Building community

As the pandemic has spread and affected almost every aspect of our lives during the past year, and as we have struggled to adjust to a life of lockdowns and not being able to meet up with our friends, ritual groups or covens, as events have been cancelled and we have been forced to socially distance and isolate ourselves in order to protect each other, life has become much different this year than expected. And while it certainly has been very challenging at times, even painful, I am once again astounded by how we can build community.

As the pandemic hit Finland I was about a month away from hosting a pagan retreat. First we postponed the event, then we had to cancel it completely. I cannot deny that I cried a little as a lot of hard work and many emotions had been put into this event. However, me and my co-organizer, Fenris, were determined to not give up on the project and we moved parts of the programme online, to a two day zoom-conference. We advertised it among our small Fenno-Swedish community but also in Finnish-speaking groups on FB. We also contacted a coven leader in Sweden about hosting a program item during the seminar. 

The result was interesting. Not only did we have a guest from Sweden participating, but we also had other Finnish pagans participate who had not previously attended our moots or participated much in our discussions. As a result of this diverse group meeting, we started hosting moots online. The Helsinki based Finnish moots also moved online during the same time and I decided to start joining them. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I have made in a long while.

From the Finnish moots was born the idea for an international panel discussion after which some countries hosted their own online moots. I decided to join the Swedish moot, just to see what kind of people were around there. This moot, once more, sparked a whole new series of moots, and since may there have been monthly online moots on Zoom that bring together Swedes and Fenno-Swedes on a regular basis. And these are no mere pub moots.

This was my calendar for Samhain 2019 to Samhain 2020. 
2021 will see its own version.

Tonight, on the full moon, we had the seventh moot in the form of a panel discussion about solitary contra open circle contra coven work in Wicca. I participated as one of the panelists, representing a solitary, eclectic side. The discussions were very interesting and thought provoking, but what stuck with me was the sense of community that these moots have created.

And that is why I am writing down these thoughts. Because although the pandemic has had a huge impact on life, especially social life, it has given me the opportunity to form new connections, to network like never before, and to build communities that I would never have though possible. If a year ago you would have said that this spring I would be giving lectures about the Witches' Pyramid of participating in panels about how to practice Wicca in different kinds of group modes, then I would have said you were jesting. But here we are.

I marvel at the possibilities that have arisen from the dire situation that we are in, and it gives me hope and warms my heart to think that although life this year did not turn out as we would have hoped or imagined, we can still find the good things and create and build positive community.

I hate many things about this year, but I love the good things it has brought into my life.

Blessed be!

~Stella

Out in the woods

The weather was absolutely beautiful today, so I decided to go for a walk in the woods. Oh, and I now also have a Youtube channel. ;)





Enjoy!

~Stella

Forming new routines

Inspired by Fenris' post about forming new routines, I feel compelled to write a bit about my own. No one has escaped this crisis (except maybe some nuclear submachine crews who might spend months under the surface), and where I live we are advised to avoid meeting people, gatherings of more than 10 people have been prohibited, and one region of the country is closed off.

I myself have been laid off work (luckily I did not loose that much money because of it since it is a few-hours-a-week job, but it still feels bad) and as schools and universities have closed and transformed all education to distance-learning, my schedule has opened up a surprising lot. Now, I do count this as a blessing, but it has come with its challenges.

Teatime is always at two o'clock!

First off, when libraries and restaurants are closing I can no longer go out of my house to study. I like going to other places because then I don't have my home life distracting me. I also don't have many lectures, and the ones I have happen to be on the same day, just right after each other, once a week. So building some kind of consistent routines from this very open framework has been surprisingly difficult for me.

I know that I am most productive during the hours after I have just woken up (between six and seven in the morning). So I have now started placing articles and other school material next to my bed so that I may reach for them before getting up (I know, really good sleep hygiene right there, not).

Another thing I have struggled with is eating regularly. I know exactly what happens if I go too long without eating. I usually don't get hungry before it is too late and my blood sugar drops, causing dizziness and grumpiness. So I have started implementing a schedule for eating, mostly focusing on breakfast, lunch and dinner, with snacks in between if necessary. I keep a meal planner on the side of my fridge. It helps me plan my meals and manage what food items need to be consumed before they go bad.

