignored, though your space doesn’t need to be perfect either. But if your space is covered in grime or unknown sticky gunk or just a mess, it will be harder to focus on spiritual or religious matters.

Then again, arguably all ritual involves consciously enacting/participating in an image of divine principles using the theology, ritual, myth, and other resources that come from the wellsprings that the Gods have given us. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if others do not see the essence of them as long as the people who worship the Gods do.

Kaye, ‘Stepping Back Is Important‘