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Other articles
of interest
To Be A Witch Is To Strive For
Wholeness And That Includes Politics And Religion
by Ivo Dominguez
Click here.
Falsehoods of the
Burning Times
by Arthur Hinds
Click here.
Politically
Correct Religion by Ogmios
Click Here.
Problems
with the Wiccan Rede
by Randall
Click here
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Boudica
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Reading Tarot for Friends
by Boudica
Sooner or later you are going to find yourself reading for a friend. Be it a best friend or a new friend, somewhere along the line they find out that you read cards and they will ask if you would be kind enough to read for them.
For me, many of the friends I read for know what the tarot is about; there is no need to explain. Either they are not good at reading cards, or they prefer another style of divination or they just are not familiar enough with the cards and feel they need some kind of validation for the reading they may have done for themselves. Most of the friends I read for know I am a very direct person who does not usually sugar coat my reading for the benefit of the faint of heart.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Other Articles by
Boudica
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Sitara Haye
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Power of Polarity, Rose of Mystery
by Sitara Haye
Welcome to one of my SEX ARTICLES! Congratulations —
you will now be inundated with science porn! Seriously, though… sex is
central to Wicca and we’ll be discussing it regularly but hold off on lighting
up that cigarette for just a moment. Sex, as I’m referring to it, does
not equal kink or titillating nuance. While we might be one of the
species on this earth that has sex for pleasure, never forget that the act of
sex is geared for one function and one function alone — reproduction. In
the animal kingdom, this takes two (with few exceptions). However, I’m
getting a little ahead of myself…
Click here to read more of this article.
Other Articles of interest available on TWPT
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Elysia Gallo
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Witches on the Air
by Elysia Gallo
If you're anything like me, you take notice when anything even slightly
witchy turns up on TV. And if that's a Pagan family on Wife Swap or Tyra
Banks' all-out assault on our witchy sisters, it really gets your
attention!
Now if you happen to live in a box that's not hooked up to the Internet,
chances are you have missed the flurry of blogs and web commentary galore about
the "Lives of Witches" episode of The Tyra Banks Show that aired on
January 29 (check out some of the blogs in the links section to get caught up!).
However, if you're like the rest of us, you've been reading them all and
rolling your eyes. How dare Tyra say she needed to burn sage (our thing) because
she got the "heebie jeebies" from her own guests? How dare she insinuate that it
was offensive to her viewers to refer to Wicca as a religion? And what roles do
Satanists and born-again Christians have to play on a program about Witchcraft?
In the end, I guess it's just sad that anyone felt that she would even attempt
to be unbiased; she showed clearly enough that she was petrified of offending
her Christian audience.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
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Bob Makransky
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The Lunar Rhythm: The Power of Symbolism
by Bob Makransky
Spirits: All early calendars were lunar, and have now been replaced by a
solar calendar. This is highly symbolic. The fact is that the human race
in its infancy was matriarchal – the female principle always precedes the male.
When the human race invented agriculture and began to stabilize waking
consciousness, it also passed its baton to the males. Heretofore the
males hadn’t done much of the work of keeping society glued together.
What little “thinking” was being done was being done by the women. The culture
– in the sense of religion, science, technology, crafts, literature, etc. – was
in the hands of the women, who handed it all over to the men at the time
agriculture was invented.
The calendar was originally invented by the women who made it
lunar because it was precisely the ebb and flow of lunar rhythms that they were
trying to track. You only need a solar calendar when you’re doing
agriculture because the work you do revolves around the seasons. And although
hunting and gathering were also seasonal (depending on what game and plants
were available in what season), this wasn’t so much a part of primitive
peoples’ existence. They were vaguely aware of the yearly cycle, but didn’t
think in those terms much because they had no need to plan much of anything.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
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Elizabeth Barrette
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Your Magical Library
by Elizabeth Barrette
Think of a Witch’s room, and one of the first things you see
is a wall of books. Witches rely on esoteric knowledge to
accomplish their goals. A magical library provides detailed
correspondences, diagrams, ritual schematics and so forth. Magic also lends itself well to focusing the
energy of a library to help empower spells, and to protecting books from loss
or damage. Of course, a single article can’t cover all
the different kinds of books that belong in a magical library, but these books
will give you a good place to start.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Other Articles by
Elizabeth Barrette
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Lyon
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Bringing Ritual into Your Everyday
by Lyon
Many people are drawn to the neoPagan paths because of the
images of pop culture. TV shows like ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Charmed’
have put a new face on magic and witches.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Other Articles by
Lyon
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Morgan Ravenwood
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Paganism and Morality
by Morgan Ravenwood
In a previous article I wrote entitled “The Joys and
Pitfalls of Pagan Parenting,” I repeated what my then-teenaged daughter,
“Jane,” said to me in response to my attempts to keep her on the “straight and
narrow”: “But, mom, it's not like you're a religious Christian or
something!" As I said in the
article, I spent the rest of our conversation trying to explain why you don't
have to be a Christian to be religious and to believe in---and
practice---leading a decent life.
