Tag Archives: holiday

Online Course: Holiday Magic

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HlidaMagc

Enjoy the holidays, Pagan style. Make your season happy, abundant, safe, sacred, sane, and magical. This course has five powerful aspects:

WhtSnoflkOne) Weekly lessons, delivered to you by email. Each lesson is a digital Book of Shadows entry (PDF), ornamented by my seasonal shamanic art, which makes the Book of Shadows a cherished tradition in the years ahead.

I boiled lessons down to their essence, so they tend to be easy and accessible. They include:

* simple quick spells, prayers, and affirmations, to nourish, energize, and inspire you during the holidays.

* fun holiday crafts and decorations, Pagan-style. Use common household items to make enchanted seasonal decor: charms for just about anything you might wish. Children enjoy these crafts. Also, discover how typical American holiday decorations can be used in spells.

* Special rituals. We’ll experience the Winter Goddess’ sacred realm. Center into wholeness and joy. Enjoy the season’s spiritual beauty. Rites include a star-drenched Faerie Solstice celebration.

* Lots of material to choose from. Pick what you want to use this year and enjoy the rest for many years to come. The course includes powerful Fey-touched material I’d not published previously.

During your busy holiday season, there’s no need to waste time searching online for fun or meaningful activities. This course delivers them to you.

Enjoy unique magics not available elsewhere.

PnkSnoflkTwo) Magical decor: eight digital full-color amulets—my original Pagan art—for harmony, success, and more. Print and cut out to hang on your Yule tree or elsewhere in your home. Four of the amulets’ designs are suitable to display all four seasons, for yearlong blessings.

WhtSnoflkThree) Six audio recordings made especially for this course. Hearing spoken word can be enchanting, and a way you and I can be in sacred space together. So I recite excerpts of the weekly lessons. One recording will be part of the Yule ritual.

Receiving gorgeous PDFs, relaxing to enchanted recordings, and printing amulets are a satisfying, productive use of the digital world, instead of overdosing on social media and online shopping.

PnkSnoflkFour) I’m available by phone for up to 45 minutes. If you have questions about the material, need support because your commitment to the lessons falters, want to further explore a particularly tantalizing part of the curriculum, or have other concerns, feel free to phone.

You can divide the 45 minutes into two or three conversations. Conversations must occur during the span of the course or within a month after.

WhtSnoflkFive) Exclusive gift: I’ll give you a five-day direct spiritual transmission during Solstice week at no extra cost! Free! The price would have been $150. This Yule blessing heals inner blocks that sabotage your happiness, spiritually rejuvenates you, and centers you into what’s important to you. These benefits can last for months if not years.

StarSwirl3November is a turning point in the Pagan calendar. The course starts November 5, with your first lesson. You receive one lesson a week by email for 11 weeks. That will bring us halfway into January.

Post-Solstice lessons provide spells for a great 2024. You also learn how to work with mystical energies that occur in the weeks immediately after Solstice. Years ago, I noticed those energies and spent goodly hours developing related shamanic modalities for significant self-empowerment. Most of the post-Solstice material has remained unpublished till now.

If an unexpected event makes me unable to send one week’s planned material, I’ll extend the course an extra week.

Tuition: The regular price is $209 a month for three months, but I’ve lowered the cost to $167 a month. That is 20% off!

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No experience needed. However, even advanced practitioners will enjoy this. If you need more information, or want to discuss scholarship, trade, or a special payment plan, call the phone number below. No refunds. My online courses aren’t transcriptions of oral tradition lessons. I teach oral tradition by phone. The online courses are special unto themselves—magic tailored to be spectacularly useful, exciting, effective, and safe when learned online.

Lessons are substantive without being overwhelming. You are brought gently and deeply into star-drenched Mysteries that heal, empower, and uplift.

Lessons also help us find joy. Joy is not an extravagance but more important than ever. Even when it is tiny, or we’re striving for it unsuccessfully, it wraps us in the Gods’ love for us. This helps Them protect, heal, and strengthen us. And They become more able to bring us abundance and other material blessings. Embrace Their gifts. Enroll now.

Faerie Samhain Ceremony, 2020

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Faerie Samhain Ceremony, 2020

Please join me in a Samhain Ceremony on Friday October 30, 3 pm to 4 pm, est.

