Tag: blogging

The Wild Hunt Gets Some Respect

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

It is nice to see that Jason Pitzl-Waters’ The Wild Hunt blog has gotten a major shout-out at Get Religion, the site for people who wonder why the mainstream media handles religion so ignorantly.

I predict that as Pagan traditions become more visible, our activities will be covered by the usual motley crew who went to journalism school instead of, y’know, actually learning anything about anything—history, science, economics, politics, religion, you name it.

Well, good for Mollie Ziegler Hemmingway, one religion writer who knows the difference between a Mormon and  an evangelical Christian.

See, blogging is easy. All you have to do is put out good content on an almost-daily basis while writing polite and informed comments at the sites that you hope will notice yours. Nothing to it.

Witches Keeping Silent

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

One coven that I used to circle with when visiting their city was big on the old Magicians’ Pyramid: To Know, To Will, To Dare, To Keep Silent.

Sarah Lawless, the “Witch of Forest Grove,” thinks that there should be more silence, writing in a post called “Oversharing Witches“:

I was taught not to share. Specifically, I was taught not to share who my familiar spirits are, to not share the exact names of my deities, not to share what my unique abilities are, not to share recent spells I’ve performed, and to only talk about my tradition when asked (especially by elders) and never say more than the absolute least I possibly can. You’re probably laughing at me because I write a witchcraft blog that’s all about sharing knowledge, practices, and experiences… but hold that laughter. Have you ever seen me state exactly what all of my animal and plant familiars are? Have you ever seen me list the names of all the ancestors I work with? Have you ever seen me state exactly which traditions I trained in? You may have even noticed that I tend to use nicknames and epithets for the deities I work with rather than their actual names. I tend to skirt around a lot of things about myself. This blog is more of a giant Sarah iceberg and you’re only ever seeing the tip.

I see her point, although what I see in too many Craft blogs is just recycling of other people’s stuff instead of sharing secrets!

Why I Have Not Been Blogging

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

Everything in my normal life stopped last Friday, and it is just starting to get back to normal. A 560-acre forest fire is not like all the tornadoes down South—for one thing, you can fight a forest fire to some extent—but it is a big disruption when it is close to your house—within half a mile, in our case.

After our evacuation order was canceled, and M. and I were back home, we started feeling the desire to clean everything. Not that it was smoked up, the house just felt grubby and messy after a long winter.

When I made my quick trip home on Saturday morning, the power was off, the house cool and dark,  shaded from the early morning sun by the ridge to the east. The previous morning’s dirty dishes were still on the counter, stuff was tossed around from our quick evacuation packing.

And so I though, “As soon as I get back here permanently, assuming that I do, it’s time to start paying attention to the house, the garden, and the physical plane in general.”

Of course, when we came home, it was snowing, but we’ll take all the moisture that we can get.

I do have some blog posts stored in my head and will be getting to them over the next three days. Then it’s festival time.

Gallimaufry with Book Porn

On By Chas S. Clifton

• “Interview, Chaos, Spiritual Machines, Circles, Readings, and Book Porn” at Plutonica.

• A Heathen-metal concert review at The Movement of Sound. (That is one genre you won’t hear on A Darker Shade of Pagan.)

• Anticipating a movie based on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods at The Witching Hour.

• Bo at The Cantos of Mvtabilitie lists favorite blogs, which must pass tests of both stylishness and spirituality.

Blogging: Why Build Somone Else’s Brand?

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

There is some political name-calling in his post, but Stacy McCain does make one valid point about blogging.

If you are going to work for free, why build someone else’s reputation rather than your own?

I know two people who were writing for The Huffington Post—the site that owner Arianna Huffington has now sold for millions of dollars. As the man said, they got played, she got paid.

Now some of them are suing. But as they have no contracts promising payment, what are their chances?

Another colleague at the university started blogging at Daily Kos. So big deal, you have a “diary” buried deep in the site. You are building Markos Moulitsas’ reputation, not your own. Your “diary” exists only at his whim—regardless of what the site says about “community.”

Yes, I did have a blog at BeliefNet at one time—it was the feed from this one—but they purged it for, apparently, religious incorrectness. I would not go back, nor to the rival religion portal, Patheos.

If you are a blogger—in love with the sound of your own typing—independence is the main fringe benefit.