I have also tried to go to bed earlier, at the latest around the time I am  now writing this blog. And since there is a lot going on right now with trying to manage the situation and keeping in touch with friends and family, I will also start to implement an even stronger and firmer evening routine. I have thus far tried to read at least on chapter of a book before going to sleep (before penning these thoughts I just finished Thorn Mooney's Traditional Wicca). Now I will try to couple that with meditation before sleep.

New routines form as we adjust to the situations that arise around us. We are humans and we are adaptable, even in the face of a pandemic. We will come out of this at some point, hopefully having learnt some life lessons. And remember: This too shall pass.

Blessed be!
~Stella

Updates

Hello dear reader,

I have been looking at the blog in dismay for a while, especially the resource section. Thus, I have currently begun the project of reorganizing the blog slightly. Here are the changes that are taking place:

Blog appearance
The blog is changing its appearance. Some changes have already been made but I am working on a new banner among other things.

Pages
All pages have been updated. The Resources-page has seen some major changes and now includes more resources with a completely new structure. I will keep adding to this as time passes. I also take suggestions for things to include.

I am also working toward adding more pages to this blog. This will, however, take some time as I run two blogs on the same topic in different languages. My hope is to be able to cross-post some content while still maintaining the uniqueness of both blogs and allowing them to complement each other.

Special thanks
I want to give a special shout-out to my dear friend Fenris who proofreads my blog and gives me advice on formatting and editing. Fenris is a professional journalist and web manager. You are a true inspiration and your support keeps me writing.

Fenris is also going to make a guest appearance on the blog soon, with a review that he has written.

A big thank you also to everyone who has asked questions and given suggestions for topics I could write about. Some of them will be included here, and others might be answered in Swedish on Häxagram.

Questions and suggestions
For anyone who wants to send me comments, questions or suggestions anonymously, there is now an option to do so through my questions box.


That is all for this time. Thank you for reading.

Blessed be!
~Stella

Words matter - Chapter 1: Wicca, witchcraft & witch

Wicca and witchcraft, are they the same? Is a witch always a Wiccan? And are all witches Pagan?

This is a topic that has been discussed to no end in witchcraft circles, but there still seems to be some confusion about it, and I can see where some of it comes from. The terms Wicca and witchcraft are often used interchangeably, not least in older Wiccan literature.

In this article I will discuss some of these terms. and how they relate to each other. I do not profess to have the Ultimate Answer (TM), however, I will be basing this article off of academic work as well as that of reputable authors from the pagan field (some of which are the same). I would also like to point out that there is some confusion of terminology even among scholars in the area.

Let us begin.

Wicca & witchcraft

The terms Wicca and witchcraft are often confused with each other, especially among people who are familiar with neither concept. When I picked up a book called Wiccapedia a while back, I assumed that the name was a combination of the words Wicca and encyclopedia. Oh dear, how wrong I was. It was not an encyclopedia, and it had very little to do with Wicca, at least not in the way I have come to know it. This book, however, used the terms Wicca and witchcraft interchangeably as if they were the same thing. This is something that happens elsewhere as well, and something that I am also guilty of.

So what is the difference then? What differentiated Wicca from witchcraft?

From an academic perspective witchcraft is, simply put, anything today or historically dealing with the practice of magic, anywhere in the world. That is to say: whether you practice folk magic, kitchen witchery of ceremonial magic, you are practicing witchcraft.

Gardner's Witchcraft Today, 1954

Wicca, on the other hand, is a religion. It was created in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner who drew a lot of inspiration from the western esoteric tradition and from Margaret Murray's writings about the Witch-cult of Europe. In short Murray picked up on theories that the witches burnt during the witch-hunts were the de-facto descendants of a pre-Christian pagan witch-cult that had lived on in secret. Gardner, who founded his new religion after being initiated into a witch-coven in the late 1930s, believed that this coven was in fact a remnant of the "old religion". But I will leave the history lesson for an other post.

In the earliest works about Wicca, the term Wicca had not yet become widely used. Instead terms like "the old religion", "Witchcraft" or simply "the Craft" were used. Notice the difference in capitalization between Witchcraft and witchcraft. The former refers to a religious practice, and the latter to a general practice.

Wicca was and still is a religion based on witchcraft, and thus, to the early authors of books on the old religion, it would have been only natural. Look up some titles by Gardner and Doreen Valiente (the "mother of Wicca") and you will find the term Witchcraft widely used in them. This is a good thing to keep in mind while reading books by Wiccan authors: the terms used to be, and still sometimes are, used interchangeably.

