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Tag Archives: pagan theology

Book Review: Sekhmet

11 Tuesday Jan 2022

Posted by Haloquin in Magic, review

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Tags

Author, Bard, Bardic, beauty, book, Book Review, Devotional, Egyptian, Fire Magic, Goddess, gods, learning, Magic, Neopagan, New book, Pagan, pagan theology, paganism, review, Sekhmet, Solstice, Summer Solstice, sunshine, Thealogy, Theology

I’ve long known of Sekhmet, that lion-headed, powerful Goddess of healing and rage, but I have never really known much about her. Olivia Church’s book has definitely changed that.

A pile of books on top of a laptop, "Pagan Portals: Sekhmet" on top, with a small black cat statuette, and a red and gold background.
Yes, I know that’s Bast.

Heavy with the weight of history, Church’s slim book clearly arose from a deep academic understanding of the sources and research surrounding the vengeful Lady of Flame and Pestilence, but the depth of direct experience also shines through. This is not a dry, dusty, text. Although it is dense the language is graced with rich and poetic illumination, and a bright passion for both the Goddess and her culture.

I now know much more than I expected to find out about this ancient Egyptian power, and would certainly use this as a reference book, and for inspiration if I ever choose to work with this multifaceted deity.

Despite the concise nature of the Pagan Portals books, Church has succeeded in including a both breadth and depth of information, and has in no way diminished the Eye of Ra, Sekhmet herself.

The short version: beautifully written, research heavy, introduction to a multifaceted Goddess, crafted with obviously personal, passionate, devotion.

Pagan Portals – Sekhmet, by Olivia Church (Moon Books, 2022)

Quin's Books - Bookshop banner - gold writing on red background, trying to look fancy.
Find this and other magical books, including mine, at Quin’s Books. (affiliate link)

Faeosophy; Faeries and Other Spirits

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by Haloquin in Enchanted, Faery, Magic, Philosophy, Reflections

≈ 1 Comment

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Alfar, Faeosophy, Faery, Feyhearted path, Landwights, Magic, musings, pagan theology, paganism, Philosophy, process, Spirit work, spirits, Thealogy

Faeosophy – the philosophising of and about faeries and fae-ness.

Back in this post I shared some questions I’ve been pondering in my development of a Faerie philosophy. I began with asking who and what the Fae might be, and, based on the approach that I take to Fae-work, the Fae are spirits, our experience of them mean that they are a real part of our world (for those of us that share our world with spirits or whose world-view allows for spirits, at least) and they exist in a world populated by spirits generally. In which case;

How do the Fae relate to other spirits?

(There isn’t a straightforward answer to this, really, so what follows are some of my thoughts in exploring this!)

… “Spirits” is such a broad term, and under that label of potential spirits to work with I’m including;

  • Ancestors and beloved dead

    A dark skinned lady sat holding a honeysuckle flower, with skirts covering her legs. Clothed in greens and deep red.

    There are many kinds of spirits and none of them are clear-cut… it is more like finding families of related beings with similar energies and functions than defining them strictly.

  • Deities
  • Angels
  • Totems
  • Power Animals
  • Guides
  • Guardians
  • Genuis Locii/Spirits of a place/Landwights
  • and so on.

I also often include living beings on that list, mentally, as incarnate spirits. The Fae are generally not incarnate, not in this context anyway, so I’ll focus on discarnate beings for today!

When we start to explore these categories we find it gets even more complicated;

Ancestors; dead humans and other species, once incarnate, now not. You’d be hard pressed to find a tradition that doesn’t work with or honour the dead in some way.

Deities; a tricky one when it comes to definitions. Different traditions define deities rather differently, ranging from archetypes in our unconscious mind, through to independent beings with personalities and lives completely separate from ours. This is a whole branch of study in its own right, but for the purposes of this post I’ll broadly describe them as non-incarnate beings which hold more power than we do, normally linked to a particular kind of energy (eg. love, knowledge, painting, etc.) or a range of related energies. They generally have their own story/stories and manifest in various ways for different people.