No experience needed.

This free ritual is a group phone call (teleseminar). Just dial your phone to attend. No computer or other equipment needed. (Your carrier might charge you for the phone call into the ceremony.)

Instructions for how to dial in will be in an upcoming newsletter. Subscribe by Oct 21 to receive the relevant newsletter, by clicking the banner at the bottom of this post.

Fleur2

What is Samhain?

Samhain is one of eight Witch holidays we celebrate in the Third Road, the Fey-touched tradition I teach. Many Pagans celebrate these holidays, (commonly known as Sabbats). Each of the eight marks a special seasonal magic. The corresponding ritual focuses on the power, beauty, and magic of that point in the year wheel.

Samhain is the ancient Festival from which Halloween evolved and is an easier time to commune with ancestors, that we may seek their guidance, honor their lives, and learn the Old Magics from them. Samhain is also the third of three autumn harvest festivals.

Fleur2

What is a Faerie (Fairy, Faery, Fey, Fae, Fay) Samhain?

I can only answer that for my own tradition. This will include telling you a bit about the tradition, as context. (For info about the different spellings of Faerie, Fairy, etc, click here.)

Whereas some Samhain rites can be rather scary or even overwhelming, the Third Road is a path of gentleness and safety, coupled with a degree of power that many individuals erroneously believe can only be obtained through risky, volatile practices.

The Mysteries tantalize, hinting at forbidden things. An oppressive society forbids much that is good, wholesome, and powerful.

We need not go into unnecessary danger, thinking pursuit of Mystery requires leaving common sense or ethics behind. (If you’d like to read more about that, Ethical (and Unethical) Fey Teachers further discusses how to sate your beautifully ferocious hunger for luminous Fey-touched Mystery, without falling prey to evil Fey Folk—sadly, they do exist—and their human pawns.)

Fleur2The Third Road frees us from spiritual bondage, so the strictures of organized religion cannot keep us from joy, prosperity, and self-care.

The Third Road is a witch spirituality protected and guided by the Magna Mater—Great Mother Goddess Creator of all. Her consort and Cocreator, my Good Father, also is our guide and protector.

My Divine Parents respect each person as an individual.

You can expect a truly powerful yet gentle Samhain ritual, in which we walk between the stars, and you are tended to carefully, with respect for your individual needs, strengths, and vulnerabilities.

Since I created (and continue to create) the Third Road materials, my personal experiences inform the rituals. Here are two ways relevant to our upcoming Samhain ritual.

1) The Fey Folk honor joy and beauty. I try to follow suit by creating beautiful, happy rites. This doesn’t mean that we have to be unwounded and in a good mood to participate. Quite the opposite. Part of beauty is honoring people exactly where they are. Part of beauty is loving people exactly as they are. Part of beauty is focusing on healing. Part of happiness is being accepted when you’re not feeling very happy at all.

2) I personally experience Samhain as a point when Nature moves more resolutely into darkening weather as winter approaches. I feel the darker weather as a safe, nurturing, peaceful environment. These experiences help shape the Third Road Samhain rituals.

I’m calling tribe: “Come! Come!”

Come seek your ancestors’ wisdom. Celebrate Gaia’s bounty. Move into darkness knowing it as the Old Gods’ generous, loving care. Reject spiritual bondage. Join me for the loving magic of Faerie, that you may draw on its joy, power, and healing.

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Upcoming Event: Santa Magic

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Santa Magic
A Four-Week Teleseminar
About Pagan Santa and His Yule Elves

Santa is in my pantheon. … Yup, you read that right. It started years back, when a friend told me she prayed to Santa.

But there was no information anywhere about Santa as a God.

So I developed the material myself.

Mind you, I found academic stuff about Santa’s roots as a ferocious ancient deity, but what about Jolly Santa who delights children? I had to develop that material myself.

I commenced to created a working relationship with a God who is jolly Santa wearing red—including his aspect as a ferocious God—by developing a theology, rituals, prayers, liturgy, and talismans. You learn pivotal parts of this in the class.

Convinced that Jolly Santa has important traits beyond those of the aforementioned ferocious God, I channeled a theology about that, with congruent ritual, etc. Now I enjoy a lusciously fun, yet complex and deep, connection with God Santa, and I’d like to share some of it with you in this four week teleseminar (class via group phone call) that is both class and ritual.

