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One hundred years ago today, the fledgling Irish Free State established the Tailteann Games for the first time in at least eight hundred years. You may not know it from the frequent intermingling of the holiday with the Anglo-Saxon holiday of Lammas and the Elizabethan legend of John Barleycorn, but the Tailteann Games were, for…

So, the question of “belief” in Pagan practice has been on my mind a lot in recent months. Many people have claimed to have seen, heard, or felt spiritual phenomena and experienced things not explainable by modern science. Among Pagans, the degree of belief in the existence of deities or otherworldy phenomena vary widely. Many…

It’s fitting that both the day after Christmas and the day after New Year’s fall on a Tuesday this year. Tuesday is an appropriate day to wake up to after a long period of fantasy and gluttony disguised as the highest holy holiday of the year. Like other periods of gluttony and celebration, we wake…

There has been a lot of buzz about the frozen body of a 2,500 year old Pazyryk woman, known popularly as the “Siberian Ice Maiden.” She was mummified and then further well-preserved by the Siberian permafrost. The permafrost also preserved her tattoos well. One of the tattoos depicted a deer that appears to be flying….

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…