Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Today is the Republican Roman festival of Lux Mundi. Saturday is the feast day of Santa Lucia. This is a time to celebrate light. Lux Mundi translates into "the light of the world". This day honored Libertas, the bringer of light. Libertas was the personification of freedom, metaphorical light rather than actual light, and she… Continue reading The Daily: 10 December 2025
It is Krampusnacht. Tonight, the long-tongued goat-man goes running through the streets, sometimes tagging along with the kindly old St Nicholas, sometimes striking out on his own, always seeking the naughty kids. He carries iron chains, a birch bough and a sack. Sometimes a good lashing is all it takes to straighten out the nastiness.… Continue reading The Daily: 5 December 2025
Thanksgiving is not a harvest feast. Puritans were not notably inclined toward feasting. Leadership especially wasn’t, and the accounts we have of their lives is heavily skewed toward the elite men who had the leisure to write things down. Whatever the average New England settler might have thought about celebrating the land’s bounty with merry… Continue reading The Daily: 26 November 2025
Didn't I say last week that there would be ice on my walkway by this week? Well, yep, that happened. We had a doozy of a storm from Saturday night right through to Tuesday morning. Windy and cold and dark with about 2" of precipitation altogether. Mostly icy rain until Sunday afternoon, then mostly snow… Continue reading The Daily: 19 November 2025
Remembering is an act of resistance. Gaslighting is ineffective against a firm memory. The lies unravel when someone is keeping a close record. Want to be a true subversive? Then get the facts straight and tell the story. Footnotes help, but be wary of the oft-quoted sources. You can see who they're working for... I'm… Continue reading The Daily: 12 November 2025
The Hunter's Moon rises full today at 4:17pm. The time of rising and setting varies by latitude. Those further north will see moonrise a little bit later, further south a bit earlier, but still somewhere around 4-5pm local time. However, the Moon will turn full at the same moment all around the globe, but at… Continue reading The Daily: 5 November 2025
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 2025
All Hallows: An Entanglement Today is All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and spooky debauchery that entails. Tomorrow is All Saints Day, All Hallows, a reincarnation of the ancient Irish festival called Samhain, which means “end of summer”. Samhain is one of the few clear remnants from at least… Continue reading The Daily: 31 October 2025
The word pagan is not unlike the word witch. Both were pejorative labels for outsiders. Both would likely earn a body substantial abuse. And both have been reclaimed in late modern times, though it would be more accurate to say that these words have been redefined, almost completely. Witch means nothing of what it once… Continue reading The Daily: 29 October 2025
The Harvest Moon west dark yesterday at 8:25am my time. Today, begins the 13th and final moon in my annual round, the Hunter's Moon. Many folks seem to think this moon is named for the hunting season. This is neither temporally nor mythically correct. It is not yet hunting season, if by hunt you mean… Continue reading The Daily: 22 October 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 