To give you a sense of my Santa God: He is a thoroughly Pagan Divinity—he gives material gifts all year long and chuckles at my mistakes instead of being judgmental. Santa bestows wonder, hope, and belief in goodness, while keeping me safe from harm. Santa is part of my year wheel; he sparkles until dark winter months are imbued with light.

Enrollment limited to 16 people so we can really connect during ritual. This event is experiential learning, so you’re guided into actually feeling the Yuletide joy and inspiration this God bestows.

FeyGirlJpegAs I channeled, one fun idea that came to me was Yule elves: kind of like the regular Santa’s elves but with a whole Pagan and magical twist.

We’ll look at what can you do as a Yule elf to help Pagan Santa with his work—spreading magic and wonder throughout the world, at Yule season and all year long.

People kept asking for more information, after reading my blogs about Pagan Santa and his elves. The readers would tell me things like “Oh my God, I relate to this so much, and I think I’m one of his elves!” Their questions motivate me to teach this class. I don’t know if I’ll teach it again, but feel strongly about teaching it once.

Yule25BlackThe sacred foolishness of this playful class opens the door to depth and magic. There are playful ways to get profound, e.g., clearing inner blocks to self-care during the holiday season and experiencing mystical states. My jolly Santa is deep, empowering, and healing. Expect to experience both healing and joy, laughter and power. Fun is important to my Santa—after all, he’s Pagan.

We meet in the year’s darkest weeks—Santa’s domain—continuing a bit after Yule to explore receiving Santa’s gifts all year long.

Nuts and bolts:
* These are group meetings by phone. To participate, just dial the phone from anywhere.
* Class meets four consecutive Tuesdays, from 6 to 7 PM EST, starting Tuesday December 15.
* Reserve Tuesday Jan 12, same time, for a makeup class in case I’m unavailable for one of the planned sessions.
* Tuition: $160. Your usual long-distance charges apply and appear on your phone bill. The event’s area code is a U.S. #.
* Upon receipt of payment, I email you event phone number, etc.
* Call me—814-337-2490—for more info or to discuss scholarship, trade, or payment plan. Do not email me. Refunds unavailable.
* Scroll down to enroll: enter your phone number and pay securely with PayPal.


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Be filled with child like wonder. All year long. Enroll now.

Pagan Santa’s Elf

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Being a Yule elf is part of my personal mythology. Do you have a personal myth this time of year? Please share it. When we share our imaginative lives, we make an even larger mythology spontaneously emerge, to enlarge all our joy, power, and creativity.

Besides, being one of Santa’s elves makes me so happy that I’m bursting at the seams! I have to share about it, or I’ll pop, like a balloon. Here goes:

Santa put me in a managerial position this year. I wasn’t sure what to think about that, at first. I mean, I was honored, but it’s not what I expected, and I did not like totally the idea.

But I’ve learned that, when Santa wants me to do something, there’s no point in resisting, because he always knows what I want, better than I might know it myself. So I knew the job would be good for me, in the long run.
HappySanta1Besides, I’ve worked as middle-management for chaos gods for years. I have the perfect skill set for managing wild elves and the crazy goings-on at the North Pole. Plus, I am not the only manager, the jobs are divvied up.

My particular job involves a lot of organization. I’ve been organizing the elf games (but not the reindeer games). This requires coming up with fun activities.

My elf friend Kathi Somers helped out. Her Yule gift to me this year was the Ravensberger game Funny Bunny. Yeah, it’s for ages four and up, but I’m not too proud to enjoy a silly preschoolers’ game. As the song says, “It’s a gift to be simple.” Simple things in life can be the best. And foolishness wakes up life’s magic.

My work is not just managerial, but also creative. I like that. Part of organizing the festivities has been coming up with holiday menus. Last year, I created a chocolate recipe I really liked. So I used it again this year. My personal formula for keeping spirits up during the Yule season: Chocolate lumps, not lumps of coal. Gluten and sugar-free.

I’ve also been responsible for decorating the Elfin communal spaces, to ensure the areas are cheerful, peaceful, and conducive to a happy winter. For example, the photo below:ByDoor1

And I painted one of my brother elves, then made the painting into a Yule ornament:Tomte

Oh, another thing: I get to be in charge of the Make-A-Wish-to-Pagan-Santa page again this year! I experience such joy doing it, because the wishes people make to Santa are beautiful! I am so lucky to convey them to Santa! Click here to make your wishes.

