Author: Yvonne Aburrow
Colours
Changing Paths Challenge day 26: colours
For today’s challenge, I’ve pulled up my article about the colours of Paganism from my blog, Dowsing for Divinity.
Green is the colour everyone immediately associates with Paganism. It is the colour of nature, of trees, and all growing things. It is associated with the Green Man, a symbol of our connection to Nature, and a manifestation of the life-force. Many Pagans also like the colour purple for its spiritual connotations (it is associated with the crown chakra).
Continue readingBooks
Changing Paths challenge day 25: books 📚
I love reading books. I love writing books. I love talking about books. I love having a to-be-read pile. I love rereading books that I have enjoyed.
A book is a little world and its characters are mirrors you can hold up, and try identifying with them to make sense of who you are.
Continue readingMusic
Changing Paths challenge day 24: Music
I love music, especially any piece where the artist really put their soul into it. This is often the case with the music of oppressed, displaced, and marginalized peoples.
I have very diverse tastes in music but some of my favourite genres are Cajun, klezmer, zydeco, blues, baroque, medieval and renaissance music, and protest songs.
I have recently been listening to Palestinian music and it is beautiful. Check out this list of Palestinian artists by Christina Hazboun from 2021.
Continue readingFestivals
Changing Paths challenge day 23: Festivals
I love Pagan festivals and I am very glad that there’s one every six weeks or so, as it takes the pressure off of Yule. If you only celebrate Yule and Easter (and Thanksgiving in North America), there’s so much pressure to get it right and have a good time. But with Pagan festivals, if Yule doesn’t go so well or isn’t your thing, there’s another festival coming soon.
🎄❄️🐣🌸☀️🌾🍂🎃
Continue readingFeasts
Changing Paths challenge day 22: feast
I love to have a feast (shared food / Pagan potluck) in sacred space, so that we are feasting with the gods. However it’s got a bit impractical with the numbers of people involved and so we tend to have our feast after circle these days.
Continue readingSolstice
Changing Paths challenge day 21: solstice
The sun pauses on her journey
Around the horizon
Waiting for you to stop
To look around and see
The beauty of the world
The flowers and the hills and the trees
The sunsets and the butterflies
The mountains and the oceans
The laughter of children
Refaat’s kites sailing on the breeze
The kind old sun is waiting
For war and slaughter to cease
For limbs, so dear-achieved
Not to be shattered by bombs
But to dance in her kindly rays.
She waits for humanity to awaken
To our full humanity
Where we open our hearts to each other
The love shining from our eyes
For all beings, all of Nature.
Cycles
Changing Paths challenge day 20: cycles.
All four classical elements have cycles.
What goes around comes around.
Everything is always changing, nothing is ever lost.
Continue readingTime
Changing Paths challenge 19: Time 🕰️ ⏰
Humans haven’t always thought of time as linear. A cyclical view of time seems to me to be more in tune with Nature.
Many cultures see time as cyclical, or as a set of interlocking cycles: the cycle of the sun, the moon, the stars, the rotation of the Earth, the seasons, geological cycles, and so on. Many Pagans see time as cyclical, and we talk about the Wheel of the Year. The phases of the moon have always been important, as shown by the ancient moon calendar carved into a piece of horn or antler.
Continue readingOn being a Queer Muslim
Amazing conversation on being a Queer Muslim, leaving and returning to your religion with a fresh perspective, navigating different spaces that don’t support every aspect of who you are, and dealing with religious trauma.
Changing Paths 