Fortunately, time and maturity has proven this to Jane, who now has
three children of her own to teach it to.
In some of the online discussion boards I belong to, it has
been mentioned repeatedly that many people believe that morality needs
religion—and preferably the Christian religion--to exist, and vice versa. Of course, both myself and others, including
some Atheists, have hastened to explain that this is in no wise true, presenting
our own personal points of view and experiences as proof.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Other Articles by
Morgan Ravenwood
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Strahbary
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Once Upon a Time
by Strahbary
Once upon a time there was a girl.
She was a young pretty thing. However through no fault of her own she finds
herself in a horrible situation. An evil woman has trapped her and she can’t
get out. The poor girl was so disheartened that she just didn’t know what to do
but to let the beautiful days of her youth just slip right through her fingers.
That was until the day that the young and unbelievably handsome prince charming
came riding up on his white horse to slay the evil woman and rescue the
beautiful young damsel in distress so that they could go on and live happily
ever after.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
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Sunfell
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Square Pegs in Round Holes
by Sunfell
Every group in society has them: those people who are on the
periphery of a group, and who want to be part of it- sometimes
desperately. Or, when they do manage to become part of a group, do
not fit in, for whatever reason. I call them 'Not Ready Yets',
because, for whatever reason, they are not ready to belong to a
working magickal group. And some are not fit for doing magick at all.
In this day and age of growth and maturity in the Pagan paths, it is
hard to imagine turning anyone away. Aren't our teachings for one and
all? Shouldn't we lay our prejudices aside and welcome the misfit?
Won't the study of magick make them well? The answer, quite frankly,
is 'no'.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Other Articles by
Sunfell
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Yasmine Galenorn
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Surviving the Magical Rut
by Yasmine Galenorn
Have you ever reached a point in
your magickal practice where everything seems mundane, including your
rituals? There you are, sitting in a stagnant pool of water; the
earth beneath your feet has gone fallow; the air is still and full of
haze and those gorgeous leaping bonfire flames are just a bunch of
burnt-out embers. Your wand is drooping, your athame has rust spots
and the Gods seem to be having a high old time at your expense.
What's a Witch to do?
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Other Articles by
Yasmine Galenorn
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Ivo Dominguez, Jr.
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To Be A Witch Is To Strive For
Wholeness And That Includes Politics And Religion
The quest for wholeness is one of
the greatest ideals held in common by a sizable portion
of the pagan community. One of the measures of progress
in this quest is often phrased as "walking
one's talk", in other words acting in accordance
to belief.
Read
Ivo Dominguez's article by clicking here.
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John Michael Greer
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Druidry and the Future:
An Open Letter to the Druid Community
by John Michael Greer
Ancient Order of Druids in America
As members of the Druid community in the first decade of the 21st
century, we need to face up to the hard realities of a world in crisis.
The soaring energy prices and destabilizing climate that claim space in
today's headlines are only the leading edge of a wave of problems
offering no easy solutions.
Read
John's article by clicking here.
Read
other articles on TWPT by clicking here.
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Lupa
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A Tale of Two Necklaces
by Lupa
Sometimes the best rites of passage are the ones that aren’t
planned. Some pagans assume that these rites are things that are stationed
along our path at certain intervals, marked by formal ceremonies and
celebrations, and ushering in new stages of life to much fanfare. Life has a
way of initiating us all on its own, though, and the more we consciously
evolve, the more opportunities it hands us.
In the
summer of 1997, between my senior year of high school and freshman year of
college, I visitedSeattle,
Washington for the very first
time. I have family up there, and they took me in for a week to show me around
the area. It was the first trip I’d ever been on by myself, and the first time
I’d ever been to thePacific Northwest. It was
also a life-changing experience.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Other Articles by Lupa
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Other Articles on The Wiccan/Pagan Times
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Authors Featured
on TWPT
Elizabeth Barrette
Lyon
Strahbary
Jesse Wolf Hardin
Morgan Ravenwood
Mike Nichols
Boudica
Jacci Sutton
Elysia Gallo
Rev. Karen Tate
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