There are certain tropes in the dialogue surrounding spirituality, especially direct-contact spirit-work, that I have aquired a marked distaste for. There's "you must be this white to ride," there's "you are disabled, ergo you would have been exposed at birth back when Pantheon X were last regularly worshipped, ergo you cannot now worship Pantheon ( Read more... )

Recently I've been making an effort to familiarise myself with the lore relating to the Dvergar, the dwarves of Norse lore. This is a rich field and I can already see I'm going to get a lot out of it. I'll do a longer entry on this at some point down the line, but for now I just wanted to jot down a couple of thoughts. (Largely coz I got back ( Read more... )

A couple of years ago there was a guy doing the rounds of various internet fora. He'd join up and post the most incredible screed as his introductory post. It was the same boilerplate text each time. It started "Hi, I am Allfather," and I'm afraid it rather went downhill from thereon in. He wasn't just borrowing the name Allfather as a nifty ( Read more... )

Today I went out and stocked up on easily-portable long-life dried foods. I collected together, in one easily accessible place: water-purification tablets, basic first aid supplies, alcohol-based hand sanitiser, necessary medications, fuel, a spirit-stove.

Survivalist swine flu prep? Nope, camping. I lucked out a few months back and made contact ( Read more... )

...still smarts, even when you're only tangentally involved ( Read more... )

I don't know, sounds perfectly reasonable to me.Raging cultural insensitivity aside, this is an eminently sensible notion. I mean, I check in with the witch-doctors of my aquaintance every chance I get. I actually quite like the fantasy of having Western woo-woo merchants look at how their gear stands up against folks from cultures where modern ( Read more... )

Was originally going to be a response to this thread, but ended up a bit long and self-indulgent.

Other poster: I don't know whether to smile or lament that the immediate response of most Heathens I know to someone asking to know more is to assign a fairly long reading list ( Read more... )

Today I am praying for compassion ( Read more... )

So I'm browsing NT-related texts on Amazon, and Feeding the Flame pops up as a suggestion. As it happens I've already got Feeding the Flame cuz my well-chewed Loki essay is therein and the editor was kind enough to send me a copy. Oooh, I wonder if there's anything juicy in the reviews..?

Jackpot.

"Who, with any scant bit of sanity, would ( Read more... )

Over at the Bad Place I see that the old "pop-culture figure vs deity" row has broken out yet again, with the l33t ch40z majykyanz arguing that a practice centred around a pop-culture figure is every bit as powerful and rewarding and meaningful as one centred around a traditional deity; that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, if anything, a more potent ( Read more... )