With pilgrimage, the journey is far more important than the destination.

While a lot of people listening to Michael might get stuck on the "It's too late to save the world." part of his message, that was really the just preface to his core message, which was "It's not too late to love the world."

The current Jack-in-the-Green is a modern iteration, but belongs to an older tradition of “green beings” that populate English folk custom. Jack-in-the-Green himself emerged as a tradition in the eighteenth century, becoming closely associated with chimney sweeps and their May Day celebrations.

“(Pre)history, like any story, is empirically non-reducible to a singular causal chain of historical events, including the bogus idea of the agricultural revolution.”

The sites where the heads of ancestors were buried were no doubt seen as especially sacred. As places where the living and the dead, Thisworld and Otherworld, the people and the gods met. Each would have its stories passed down from generation to generation and rituals surrounding it. It is likely that, at liminal times, such as Nos Galan Gaeaf/Samhain, the seers of the Setantii tribe would commune with their dead and their heads would speak again.

As the ravages of Empire play out, cultural recovery may become our goal again in the future — and we may find ourselves by choice or necessity living in small localized kinship groups once again, looking to our own ancestral traditions for a template to survival.

The mundane and the spiritual are entwined, twisted together like the ivy that wraps around the fence posts in my garden, not a burden, but each supporting the other, for the fence is rotted and it is only the ivy keeping it standing, but alas I digress.

So whilst there is a separation in culture between the generations, even within the culture one is raised within, for how many of us live the same lives as our grandparents or even our parents, it doesn’t mean that our heritage isn’t important nor does it reduce it.

Wherever we find ourselves in the world, we can build a relationship to the land, to nature, right there. We can meld the knowledge of our ancestors to the land and in doing so, we make ourselves stronger.

The Anansi stories hold a special place in my heart, what with my family, or at least the paternal side, hailing from the Caribbean. But there’s another important aspect to not only the Anansi stories, but most folk stories, generally speaking of course. Many of them come from the common people. These stories are born from the shared struggle against the harshness of life.

I adore folk lore, superstitions and old wives tales, from all over the world. There are stories and sayings about almost everything you can think of from trees, to birds to the weird and wonderful. I believe such stories give a great deal of insight into humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and highlight the common thread that runs through whilst at the same time celebrating our differences. These stories can help to deepen our understanding of and thus our connection to the land. Here I’ll share with you some of my favourite tree lore.

“she danced the circle to call forth the spirits”

Traditions are kept alive through repetition. The gods are honored by honoring the cycles of the seasons, which dictate when offerings are given, and by honoring the process of life and death itself.

Slovenian Christmas songs, remembering the Sun and the Water, and holding on to old traditions.

We cannot return to our home, any more than we can return to the wholeness that was taken from us. But we can reclaim something of our inheritance. We may light the fire in the hearth, call the gods and spirits to us, and make a new home for ourselves.

…as if there was a huge dome around the metropolis that prevents access to other places, or that transforms other places into utopias disconnected from reality which can be accessed only from time to time in dream

An editorial from Rhyd Wildermuth

On being white and talking about racism. How to witness and learn from Afro-Brazilian stories of resistance, through lenses free from the objectifying effects of the white gaze.

“Rules to be followed in order to achieve something desired, exchange favors, the human mind is so materialistic that it bargains even with the spiritual.” From Jal Souza

It’s no surprise that, even though chattel slavery was formally abolished throughout the Americas over 100 years ago, enslaver culture is still very much alive.