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Let us welcome the Celtic fire holiday of Samhain! Forms of this ancient Celtic festival have spread around the world, particularly with Halloween. Such popularity might be seen as both a blessing and a curse. The festival has changed in ways that probably would be almost unrecognizable to the ancient Celts. So in this post,…

What if I told you that an argument could be made that the time around Samhain is one of the most natural times of year to mark the new year? This is not a point of view I’ve always held. As a solitary Pagan, for many years I celebrated the New Year at Yule because…

Due to a rather strange set of circumstances, Wheel of the Year criticisms are now part and parcel of the Autumn Equinox tradition. And I’m all for it.

The day that gives the Earth the longest daytime in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest nighttime in the Southern Hemisphere goes by many names. In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s referred to as the Summer Solstice, and in the Southern Hemisphere, it is considered the Winter Solstice. I often like to refer to the holiday…

Up until recently, I wouldn’t have considered using the phrase “Celtic erasure.” Certainly, growing up in Chicago, “Celtic” was everywhere. St. Patrick’s Day—at least the Chicago-several-generations-removed-from-Ireland version—was characterized by green beer, the Chicago River being dyed green, and people dressing in green. It was everywhere. People of Irish descent with the last name of “Daley”…

I hit a wall on January 8, 2020, but maybe that was the best thing to happen to me in a long time. I was burned out for much of 2019. That spring, I had to suddenly find a new apartment and move after the building I lived in became a drug dealing den. I…

It might seem excessive for me to post more than one article about Imbolc in a single week. But Imbolc has intersected with my life in many interesting ways.

I’ve started following the Substack column OK Doomer by Jessica Wildfire. She pulls no punches–especially in this article. She says that we are facing the end of our civilization, and that we’d better start acting like it. She’s absolutely right.

11723 Southlight 20. We’ve been told for a long time that the transition to sustainable living can be done without having to consume less. But we’ve been misled. The reality is that we need to be both changing our energy sources AND reducing consumption. The article link from Resilience paints some of the details of…

11722 Westcross 84. I have often found it confusing by the fact that Samhain falls on the same day as Halloween. This time of year, it’s not surprising to find the media talking about Halloween being the holy day for Pagans. This reinforces the stereotypes of Pagans dabbling in evil energies, and it isn’t helpful…