By Psyche | January 17, 2010
Standing Stone and Garden Gate is a new podcast started at the end of December 2009 by author and philosopher Brendan Cathbad Myers and Juniper, who blogs at Walking the Hedge. Their tagline is “the podshow for thinking Pagans and working Witches” and they’ve already put out three episodes.
In Episode One Brendan and Juniper introduce themselves and the podcast. Also introduces the segments, such as Standing Stone, a segment dealing with philosophic themes – very appropriate for Brendan. Rants and Raves, which will be commentaries on current media, book reviews and other social commentary on the Pagan scene. Garden Gate, how to find the magickal in the mundane, every day practice. Ask Dr Expert, a segment where Juniper will try to stump Brendan on some bit of arcane lore. Continue reading »
By Psyche | December 21, 2009
(click photo to enlarge)
@joeldey posted a TwitPic of the Flying Spaghetti Monster holiday treats he made.
They look incredible.
No news yet on the recipe, but they look awesomely delicious.
Update: Recipe found on EvilMadScientist.com (love the site’s name). Thanks Brent Friedman!
Spotted on BoingBoing.
By Psyche | November 22, 2009
Back in August I posted about My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, a new musical I’d heard about that debuted at the Toronto Fringe Festival earlier in the summer.
It had just been announced that Mirvish was going to host a production of it at the Panasonic Theatre in November, and that I simply must see it based on the name alone.
November came, and indeed I did go to see it. And I’m surprised to say it was genuinely awesome and I loved it.
MMLJWW is narrated by David Hein, the co-author along with his wife Irene Carl Sankoff, and is based on the true story of how Hein’s moms got together.
Hein’s mother Claire (played by Lisa Horner) was an atheist who came out to her son is as a lesbian after falling in love with Jane (Rosemary Doyle), a Wiccan. Claire later comes out a second time to her son, this time as a Jew. It’s funny and it’s clever, but it’s also sensitive and genuinely touching. Continue reading »
By Psyche | November 17, 2009
Hidden Publishing has just released a new book edited by Dr Dave Evans and Dave Green, Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon.
Can you believe it’s already been ten years since Ronald Hutton first published The Triumph of the Moon?
Ten Years is “a collection of researches inspired by, deriving from or just celebrating the immense impact of [Hutton's] seminal book”. From the website:
The topics cover many historical periods, many academic disciplines and it provides a wealth of information of use to academic scholar and interested freelance reader alike. Includes an extended essay by Ronald Hutton on the history of such scholarship, the state of it today and some of his thoughts for the future.
I haven’t been able to locate a contributor list, but it’s suggested that there are “big names” and “those newer to the field” who collectively bring “nearly two centuries of hands-on pagan research experience between them”. Which sounds kind of impressive.
By Psyche | October 16, 2009
Sorry, no time.
Hallowe’en’s but a few short weeks away, and it’s supposed to be the time of the dead, when “the veils are thinnest ‘tween worlds”. Yet, outside obvious fiction, when was the last time you heard of a young ghost?
Recently I reviewed Claude Lecouteux’s The Return of the Dead for SpiralNature.com. In it, the author delves into Germanic and Scandinavian folklore to discover their pre-Christian beliefs about death and the afterlife, focusing on ghosts and revenants in particular.
He was writing of a time when they were taken to be a very real phenomena, yet for the mainstream, this no longer holds. He writes:
In terms of evolution, having suffered the outrages of time and history, revenants have lost almost everything that distinguished them: their physicality and their powers. They no longer kill or threaten, nor do they perform domestic tasks. They are no longer the tutelary or wicked spirits of an earlier age. Ordinarily, they appear mute, using their eyes or gestures to express what they wish to say, but they no longer have the power to express themselves with words because they are no longer of this world.
Lecouteux attributes their decline to Continue reading »
