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Listening with Empathy I have been trying hard to listen, with compassion and understanding, to my friends who are resistant to getting vaccinated. My friends are not right-wing conspiracy theorists or Trumpists—they are coming from the wellness community. They are herbalists, anti-capitalists, homesteaders, spiritual people suspicious of mainstream ideology in general and the pharmaceutical-industrial […] Winter Solstice: The Light Begins to Return It’s also the holiday season—a time to enjoy friends, family, and feasting. And yet this year it’s also the time of intense political stress. The Democrats are finally holding the occupant of the White House accountable, more and more corruption is coming to light, and the Republicans are almost […] Originally published in December 1999 in Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising It’s been two weeks now since the morning when I awoke before dawn to join the blockade that shut down the opening meeting of the WTO. Since getting out of jail, I’ve been reading the media coverage and […] 
What is Magic, and When is Political Magic Called For? I’ve always liked Dion Fortune’s definition of magic as “the art of changing consciousness at will.” The ‘art’ part of that is using sensory imagery and symbols that evoke emotion. The ‘will’ is directed energy and intention. Together they shift consciousness—and while that […] 
Beltane Approaches May Eve, the holiday that celebrates the burgeoning fertility of spring! In ancient times, it was the joyful festival that reveled in wild sensuality. The Maypole, that upthrusting rod, was crowned with a ring of flowers that slid down as the ribbons twined in the dance. But how do we […] For the Israeli snipers, who, behind concrete barricades, shot into an unarmed Palestinian demonstration in Gaza, killing fifteen people and wounding nearly a thousand on the eve of Pesach. It is said that the God of the enslaved Hebrews visited ten plagues upon their Egyptian overlords in order to compel Pharaoh to set the Hebrews […] 
Ritual is a Basic Human Response to a World of Uncertainty and Intensity When we do a ritual around something, it’s a way of saying ‘this is really important’. It’s a process that helps us integrate deep emotional experiences, such as loss. If someone dies, we feel a need to mark their passage, […] 
Winter Solstice— The longest night and shortest day of the year, when the powers of light and warmth seem weakest, and we are immersed in the dark. But in the ancient Goddess traditions, darkness was not something fearful. White, the color of bone, of snow, was the color of death. Black, the color […] |
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