Share your imaginary life. Quite honestly, imaginary doesn’t mean that it’s not true. Happy holidays!CorsgWSntaButn

Snow Faerie Snowflakes

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Updated 2021.

This post was written in the mythopoetic realm that I’m always building, that I might continue to inhabit it happily. It’s a lighthearted post overall, in hopes it helps keep our spirits bright during wintry days. Included are some more serious thoughts—which I believe also can keep life bright. Let me know what you think.

Isn’t it amazing how someone can spot a wonderful part of you that you’ve overlooked? William Dreamdancer, an online friend who is an astute fellow, noticed that I’m a snow faerie.

Here I am, one of Santa’s Yule elves, but I never noticed I was a snow faerie. How could I have missed that? . . . I mean, you don’t have to be a snow faerie to be a Yule elf. Santa gives different jobs to different elves. But still …

Informed of William’s insight, Santa made me one of his official Snow Fairies this year. That is the job title for elves who tend the snow. (If you wonder why I’ve spelled it Faeries earlier in the post, and now I’m spelling it Fairies, check out this post:
https://stardrenched.com/2020/09/08/fairy-faerie-faery-fey-fay/)

My job as a Snow Fairy is creating snowflakes. I’ve gotten to make a lot of them. Making them makes me very happy.

Some Snow Fairies fashion snowflakes, and other Snow Fairies tend the snow in different ways, e.g., ensuring snowflakes don’t melt before they have a chance to fall from the sky. (I love making up the facts of my mythopoetic realm. And once I make them up, they’re true.)

On the mundane plane: I did a series of paintings that involved my drawing approximately one-hundred unique snowflakes. This post has three of those paintings.

A single snowfall uses up a lot of snowflakes. However, as I said, I’m not the only one of Santa’s elves who creates snowflakes.

In fact, every time you create paper cuttings of snowflakes to adorn a Yule tree, tape to a window, or otherwise decorate your home, you’re automatically one of the Yule elves helping make snow. Ditto your children when they start cutting the paper.

During a snowfall, I love watching Wind Fairies blow my snowflakes hither and thither.

Wind Fairies also make snowflakes drift lazily down. When they fall on you, look carefully and remember that Snow Fairies make each snowflake unique, especially for you.

Drawing snowflakes is a meditation that centers me into sanity and sacredness, which keeps me from going down the rabbit hole of dysfunction aka America’s holiday craziness. One of many perks of working for Santa is getting to do jobs that maintain joy, not only mine but that of others.

Popular culture, which as a whole considers magic nonsense, embraces it this time of year.

For one thing, during winter, many people who would humbug magic the rest of the year become open to miracle transforming their lives.

Also, the population as a whole becomes more open to extravagant decor. They forsake bourgeois restraint and the bland decor that results, replacing it with sparkling lights, bright red clothing, and gaudy displays. Typical holiday decor, with its exuberant fun, fills the air with magic. (Christmas decor is Pagan at heart and often has Pagan roots historically.)

Plus every year, folks everywhere are excited about a jolly elf who flies through the air, mysteriously managing to give gifts all over the world in a single night. If he isn’t wondrous and magical, nothing is, and I love seeing people suspend their disbelief (even if it’s only long enough to watch a Santa Claus movie).

Popular culture’s indulgence in magic this time of year is such happy, satisfying fun for me.

Want rituals that foster happiness and sheer joy in you?

Please join me in my free upcoming winter rituals.

There will be two rites. Attend one or both. One ceremony will meet in person in the San Francisco Bay Area. The other will meet worldwide via teleseminar aka group phone call.

We’ll drink in the season’s wonders, enchantments, and joys that they may lift our spirits and transform our lives. This will include an imaginary visit with Santa, to foster our happiness, joyfulness, and transformation even further.

Full details will be in my newsletter. Click the banner below to subscribe.

Click here to subscribe to my newsletter, for Fairy freebies, enchanted upcoming events, and stardust

Turning the Wheel

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Turning the Wheel through Personal Myth
Santa, Squirrels, and More

Backstory: I live in faerie tales. This lifetime, I’ve never heard of turning the year wheel with one’s personal myth (in this context, I mean a myth of one’s own making or a myth not generally perceived as related to the year wheel). I remember it from past lives.