Angels; cosmic messengers or intermediaries between ourselves and larger beings/powers. Normally within the Judeo-Christian traditions as I understand it, but not limited to them.

Guides; this describes a job rather than a type of spirit – i.e., a Guide is a spirit-being that has the role of guiding people in some way.

And so on…

The Fae seem to me to be most similar to Genius Locii or Landwights – spirits belonging to or expressing the Being/existence/essence of a particular place. They may be more or less approachable. Some of them act as guides. Some deities have Fae characteristics, such as Rhiannon, a magical woman of the otherworld who appears near a particular place (Gorsedd Narbeth). Faeries are not necessarily tied to a specific location, however, so perhaps some Fae are spirits of a particular place – those that are beings of particular lakes, trees, hills and so on – but others are not.

There are travelling Fae, that troop across wide areas, those that act as guides and those that live among us. Perhaps, though, they are simply connected to counties, countries, or families, rather than a single rock or tree.

The land of the Fae and the land of the dead

The land of the Fae and the land of the dead are often seen as the same place, and often described as reachable through water or mounds, into the earth itself.

There are also stories that conflate the Faery Realm with the realm of the Dead. The Nordic myths describe Frey as the Lord of the Alfar, and the Alfar as both Elves and Ancestors. In Irish myth Faeryland and the land of the Ancestors were both called “The Summerlands”. I take connection to mean that they are a similar energetic vibration to ancestor spirits, close enough to the material realm to overlap with our existence, hence their roles as manifestations of the non-human natural world. Perhaps the Fae are the ancestral spirits of the non-human realms, as viewed through our anthro-centric filters to allow us to relate to them?

For me this all ties in with our nature as somewhat-fey, or potentially so. We are part of nature, we are domesticated, but underneath that is the wild magic. If the Fae and our ancestors are connected, that points to be to their relation to us as part of nature.

Returning to the question at hand, however, the Fae and other spirits seem to me to be parts of a spectrum. Goddesses can be Faery Queens, Faeries can be ancestors or Genius Locii or both, and so on. Although some would, many deities would not be described as Fae, even if some would… and angels generally aren’t considered to be Fae. In some of the stories of the fall of angels, however, faeries were the angels that got left behind on earth when Heaven closed its gates and Hell became full, and those angels took up residence in the land and became Faeries. So Faeries are spirits that are intimately linked to the land and the natural world. Not all spirits that match that description are faeries, but that’s a pretty good place to start.

In short, my answer to this question is that they are a type of nature spirit, and that “spirit” covers such a wide range of beings that Faeries can fit into many categories. In terms of spirit working it will be linked very much to the land, to relating to and responding to natural currents and generally working outside of strict structures that are imposed over those currents. More often than not I define some being as Fae based on a feeling, but the pattern that has emerged for me is that that feeling often links in to the “natural” or “untamed” roots of those beings, so I try to track those connections and draw a map that makes some kind of sense!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on where Faeries sit in your understanding of spirits.

And next time I post it will be a little shorter than this!

Happy thoughts,

~ Halo x

Some Faery Philosophy

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by Haloquin in Faery, Philosophy, Reflections

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Faery, fairies, Honesty, Imperfection, inspirations, Journey, Magic, musings, Pagan, pagan theology, paganism, Philosophy

Pandora's Box by JW Waterhouse

In my heart of hearts, I’m a philosopher, which means that I like to have thought through logically the reasons behind my beliefs. (This is sometimes like opening Pandora’s box… so here’s a disclaimer; these are my beliefs and thoughts, so I don’t expect everyone to agree with me by any means, I’m not out to convince anyone! I do find it interesting to hear why people think and say what they do though, so let’s have a discussion!)

In my last post I talk about pondering Faery Theology (there has to be a better word for this… any ideas?) so, by way of preliminary thoughts, here is an extract from chapter 3 of my book “Pagan Portals; Your Faery Magic” wherein I ponder the nature of faeries (as I see them) and the value of working with them.

