If you’ve read much of my writing, either online or in books (especially DIY Totemism), you’ll know that I have a tendency to advocate working with totems other than the Big, Impressive, North American Birds and Mammals (BINABM) that so often show up in totem animal dictionaries. I’ve worked with extinct totems, microscopic ones, and [...]
Several years ago I happened across a program on cable about non-violent horse “breaking.” I don’t recall the trainer’s name, but I still recall the method: The horse was in an arena with a high wall, no visuals to the outside; the trainer stood in the center with a long rope. The trainer kept tossing [...]
Over on my LiveJournal, I have a significant number of furries on my friend list; I’m not a furry myself, but I enjoy the artwork folks post, and we tend to have other things in common as well. (Lots of pagan furs, for one thing!) Something that got posted a few weeks back was some [...]
Ancestral Airs
Verda Smedley
Dim Light Books; 1st edition (2008)
ISBN: 978-1934703304
700 pages
Reviewer: Lupa
As I was reading this book, I was trying to figure out where to fit it into the categories on my blog. On the one hand, it’s purportedly a reconstruction of a culture 6,000 years old; this includes extensive research into botany, mythology, history and [...]
I had a nightmare last night — about bugs. Scorpions, spiders, biting flies, centipedes, and other creepy-crawlies that could potentially do damage to the soft flesh wrapping my endoskeleton. (Why couldn’t it have been butterflies? Or snails?)
Back when I was a kid, I spent countless days when the weather was warm overturning rocks to catch [...]
Animal magic always has been and probably always will be my favorite form of esoteric study and practice. I’ve been fascinated by critters since I was barely old enough to toddle around on my own; I’ve had many pets, and I was always the kid out in the woods catching garter snakes.
So it was no [...]