Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
A Moon Intervention Long an irksome pull at the Math Lady lodged in my left brain, I decided I’d had enough with moon dis-logic. It is time for an intervention. Moon 101 for writers of all shades. Here is the imagery that pushed Math Lady over the edge: Facing south in the evening, she “looked… Continue reading The Daily: 4 November 2023
It is the first Friday and the third day of the eleventh calendar month, named for the ninth. It is two days before the last quarter of the last moon cycle in my wheel of the year, the Hunter's Moon. The growing season has ended here in Vermont with the hard finality of snow and… Continue reading The Daily: 3 November 2023
The Day of the Dead In Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom, he says that a “man” does not fear death. “Fear of death is our animal nature,” he claims. I don’t know that any part of that is accurate. To be sure, we have a very unhealthy relationship to death. We tell ourselves stories of our… Continue reading The Daily: 2 November 2023
All Hallows: An Entanglement It is All Saints Day, All Hallows, the ancient new year festival called Samhaine, which is usually translated as “end of summer”. Last night was the All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, a new year's eve in former days with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and debauchery that entails. This is… Continue reading The Daily: 1 November 2023
Today is All Hallows' Eve, Hallowe'en, the first night in the ancient new year's festival that Celtic language speaking people called Samhaine. We hardly remember that it was once a sacred festival, celebrating endings and beginnings, nor that it was "converted" by the Catholic Church into a day for honoring the dead. It's possible that… Continue reading The Daily: 31 October 2023
The Hunter's Moon is full on Saturday at 4:24pm. This is the 13th and last lunation of the luna-solar year. It can be full from October 28th to November 14th, so you can see that the months have shifted relative to the solar-based 12-month calendar. For most of the year, moons have been falling right… Continue reading The Daily: 25 October 2023
I will be making a few changes to this website again. Some are actual new things. Probably most will be resurrections of older things. Today, I'm bringing back the Wednesday Word. This is no longer a Twitter phenomenon because Twitter itself is not much of a phenomenon now. In fact, before the Musk Ox bought… Continue reading The Daily: 18 October 2023
Friday the 13th Today is judged unlucky by many. It is the weekday named for the goddess, Frigg, mother and matron of the Norse. She is wife to Odin, the wanderer and all-father in the Nordic pantheon. She is mother to Baldur, the golden summer lord who dies from a dart of mistletoe wielded by… Continue reading The Daily: 13 October 2023
St Francis of the Birdbath 4 October is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi. You might know him as the irreverent but apt moniker, St Francis of the Birdbath, because that is where many of us encounter him. Bare-headed with the monk's tonsure, dressed in rough robes and coarse rope belting, he stands… Continue reading The Daily: 4 October 2023
The ancient world of the Mediterranean and Near East has a great number of interesting mythological beings. Some are related to old gods and tutelary spirits. Some are fairly accurate illustrations of the anxieties of humankind — or maybe mankind, since women didn't have much of a voice. Some are just ludicrous. One of my… Continue reading The Daily: 29 September 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 