The term Wicca became popular during the 1960s when the religion started to spread and split into different traditions, and it is now the most widely used name for the religion. A Wiccan is a practitioner of witchcraft, but all practitioners of witchcraft are not necessarily Wiccan.

Let us make a quick summary:

Wicca: a new witchcraft religion created in the mid 20th Century by Gerald Gardner, with roots in the western esoteric tradition, and the assumption of an unbroken continuance from a (since disproven) pre-Christian fertility religion that evolved into the so called witch-cult after Christianity took over. Wicca has evolved and developed a lot since its inception in the 1950s and has become a diverse religion with many traditions.

Witchcraft: the practice of a witch's craft, an umbrella term for different methods and practices.

Witch

What then, is a witch? Let us simply skip the caricature picture of the old wart-nosed hag stirring her cauldron. A witch, simply put, is someone who practices witchcraft. If we look back to the era of the witch-hunts, it was a term applied to both men and women equally, and in witchcraft circles it is considered a gender neutral term, even though popular media seems to want to differentiate between the genders (just look at Netflix's Sabrina-series where witchcraft-practitioners are pushed into different classes because of their assumed gender, into witches and warlocks, who supposedly own different power potentials).

Before I go off on an other tangent, let us reiterate that the word witch is gender neutral and anyone practicing witchcraft is a witch. You do not, of course, have to call yourself a witch if you do not want to. Most countries have their own terms for practitioners of witchcraft.

***

Interesting to note is that, in my experience, these terms have become more widely discussed in recent times. Most books before this millennia seem to be more interested in discussing paganism than witchcraft, and that might have something to do with a few things:

The research pile just continued growing
while writing this article.

First of all, paganism has been more widely studied in the academic field than witchcraft has. Second, since witchcraft practices have become popularized through the rise and popularity of Wicca, druidism and the goddess-worship movement during the latter part of the 20th Century, and the terms Wicca and Witchcraft were, and still are, used interchangeably, there is more confusion about these terms.

Thirdly, I think that instead of studying witchcraft, academics tend to keep to the topic of occultism. The occult handles esoteric thinking and theory, as well as magic(k), which is also a part of witchcraft. Witchcraft as it's own thing, however, is not being as widely studied, but it seems now to be a burgeoning field attracting new attention from academics.

Paganism, neo-paganism, occultism and western esotericism will have to require their own chapters. Thus I will end this chapter here, hoping you have gleaned some more clarity into these three terms. Questions can be posted below, or in my question box.

Sources

Berger, Helen A. (1999): Witches - Contemporary Neo-Paganism ans Witchcraft in the United States
Johnston, Hannah E. & Peg Aloi (2007): The New Generation Witches - Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture
Pearson, Joanne (2007): Wicca and the Christian Heritage - Ritual, Sex and Magic
White, Ethan Doyle (2016): Wicca - History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft

Ritual of hope and healing

The corona virus pandemic is hitting the world hard. Here in Finland, where I live, a state of emergency resembling martial law has been declared today. We are literally at war with the epidemic, with the goal of slowing it down and protecting the people most vulnerable to it. The past week has been more or less chaotic, with events being cancelled, schools closing and gatherings of more than ten people being banned.

Amidst all the people hoarding food and toilet paper (for which a special place in hell has been reserved if they do it without good reason, especially here in Finland where paper never runs out), and the neighbors who turn their back at you in the stairwell out of fear of infection, what can we as a magickal community do?

In the Finnish Wicca group on Facebook, the following video was posted today. It is a call to action by Chi Nami for the magickal and spiritual community to raise energy to heal, help and create hope in the world during this pandemic. The ritual will take place on Friday 20th March at 8.00 p.m. UTC +2 (= 2 p.m. EDT).

If you are not into doing ritual, you can send a prayer as well. However, if you do want to do a ritual, but do not know how to structure it, here is what I will do, presented as a complete ritual structure.

