The Pagan Community is one filled with diversity and individuality - characteristics we celebrate. Our religious beliefs are often quite disparate. Yet, although we walk different paths, we do so in harmony with one another. We connect - often deeply - on a spiritual level. And it is through our spirituality that we become more than just a community. We become a family.

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Spoil Me...Please
By Callum Mostyn.

In the northern hemisphere the first spring festivals are occuring - although it may not seem very spring-like in parts. After the stress of Winter, the dry flaky skin, the itches, the excessive oiliness (or lack), the dandruff and red eyes, and so on, your body is crying out for some pampering. Something to help shrug off the lethargy of the winter and welcome in the vibrancy of early spring!

On the other side of the world, autumn is looming near. Tired, over-sun-kissed skin, dry hair, and the calluses of bare feet linger as reminders of the summer. Unfortunately these things also set your body up to suffer in winter. Calluses crack, dry hair splits, and sun-tans rob skin of its protective moisture barrier....
Extract from Pagan Families

Seasonal Festival - Lupercalia
By Anne S.

....Following the sacrifice, the goat was skinned and the Luperci as a whole feasted. Wine formed an integral aspect of the feasting. The hide was then cut into strips: some was tied to the chosen Luperci, the rest made into februum (goat-hide whips used during the Lupercalia to whip people). Once armed, the chosen Luperci led their colleges on a purification run - a lustrare, or ritualistic going around. By this stage, all the Luperci were nearly or fully naked. They ran the pomarium (perimeter of the ancient city boundaries), and about the bases of the Seven Hills. When Ovid discusses the actions of the Luperci, he talks of piamen, or expiation. The scapegoating in other words? To expiate is to transfer offence from one to another - those that may have offended the gods and thus risk bringing divine wrath upon Roma must be expiated. Is this the intent behind the whipping? To take the sins from the people? If so, where do the sins go? Into the dead goat? The chosen Luperci? Was the earlier act of marking with blood a way to signify that these men where now the scapegoats of Rome and the subsequent cleansing with milk a sign that the role was an assumed one and no sin would stain them? After all, Rome was founded upon fraticide....
Extract from Festivals and Holidays

Memories
By Avril H.

....In some ways we Heathens are similar to the Scandinavians, but in others we differ. Many of our gods evolved from the same original deity - we follow Woden, they honour Odin, We worship Tir not their Tyr, and our Thunderer is Thunor not Thor. However our supreme deities are the goddesses: Harvest Queen Nerthus, Eostre of the Dawn, and Winter Hred. These are the rulers of our pantheon. And these are the older deities, the ones from before the Scandinavian influences, from the time of women not warriors. Mind you, Nerthus is in all likelihood a merger of what was once a male/female pairing of deities - similar to Osiris and Isis, Zeus and Hera, or Odin and Frigga. I find it very interesting that it is the female gender that has been preserved, despite the masculine name and "virility" overtones....
Extract from Memories Over the Years

Healing Through Chromotherapy
By Angus.

In using energy we often turn to a variety of tools to magnify or focus or otherwise influence our energy-work. Crystals and herbs are common. There's the usual 'magical tools' such as wands and staves and athames and candles and bells...and then there's colour. I'm not talking about using a pink candle when doing a love spell, or a green crystal when working money magic.
Extract from Tools of the Trade

Seasonal Festival - Lughnasadh
By Catherine M.

....This is an interesting alternative view to the traditional viewpoint of ever-living Earth Goddess and yearly dying Agricultural God. Lugh does not die so we might live. Lugh is not John Barleycorn or the Green Man sacrificed as the grains are cut down. Instead he fights and wins the harvest for us, releasing it from the earth. It is the Earth Goddess who slips into dormancy - this ties in so much more with the mythos of the earth slumbering over winter, dormant and seemingly dead. Do we not engage in activities to awaken her and bring life to her flesh in spring? Why then shouldn't we see the Earth as also a cyclic deity who lives, dies, and is reborn of herself?....
Extract from Festivals and Holidays

Reincarnation
By Axiom

....This third one is what interests me. I have always had difficulty with the concept of reincarnation as a process the soul underwent life after life - it always seemed to me that in such a scenario more people should have an awareness of past lifetimes. And a stronger remembrance. It's all very easy to say we choose to forget but that just reeks of scrambling for an explanation to me. Mind you I could be completely wrong!

Anyway, I have been looking into this Buddhist concept on and off over the years, and this last few months more closely. Not that I desire to become Buddhist - far from it. But there is a "yes" moment for me when I read it....
Extract from Myth, Magic and Madness

The Heart of the Matter
By Nokomis Dreams

....I had been having dreams of this baby. Dreams of a baby girl. Dreams of painting a room in soft pastels, and decorating it in extremely feminine ways. Building shelves that looked like they were "in" the wall, with a curly, decorative design on the top. The shelves were white in my dream, and I was putting pretty, girly things in the shelves. So different from the pick-up trucks and tractors that I pick up on a daily basis!...
Extract from Pagan Families

Whispers in the Dark
By NiteSage.

....My mother is a whole different can of worms. Though I have explained what I believe and what I do to practice in great depth and many times it is meaningless. To her what I believe is irrelevant since I am being deceived by Satan and everything I believe is a lie. I'm sure all of you who have been what we are for even a year have run into someone like my mother. For her to accept what I am means she has to betray what she believes. There is no intellectual argument that will change her mind. The best I can do is to try to live a moral life and by my actions demonstrate that she is the one who is wrong....
Extract from Editorials

From the Desk of
Albineus Equinus

This issue marks my anniversary with the Magazine as Editor in Chief. I have seen many changes over the last year - in myself as well as my staff.

I have watched as some of the people working on this magazine fought illness or dealt with family tragedy. I have seen others take up the slack, offer support, and labour to ensure the magazine continued to go out.

With the approach of spring I hope that rebirth and renewal is evident in all our lives, bringing resolution and peace to those who need it. The wheel turns daily and we can but hope to keep on our feet rather than tumble along aimlessly.

To those of our staff and readership dwelling in the south, entering into autumn, I hope you are harvesting a bountiful crop from the last year.

For myself I am dealing with radical changes in my home - my nephew is coming to stay with us while his mother has surgery and goes through recovery. I know this will disrupt the flow of things, but I am choosing to see it as a positive force. Our lives have been fairly sedentary lately and he will bring new ideas and attitudes with him.

Teenaged attitudes. I need to remind myself this is positive - and in that lies my lesson I fear. I am growing older and getting more set in my ways. The thought of some teen disrupting the running of my household fills me with trepidation - and not only because I have the 10 other children in a routine.

I am becoming my father. Uncomfortable with the unknown or with change. I dislike loss of control.

I fear this lesson will be a hard one for me. Especially as I need to remember that in as much as I will be disturbed, he is so much more.

The wheel turns indeed and already I am stumbling.

In light and love,
Albi
Managing Editor
   

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