UPDATE: Law-blogger Eugene Volokh says (tongue in cheek) that we are all exploiting commenters.

UPDATE 2: Is the Huffington business model really piracy?

Gallimaufry, But It’s a Secret

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

• Is your religion playing secrecy games? Anne Hill asks, “Does Your Religion Pass the Briefcase Test?” This concept was explored in the magical religion of Candomblé in Paul Christopher Johnson’s Secrets, Gossip, and Gods. Read Johnson’s book and see how much seems familiar.

• Sannion rants about bad ritual:

As annoying as all of this was, the thing that I found utterly intolerable was the high priestess’ choice in ritual tools. Her default images of The Lord and Lady were a pair of black velvet paintings of a shirtless Fabio-faced Indian Brave and his equally improbable and extremely busty Indian Princess paramour. Next to these was the ubiquitous cheap wolf statue and more crystals and feathers than you could shake an athame at.

• If you missed my earlier brief reference to it, read Peg Aloi’s “The History of Pagans in the Media: A Cautionary Tale.”

Pagans who want media attention are nothing new. Look at Aleister Crowley; he was a public sensation and scandalous topic of conversation throughout society in the days before Facebook, before television, before radio. His desire for fame and fortune certainly marred what might have been a respectable career as a talented poet and brilliant occultist and author. Well, maybe also the drug addiction, unpaid debts and sexual enslavement of women held him back just a teeny bit.

Riddle Me This

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

I have two blogs, this one and Southern Rockies Nature Blog, and I switch between them as the mood and topic strike me.

The Truth Laid Bear “ecosystem” ranking of the blogosphere is long dead, alas.

So now Technorati seems to be the winner in blog-ranking systems.

This blog, Letter from Hardscrabble Creek, has two to three times more daily visitors than does my  Southern Rockies Nature Blog.Yet Southern Rockies has a Technorati “authority” rating, as of today, of 434, whereas Hardscrabble Creek comes in at merely 125.

Is it just that the Technorati system does not handle religion well as a topic? They list 6,758 blogs under that heading. Number one is a Roman Catholic blog, What Does the Prayer Really Say? Is that really the most popular religion blog out there?

Not surprisingly, The Wild Hunt comes in tops on a “Paganism” search (authority 485), followed by Aquila ka Hecate.

Erudite commentary welcome.

Oh, Let’s Just Talk about the Weather

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

I think my brain has slowed down this week. At one point the temperature dipped to -20° F. (about -30° C), and I was completely preoccupied with trying to keep heat and water in both my house and the guest cabin.

There was one bad moment about ten o’clock at night a week ago when, due to a series of unfortunate events, a pipe did start leaking dramatically, spraying water into my basement.

I had to wade through the spray to shut off three valves, more or less by feel, and all I could think was, “I’m in a submarine movie.”

Life imitates art, as usual. Just as “myth” (the explanation) follows “ritual” (what you do).

And it’s snowing a lot. Earlier in the winter, this part of the Colorado foothills was short of snow. New York City had more snow than we did.

But we are catching up. I think we got November’s snow on Saturday night (a foot) and more is falling now. And it is normal for it to keep falling through April, when those New Yorkers will be looking at spring flowers.

The problem is that at some point (probably around 0° F.), I stop wanting to just hole up and work at my desk, instead starting to fret about what is going to break or freeze next. No fun.

Or I go to the hardware store looking for a machine to help me deal with it all.

Around the Pagan Blogosphere

On By Chas S. Clifton5 Comments

• Ways of leaving offerings for land wights, at Golden Trail.

• Hermes versus the Internal Revenue Service (and a great poem) at The Alchemist’s Garden.

• “Animist Human Diplomats”  at Adventures in Animism. Are you asking more than you are giving?

• Still on the theme of place: Dealing with a psychically hostile place of the dead, from Three Shouts on a Hilltop.

‘My Argot is Sausage’

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

Somebody needs to explain to me the software that writes spam blog comments. (Fortunately, WordPress and Akismet stop 98 percent of them.)

Some of these comments have a wonderfully surreal character:

hi everyone, my argot is sausage and i virtuous need to say that this is an superior blog flier and i truly pioneer it stabilizing, would it be alright if i submitted posts to this blog virtually topics i found fascinating?

I’ll have the word salad with argot sausage and vinaigrette, please.