Ritual of hope and healing

Prepare your ritual space and set up an altar. Here is how I will do it:

• Elemental representation for Water and Earth: a bowl of salt water
• Elemental representation for Air and Fire: smoldering incense
• Any representations for your deities*
• A white candle. You could also opt for three different candles: 
• Light green for healing
• White for helping 
• Yellow for hope
• Cakes and ale (aka. some food and drink to help you ground after raising and sending energy)

Here are the ritual steps:

1. Ground and center
2. Magickally cleance your space and yourself by asperging (springling salt water) and censing (wafting incense).
3. Cast the circle in your preferred manner
4. Call the quarters, starting with the East
5. Invite Deity* and state the intention of the the ritual
6. Meditate for a moment on the goal of this ritual, visualizing it in your mind: 
• See before you how healing and help comes to everyone in need, and how hope is born.
7. Keep this visualization firmly in your mind as you start raising energy. You could use a number of methods:
• Drumming
• Chanting/singing
• Dancing
• or others
8. While you keep the vizualisation going in your mind, as the energy rises and comes to a peak, release it and send it out into the world to do its work.
9. If you have any residual energy left you can earth it 
10. Next, bless the cakes and ale (or whichever food and beverage you have) and relax for a  moment. If you invited Deity, share some with them.
11. When you feel ready, and it is time to end the ritual, start by thanking Deity for their presence and help.*
12. Release the quarters
13. Open the circle

Now that the ritual is done, it is time to act in accord with the intention. Do what you can to help keep others and yourself safe (wash your hands, follow the directions of you country's health department, etc.) and create hope by sharing positive moments with friends and loved once on social media.

*Skip if you are not into deities or are not religious

***

After the ritual on Friday, I will be hosting a chat (in Swedish) on my Discord channel Hexagram for anyone who wants to talk and share experiences. 

Stay safe and hopeful, everyone!

Blessed be!

~Stella

Daily Spells: Courage Cord

Sometimes we feel low on courage and would need some extra protection to go along with us in our day-to-day lives. This is a simple spell that requires minimal ingredients and preparation, but can yield a powerful result. It uses correspondences to create a sympathetic bond to the goal you want to achieve: courage. So here goes:

Day: Tuesday (associated with the planet Mars, and with courage and protection among other things)
Moon phase: Waxing (growing)
Ingredients: A red cord

Your goal is to be more courageous and thus feel more protected. If it helps, you can write your goal on a piece of paper. The idea is to use the power of the growing moon to let your courage grow. As Tuesdays are associated with Mars you can also draw upon these energies. The color red is associated with courage and thus with Mars and Tuesdays, so here we find a triple connection.

This spell uses the classic knot magic. With each knot you tie you are knotting your goal into the cord, making it a physical representation of courage. You can then place it on your altar, bedside table or wear it as a bracelet, wrapped around your wrist.

During the day, ground and center yourself and then create your sacred space. Follow whatever ritual format you normally would do. As you start the spell, pick up the cord and hold it in your hands. Visualize your goal clearly. As you begin tying knots into the cord, feel your goal starting to manifest, your courage starting to grow. Tie the nine knots in the following order (starting with 1 and ending with 9) and recite the verse, always keeping your goal in focus, tying it into the cord:

1---6---4---7---3---8---5---9---2

With know of one, this spell's begun,

With knot of two, it comes true,

With knot of three, it comes to be,

With knot of four, power I store,

With knot of five, this spell's alive,

With knot of six, this spell is fixed,

With knot of seven, success is a given,

With knot of eight, I make it fate,

With knot of mine, this courage is mine!

So mote it be!

As you recite this and visualize your goal, feel yourself raising the energy for the spell. As you reach the end and proclaim "So mote it be!", feel that energy culminate and release it. Then finish your ritual in your usual manner and remember to ground and center. Place your cord on your bedside table or wear it as a bracelet. Whenever you feel like you need to be reminded of your inner courage, look at or touch the bracelet, it is now your focal object and you can redo the spell whenever you need to, recharging the cord. 

Compassion, goals and building a practice

These are some short thought on how we, when we set new goals for ourselves in our lives (think new years promises and "I'm gonna change my life for the better"), sometimes feel like we end up failing. So read on if you wish.

***

We often set ourselves up for failure by wanting to do too much at a time. We feel like our lives are a drag and so we decide to start meditating daily, doing our devotions daily, pray, go to the gym X times per week, eat healthy, sleep enough, write in our Book of Shadows, or a myriad of other things at the same time. We want change and we want it now.

In September I set a goal for myself to read one book each month. By December I felt as though I had failed. But I did not have a routine in reading. Since then reading has become a little easier because even though I have not realized it, I have been getting a routine. But it has built slowly, little, by little.

Those can all be good goals, but if we lack a previous routine doing them, we are setting ourselves up for failure very effectively, because good and healthy habits take time and dedication to build. It can be your end goal to live like this list you have set up, and if that is so, then good. But start small, with one thing, and slowly change your routine to incorporate this and the other things into your life. And as your life changes, adjust your new routines to suit it. Your goals might even change, and that is okay.

