Author: A Solitary Pagan
Creating a Garden Sanctuary
A personal outdoor sanctuary is an important part of feeling connected to all of life.Each of us has been blessed with an innate need to celebrate and glorify life. At a most basic level, we honor the forces that came together to bring us into being by caring for our bodies and our souls. To truly rejoice in existence, we must also learn to cultivate loveliness in those special places that repleni...
Spirit Animal, Power Animal, Totem Animal – What’s the Difference?
These terms are often used interchangeably, but there’s a difference. Put simply: A Spirit Animal refers to an ally who helps teach/guide you.A Power Animal refers to a creature that empowers you.A Totem Animal refers to a creature that is inherited (ancestrally or as part of a tribe/clan).While a Power animal can be invoked or called upon, it’s often thought that a Spirit Animal chooses you (and ...
Yuxa, or Yuha (“Sly Snake”), the Queen of Serpents in Turkic folklore.
She manifests in every serpent that is at least 100 years old. She can become a beautiful maiden, and makes an excellent fairy wife. A human husband must never speak of what she really is, or their family life will end, and if there have been no children, she may even kill him. But if they do have offspring, she leaves him to care for her children, and returns to her supernatural realm, both...
The Fairy Sibylia
On the tools used to conjure the fairy Sibylia in the 1584 Discoverie of Witchcraft. Text from the book Fairy Magic in the Grimoires. Comments: Carrying out the previously described operation is a serious work of magic which leads the magician or witch into the cemetery and into the practice of necromancy, the conjuring of the dead. Further exploration of this is given in operation 9. The previous...
Dreams of Witches: The Meaning of Meeting Mystics While Asleep..
Dreams tell us a lot about ourselves. They can take us to other far away places, other realms of existence, other universes. Sometimes they can even predict the future or clarify things in the past. More often, our dreams introduce bizarre, enchanting, and sometimes otherworldly beings to us. If you’ve been having dreams of witches and you want to know the meaning, read on.. If you’ve come here lo...
Things You Do NOT Have To Be In Order To Be A Witch..
PAGAN: you can be a witch and be a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or any other. Religion that does not use the label pagan for itself. WICCAN: witchcraft is a secular practice. Wicca is a religion that involves the practice of witchcraft sometimes. RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL: you can be an atheist witch. FEMALE: men and non-binary people can also be witches. WHITE: a person of any ethnicity o...
CERIDWEN
Ceridwen is a Welsh sorceress, a white witch with the power of Awen. She can brew life-altering potions, to change her form, and to inspire knowledge and beauty in others. In some tellings of her legend, she is a goddess of creation and inspiration, giving her further powers. Her symbols are:cauldron, pigs and grain Ceridwen is a name of Welsh origin, originally rendered as Kerdwin or Cyrrdven. It...
What It Means To Be A Spiritual Person Vs. A Religious Person
What It Means To Be A Spiritual Person Vs. A Religious PersonKnowing the difference will let you discover your truth… Are you a spiritual person or a religious person? People are inclined to think that these two lifestyles are the same, and on the surface they are. What they both have in common is connecting to something larger than themselves. And knowing the difference between spirituality and r...
What Paganism Does And Doesn’t Mean…
Being a Pagan has a variety of meanings, many of which are often misunderstood. What Is Paganism? What Being A Pagan Really MeansThe term “Paganism” may conjures up images of witches or other occult practices. Maybe you’re like me and had only heard Pagans referred to in religious school classes, or perhaps you’ve been hearing more of Paganism and Pagan practices mentioned on Tik...
HOLDA, GODDESS OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE
Mother Holda, an ancient Germanic Goddess, has many surviving stories. She is connected in several ways to our contemporary concept of Santa Claus. She was a teacher, a spinner, a wise woman. She was a Fate Goddess, a Protector and Guide of the souls of the dead to their new life in the next world. Even in modern day, when it snows, people say that Mother Holda is shaking out her down comforter. A...
Seiðr
From totemic baton to sceptre, and from cursing rod to distaff, a shaft of wood or metal has been raised in the hands of women across the globe for thousands of years. Plain, crooked or carved, and bedecked with various impedimenta; fashioned in bone, skin, wood and metal, the phallic rod has perhaps attracted more attention than any other tool associated with magic and the Female Mysteries. Becau...
Astral Travel
This is one of those things that can be a little strange on our path. It’s not exactly a gift because anyone can learn to do it. It’s not exactly a skill either because it can happen unconsciously. What is astral travel? Astral travel is that allows a part of the spirit, the ka, to travel to other places without the body. I know the idea of this cn freak some people out, so let’s...