 

If we look at the stories of Faeries, all the myths and legends, we see a common theme; they are all very strongly connected to, or embodying, nature. They are not, however, merely the plants or trees or forces they embody, they are beings that are inherently magical, beyond limits. Faeries are natural magic and, as part of nature ourselves, the magic within us is fey.

Humans are lured into Faeryland by beauty. Beautiful music, beautiful visions, beautiful food. And this beauty, once we return to earth, we pine for. So Faeryland is that place within the world, and ourselves as part of nature, in which the sense of magic, wonder and beauty lies, the natural core of our being. The heart of the world we reach through connecting to our Faery Heart.

If our hearts, at their untamed core, are places of beauty and magic, then following the call to Faeryland will open our hearts again to the beauty of the world. If we learn to touch the fey parts of ourselves then we can move through our lives open to the beauty that surrounds us and so we can reconnect to the natural world, with the other beings on the Earth as our brothers and sisters and kin.

…

And, of course, we recall the other parts of the stories of the fae…the wilder parts…the dangerous parts… They are untamed and not human and so their ethics are a little less strict than ours tend to be. In our heart we are natural beings, just like them; we have learnt really wonderful human skills, such as compassion and language, but in our search for order we have tried to tame our essential Selves and instead we have locked them away. These parts of ourselves hurt, so each day we die a little inside.

Here we choose to walk down a path that will lead us back to the parts within us that hold who we truly are. We seek all our parts, those that are good at communication, at compassion, and those that are good at standing up for us and being free. We do not have to give up the gifts of humanity in order to find our Faery Hearts and heal our lives, we can free ourselves of those things that do not serve us, release those things that hold us back and fly, carrying both gifts of humanity and gifts of Faery. We can choose to be both human and wild. That is what it means to be fey.

Fey means free. Free of the locks we’ve used to keep ourselves acceptable and free to choose to move in compassion and beauty. Fey means to be free to be our real Selves, to live our lives without unhealthy compromises, to dance to Faery music so we are filled with love and joy and deep feelings of connection even in a business meeting or on a busy, grimy underground train.

Fey means so full of shiny, happy, beauty, that you cannot help but share it.

Faeries are the conscious manifestation of the wild magic of the natural world. At our untamed core we are also part of the world, so part of our heart belongs to the realm of Faery… in which case, those of us that find our hearts singing with that wild magic? We are Fey. And when we allow ourselves to express that magic in ourselves we feel happy and we can share that happiness with the world.

It is always important in the stories to be respectful and to cultivate a good relationship with our “Good Neighbours” with whom we share a kinship, and the stories are where we first learn how to approach this people. In the same way we must learn to respect the wild world around us, to take only what we need and not deplete the land and her resources.

Growing up I was taught that the trees are conscious and aware. I was taught that the plants have feelings which deserve to be respected. I was taught that non-human animals are people just as we are. I learnt that the world around me was alive and the spirits dwell within everything. I have to eat to survive, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to say thank you.

We are given masks to wear in our lives, but I have seen that we are much happier when we learn who we are under the masks and choose which masks to use and which to discard… and when to cast them off entirely and dance under the starlight with our friendly cousins.*

Book Cover YFM

 

*And it’s good to know which cousins bite, or don’t want to dance with you! You might swim in a river you know well, or cuddle your childhood canine-friend but you wouldn’t swim in a storm-tossed sea, or pick up a wild-wolf-cub with mamma wolf about to pounce, now would you? The Fae are the spirits of the wild, with all that entails.

 

Meet Halo

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Halo Quin is an author, a storyteller, and a practicing witch with a lifelong relationship with the spirit realm who aims to share magic through experience. Halo lives in wild West Wales, right by the roiling sea, and loves to sing, dance, and otherwise enchant through performance. She also runs the Crimson Coven Collective, and ultimately encourages self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-healing, and self-enchantment through everything she does... leading to:

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