Hearthside

  One thing I have noticed with Heathens, and Pagans more generally, is that they do things as a labour of love. (I mean… coughs …. Look at this blog. Don’t worry, I get the irony. Even though this blog is often just as much for me as my readers I could definitely monetize it if I wanted the headache.I don’t wish to stick to a schedule for posting for Patreon support though, and I don’t like the added paperwork at tax time.) I am thinking more of physical goods and events though, in this case. One of the members of my Kindred was asking how much they could sell an item for that they were making and we were happy to help them set a fair price, which allowed for people trying to negotiate them down as well. It was much higher than what they thought they could get for that work, despite their skill and quality techniques and materials.  I am thinking on an even larger scale though, like Pagan events. I am surprised what events are free or by donation, that have a huge overhead co...

I have been on a bit of a hiatus because of the intensity of the course I have been taking. It was getting progressively more intense the past few months, but the last two weeks, my residency, was so intense I was barely sleeping and not eating very well. I was a pile of exhaustion after my final exams and final presentation. The residency really opened my eyes to ways we tell time. When we talk about History in the Montessori classroom it is steeped in Timelines and Mythology from various traditions. We start with the first Great Story. This is the story of the Big Bang and the creation of the Universe, right up until the point just before the first life appears on Earth. This was the time before time. The second Great Story is the story of Life, from the first single cell organism, right up until just before humans appear. This is still the time before time. Because humans created the construct of time. A day is the time it takes Earth to rotate on its axis and a year is the time it ...

These posts are sometimes the hardest to keep up with, since it is a long-term project that may or may not yield anything interesting. In addition, I have found this year particularly difficult, at first due to personal time constraints, but also because this year has been surprising me! Rune Rasmussen talks of a 19 year cycle which he associates each year with a rune in the Swedish rune poem. What I am doing each year is looking at the rune poems, plus historical data, to see if I can predict trends for the year. Think of it as a Heathen Farmer’s Almanac or something.  I had initial thoughts based on the rune Sol as to what that might mean for 2024, and went to historical data to see if I might be correct. However, the data wasn’t showing me a particular trend. It seemed that both warm weather and rain were likely for a Sol year, but sometimes these weather patterns would go to the extreme, causing flooding or drought. The Dust Bowl started in 1930, which was a Sol year. This year...