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Autumnal Equinox

This Monday, September 23rd, is the Autumnal Equinox, one of two days a year where day and night are of equal length. Throughout history and across the earth, peoples have marked the equinoxes with festivals. Ancient peoples built structures that align with the sun’s movement, interacting with the light to illuminate inner chambers or create […]

Full Moon Ritual

It is Friday the 13th and the Harvest Full Moon. Tonight watch the full moon rise, or go out and greet the moon, the symbol of your intuition, while it is at its zenith. While you are outside, you can do a Full Moon Releasing Ritual. You will need: candle matches or lighter paper pen […]

The Pied Piper of Hamelin on Ratcatcher’s Day

I didn’t think Ratcatcher’s Day would be the thing that would prompt me to write another blog post for Hag Stone Journal. But, Der Rattenfänger von Hameln brings together German folklore, Grimm fairytales, missing children, and one of the three animals that students are allowed to bring to Hogwarts their first year. So, of course it […]

The Green Man

The Green Man, an architectural detail carved into English churches, is a mystery and lesson in modern myth making. Before being named “Green Man” by Lady Raglan in her 1939 article for The Folklore Journal, “The Green Man in Church Architecture”, these leafy faces were known as “foliate heads”, and the reason for their appearances in […]

Psysanky eggs

The award for most magically decorated eggs has to go to the Ukrainians and their pysanky eggs. Pysanky eggs are decorated by applying melted beeswax to a hollow eggshell. The layering of intricately applied melted wax and dying can take hours per egg. Before Christianity came to the Slavic peoples, Ukrainians decorated their eggs for the sun god Dazhboh. […]

Venus-Aphrodite

The month of April was dedicated to the goddess Venus in Ancient Rome, and their word for April, Aprilis, came from the verb aperire, “to open”. The Fasti Praenestini, the Roman calendar, described Aprilis as the time when “fruits and flowers and animals and seas and lands do open”. When I think of the goddess […]