As with learning sports, knitting, playing the piano, or developing any other skill set, we need to give ourselves time and be persistent in learning and getting used to, eg. meditation or going to the gym. We need to allow ourselves to not always succeed, and to recognize that sometimes we simply do not have the time and energy. But if we persistently try we can build new habits to replace the ones we do not like. With time and patience. 

Sometimes it feels like we are getting nowhere with our goals. But as easy it would be to just give up as we feel the path takes us nowhere, it might be good to know that even the smallest steps take us closer to reaching our goal.
Pic from Salamajärvi National Park, Finland, August 2018

The same goes for building your daily Wiccan or magical practice. Above all: Remember to be compassionate with yourself. Be kind and do not demand too much at once. Sometimes life is hard and takes time, and then you just need to be even kinder to yourself at those times.

Love and compassion, not just for others, but for yourself as well. 

Blessed be!
~Stella

Harmony Nice: Wicca - a modern guide to witchcraft and magic

It is time for an other book review. This time I will be taking a look at Harmony Nice's book from 2018 by the title of Wicca - a modern guide to witchcraft and magic. Harmony Nice is an influencer, a youtuber, who makes videos about fashion and Wicca. She is also active on other social media, such as Instagram. She wrote this book after being asked to do so by a publisher Orion Springs (which is not an occult or pagan publisher).

So that is that, now let's get into the book itself.

What did I like about the book?

• Nice has a very positive tone to her writing. Reading the book made me feel like I was listening to her happily telling me about how happy she is to have found Wicca. 
• Although some parts are very floofy and lofty in their description of things, she gives very good practical advice for example on how to celebrate sabbats. There is some very down-to-earth advice to be found in the book.
• Easy to read. This book is very easy to read and it took me only a few hours to do so. There is no difficult language, although at times I felt like it was almost too simplified. But that might be editing.
• The book is beautifully layouted, but that unfortunately adds little to the content. It does look good on Instagram, though.
• Ethics. Nice discusses the Wiccan Rede and ethics in casting spells etc. at some length and returns to these points in other parts of the book. 

What problems do I find with the book?

First off, what is going on in this book in regards to editing? There is no clear structure, and the chapters seem almost at times to be randomly placed in the book. For example, there are two chapters on the moon in completely different parts of the book... I am not certain, but I am willing to think that this might be the fault of editing less so than of the author. But I have never published a book (yet) so I cannot say for sure.

The content is however where I find most issue. Let me summarize:

• A book with the main title Wicca, should be about Wicca. If the second chapter is about divination I will not be able to think it is seriously written. I do however think that this is a symptom of the author's youth and of the fact that divination is a huge part of her own life.
• Nice gets that basics of Wicca right (except for it's history, I'll return to that soon), but mentions belief in deity very briefly. For a book about a religion I feel that it is a huge red flag if deity is mentioned in passing. She does list gods and goddesses of different pantheons, but that has little to do with actual worship, or with the core beliefs of religion.
• Not giving credit where credit is due. Nice cites Lady Gwen Thompson's poem known as the Long Rede while saying that the original author is unknown. A common misconception which is easily rectified through a simple google search.
• The history of Wicca. This point really bugs me. Wicca is a modern religion created in the middle of the 20th Century by Gerald Gardner based off of Margaret Murray's Witch cult-theory which had been definitively debunked by the 1970s. Yet Nice writes that Wicca is centuries old and was "popularized" by Gardner in the 1950s. In the 21st Century we cannot go on propagating this kind of misinformation if we as Wiccans are to be taken seriously. However. This might have something to do with the sources she has read. She cites Scott Cunningham extensively but almost no other authors. Which leads me to the next point.
• Sources. Scott Cunningham is almost her exclusive source. Cunningham's Living Wicca is one of the most popular books written by any Wiccan author still being sold, but it is dated. It is a book that has gotten many a beginner into Wicca, and it still does. But we need newer, better books, more modern ones. That is why I believe so many new, badly written books are surfacing: there is a demand, but the good books drown in the sea of instagram-worthy bestsellers without any substance. 
• Vague language such as "it is believed" and "it is thought". For example when talking about the Gardenerian tradition, Nice writes that "there is thought to be a system of hierarchy ...". This is something that could easily be fact-checked. In many instances she writes about certain things as if they were uncertain. I think this speaks mostly of her inexperience and the fact that she might not (my guess) have read that many books on Wicca yet. But we are all there at the beginning. As we grow and learn we learn more things. And most of us are happy learning the bare basics and that is fine too. However, if you pass your uncertain knowledge on as fact, do not be surprised if someone corrects you. Especially for solitary practitioners of Wicca, gaining quality knowledge about their religion can be a very demanding process (this is also why we need good books about the subject).

