Plough Monday, an ancient rustic holiday that became attached to the Christmas holiday tradition, is on the first Monday following Epiphany (January 6). It is the traditional beginning of the agricultural year.
The Daily: 8 January 2026
Category: Philosophy & Religion
The Daily: 6 January 2026
It is Epiphany, 6 January, the close of the Christmas season and the beginning of mundane time, a shift to Imbolg and the hope of spring — after we, hopefully, survive the worst of the winter weather. This is the date the Catholic Church assigned to the arrival of the Magi and also, later, the… Continue reading The Daily: 6 January 2026
The Daily: 16 December 2025
Las Posadas begins today. In this Latin American Christmas novena, the community acts out the Holy Family's search for a place to sleep upon coming to Bethlehem for the Roman tax census. Starting nine days before Christmas Eve, a Mary and Joseph, with an entourage of angels and shepherds and others, walk door-to-door begging for… Continue reading The Daily: 16 December 2025
The Daily: 26 November 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
The Daily: 2 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
The Daily: 31 October 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 Daily: 29 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 Daily: 28 October 2025
Odds are few of you are as involved in the pagan community as I am. Though this is the fastest growing spiritual path, both in the world and in my own country, it is still a very small community. Moreover, even within this small community, I am in the minority in thinking that it might… Continue reading The Daily: 28 October 2025
The Daily: 23 October 2025
It is the time of year when I am increasingly compelled to define my path. What does a witch do? What does a witch believe? What does it mean to be a witch? I find that the definition often leads to more words in need of definition, bound up as they are with the world… Continue reading The Daily: 23 October 2025
The Daily: 15 October 2025
Ever since reading Becoming Native to This Place by Wes Jackson back in the late 1990s, I have sought to define what that means for me. Wes defines it mostly in terms of food production, but there are also elements of spirituality and philosophy even as he writes about farming. Food is certainly the central… Continue reading The Daily: 15 October 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 