Below, you will not find a theoretical exposition on turning the year wheel with one’s personal myth. I prefer to live in my faerie tales, not in my (albeit fabulous) theories. So, I share a little piece of my myth here. You mystics are smart—you don’t need someone lecturing theory at you from on high; mystics usually learn more watching—and feeling—how people actually embody their theories. Equally important, when I talk about my adventures, some people join me in them—I long for shared escapades.

Telling my own myth is no suggestion that it is the best one for you, or the right way for you to turn the wheel. End of backstory.

I blog about Yule starting in September. It is not the crass commercialism of stores that promote Christmas items way too early. It’s actually the opposite; it rescues me from holiday madness.

In Autumn, squirrels gather nuts to store for the winter. In the same vein, I plan my dark months in Sept or Oct. (I have been planning my dark months in the autumn for decades, so cannot remember whether I made the practice up or was taught it.)

According to Chinese philosophy, unresolved issues are more likely to bubble up from the subconscious in the winter. Experience has taught me that, if I do not plan my dark months before they start, I lose my mooring, and easily sink into holiday frenzy, codependent gift-giving, etc.

Every September or October, I get in touch with what I truly want for the fall and winter this year. Eg, Do I need to focus on a major inner healing? If so, is there a theme I can use for the healing rituals? Do I want to decorate the house for the holidays? If so, a little or a lot? Which holidays do I want to celebrate? Do I have the time to cook for the holidays? And so on.

It’s not that I stick to these plans rigidly. But when I lose my center, the plans helps me regain it. Then I can make sane decisions.

An additional piece of my process is relevant to why I blog about Yule so early. As I said, I live in Faerie tales. They are often myths of my own creation. One is that I am a Yule elf. Come autumn, Santa’s elves are very busy planning what’s going to happen over the next few months.

This planning, including what I’ll craft the next few months to put in Santa’s bag, aka my Etsy shop, is part of my turning the wheel of my personal year. I am an artisan, not a manufacturer, so fall—at latest!—is when I need to start planning and making the handful of items I will add to my shop before Yule.

I blog from the heart. I start blogging and posting from the North Pole as early as September. I want to share my real life—the day-to-day of my myths.

I am also spared holiday madness because, being one of Santa’s elf, I instead can spend the dark time focusing on service: I focus on the joy of crafting goods in the North Pole’s elven workshop, high quality craftsmanship, purposeful creativity, and Yule elf tweets/blogs/posts that help people smile during holiday grumpiness. I also get true holiday joy from my absurdly happy Yule elf meditations and costumes. I am turning my personal year wheel, connecting with the season of Mama Earth.

(I mentioned being a Yule elf as a myth of my own creation. I do not have space in this post to thoroughly portray what I’ve created about Yule elves. Nor could a library of printed word hold it because 1) some things can only be conveyed in oral tradition and 2) some things are so integrated into one’s life that they become too extensive to thoroughly share in words alone. But a lot of what I created plays out in my meditations, which feels important to say because, when we take time to really sink into our mythic stories meditatively, we can live them the rest of the day.)

More of how my myth turns the wheel:

Most of the year, I am in my tinker’s wagon, traveling between the worlds. I am a shut-in but my wheelchair has wings, and so do I. Astrally-traveling shamanic guide and fey artisan.

When weather gets cold, I retreat to Santa’s warm, cozy workshop. I still counsel and teach, from my snug Arctic home.

Claus is in my pantheon. So I pray to him any month. One way I turn the wheel through myth is, the past few years, I’ve made my winter plans by writing a letter to Santa in September about what I want for the dark months.

Every year, I have new elven adventures. And my other myths grow a bit. All my faerie tales are more extensive than this post. And are deeply personal. But I risk posting bits online for two reasons.

Telling my myth is a fun way for this shut-in to share her wanderings.

I am dedicating to helping my students find and/or further evolve personal myths, and live them fully to connect with Mama Earth and Divinity. I posted today in hopes I might do that a bit for my dear site visitors. For one thing, I believe that speaking my life supports starry-eyed seekers to trust their own unique mythic being.

EtsyBotmBnrYule