From what I have understood from her own comments she was approached by the publishers about writing a book about Wicca and received a fairly short time frame for doing so. This might explain some of the issues I have with the book. However, I think that any serious publisher would fact check the books they are publishing (unless of course they are looking to make a lot of money quickly, which I fear might be the case here).

Harmony Nice has been a Wiccan for a few years as she wrote this book. The lack of experience shows. I believe however that this is a place where she can grow, and that she can produce quality content once she gains more experience in the Craft.

I read this book mostly as Nice's own story about her personal journey into Wicca, but as it is made out as an instructional book about the religion this does create some problems. For example, writing about Wicca and having divination so soon in the book makes it look like divination is an integral part of Wicca. Yes, some, maybe even most Wiccans, use divination, but it is not an integral part of being a Wiccan. And divination is not exclusively Wiccan, but a tool used in many traditions.

Do I recommend it?
I think it is a book that could get many newcomers interested in Wicca. Like Silver RavenWolf's Teen Witch drew me into Wicca as a teen, I believe this book might function as a starting point for so called "baby witches" (by the Goddess do I hate that term).

I hope that if future editions to this book are made, some facts might be corrected and more sources added, or at least a list of recommended reading. In fact, I do hope that in a few years we might see a new, more informed, book by Harmony Nice.

For advanced readers this book has almost nothing to give, but for the person interested in learning about Wicca, and who follows Harmony Nice, I might even recommend this, especially if you can get it from a library or second hand. However, there are better books out there, and Teen Witch is still, despite RavenWolf's many faults as an author, a much better book than this.

~Stella

Imbolc

Imbolc is coming up and the days are growing longer. I will not be writing a post on what Imbolc is about or how to celebrate. But I thought I might list a few things I will be doing for the holiday. If you want information about Imbolc, correspondences and the different ways you can celebrate, I suggest watching this video by HearthWitch on YouTube:

As Imbolc is a time for lighter, longer days, and new beginnings after the darkness of winter I am incorporating this into my celebration. I will be going on a small trip on February Eve, so my celebrations at home will take place both before, during, and after.

• I am doing a spring cleaning of the house, or the first part of it. I usually have my large spring clean around Ostara when spring really settles in here, but around Imbolc is a nice time to clean the house and clear the air by cleansing energies. This I will do before the trip.
• During my trip I will be celebrating with a person close to me, the newfound relationship and the hopes we have for the future.
• Once I get home from my trip I will have time to set a new altar for Imbolc-time, light candles and celebrate in ritual.
• I will plant the first seeds of the year. I have some flowers I want to grow this year, so I really hope I can manage to get them to grow so that I may plant them outside in summer.

For me Imbolc is a celebration of the coming spring, of fertility and light. It is also a time for crafts and baking. For casting out the old and bringing in the new. So in general a time for renewal and practicality.

How will you be celebrating?

Happy Imbolc!

~Stella

Updates: Cirkelgemenskap, etc.

I should write more often. But life sometimes makes it difficult. So here is a small update:

Are you Wiccan, a witch, Pagan or otherwise interested in these things? If you speak Swedish there is now an event just for you happening in Finland: Cirkelgemenskap Ostara 2020. You can visit the homepage for the retreat here.

Cirkelgemenskap is a retreat for Swedish-speaking witches, pagans and other like-minded individuals. It will take place in Oravais in Ostrobothnia on 10-12.4.2020, and the sign-up starts on Imbolc. Some material for the retreat will be made available on this blog in English afterward.

***

So that is that for the retreat. Here are some other updates:

• I will attempt to post a bit more regularly on the blog. As the moon waxes and vanes, so too does inspiration, and energy. Permitting that both inspiration and energy coincide, I will most definitely post more content.
• I have a good friend, a chaos mage, who will be writing a review for the blog on something he has tried out.
• As Ostara approaches, stand by for a post about making witches' hats.

That is all for now,

~Stella