Buzz Coil: May '10

A look at some posts of interest from our blogroll and sometimes beyond:

American Witch: In her May 5 post, "The Goddess Conference, the Middle School Concerts, and the Coming Cosmic Convergence," Annie Finch shares how it felt to read her poetry at the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology’s Green Goddess Conference, and of how Christian content in a public school concert reminded here "searingly how much the world needs a good pagan repertoire" for choral singing that includes pagan poems set to music.

Association for the Study of Women & Mythology: ASWM’s May 3 post, "Green Goddess Conference - A Life-weaving Web" contains the note Annie Finch sent to ASWM after the late April conference.

Amused Grace: For the first time, Thalia Took tells us in her May 17 post, she got Medusa when drawing the "Goddess of the Week" from her deck-in-progress. Since this happened within a week of my birthday, I’m taking it personally :-D In her description, she got me spot on, and her gorgongeous art even got my snakey red hair right! And she’s also right about me not being mortal—not even half! But seriously now folks, she gives an excellent analysis of the Medusa myths. And on April 30, for Beltane, she posted "A Story," a lovely tale with other thematic material.

Glaux’s Nest: Inspired by Thalia Took’s post, blogger Glaux devotes her May 18 post to "Athena and Medusa." Glaux restates common Medusa mythology and then questions why it is so entwined with Athena’s and goes in deeper and deeper. . . and for an extra treat, there’s a discussion between Took and Glaux in the comments section.

Goddess in a Teapot: In her May 9 Mothers’ Day post, "Enheduanna:Priestess, Author, Inspiritation," Carolyn Lee Boyd pays tribute to Princess Enheduanna who, Boyd notes, is probably best known for her hymn to Goddess Inanna written about 4300 years ago. Boyd writes that the story that comes down to us of Enheduanna being the first person to sign her literary work inspires her to "realize the importance of taking credit for my work and encouraging other women to do the same." She continues:

Putting your name on your work means not only by claiming authorship, but also proclaiming its existence and importance to the world. So often we second-guess whether anyone will want to read or see or hear what we create and it may never see the light of day. If it truly expresses you, it is worthy and deserves your time and effort to be experienced by others. From now on, when I write something I love, I will make sure that it finds a home in some publication or this blog.

Full Circle: Blogger Sia, who is personally working on bird and wildlife rescue in the Gulf of Mexico, has posted several times this month about wildlife rescue necessitated by the BP oil spill, beginning with May 8's "Updates: Wild Life Rescue at the Gulf Oil Spill." But do go to the blog home page so you can read the rest of her posts on this subject.

Pagan Godspell: In her May 21 post, "Re-membering: Story and Bone" Ruby Sara gets down to blogging about the BP oil spill in the Gulf "after being silent for weeks." She asks:

What have we done? What have we done? Where will it stop? I admit – the world of late has been sacking my reserves, pulling at my loose threads, and weighing my spiritual feet. Where’s the meaning? Why bother with all this religion and all this poetry? For a while, pagani, I admit…I forgot why, and that’s a hard time, and I’m all exhausted from empty. . .

and then she goes to the lake and re-members.

Know Thyself: Musings...Thorn Coyle’s May 13 post, "A Prayer for My Beloved," is related to the Gulf oil spill and other ecological disasters.

Daily Kos: In a May 16 post, "Brothers and Sisters, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas," blogger brothers and sisters focuses on the Goddess Tara, including a Green Tara mantra (youtube music video) and other Tara art along with a prayer asking for healing "on Our Mother, the Earth." It continues:
...Heal the wounds we have inflicted On our Mother, the Earth
Heal her bleeding Gulf of Mexico
Heal her ailing rainforests
Restore her glaciers and atmosphere
Feed her starving creatures
Relieve her of all depredation
Relieve our suffering
Awaken loving kindness in our hearts
Loving kindness in our actions....

The Wild Hunt: Jason Pitzl-Waters announces a 2-week comment period on a "voluntary opt-in statement of sexual ethics" in his May 18 post, "An Ethics Statement: Public Comment Period."

Witch, Please! In her May 11 post, "The Importance of Solitude," blogger Kate explains why she disagrees strongly with the concept that being a Witch requires initiation even though she herself has been initiated "several times."

Z Budapest Blog: Z Budapest is planning to write her autobiography but isn’t sure what to include. In her May 18 post, "Send me question...a writer’s lament," Z says it would help her if you would ask her questions about what you would like to read about her life.

Hecate: Blogger Hecate, who often publishes poems by others, sneaks in an intriguing poem of her own in her May 22 post, "I Am The Witch Of This Watershed." Her May 12 post, "She’s a Witch! Burn Her" is based on an article tying the witch trials of a few centuries ago to bad weather in Europe. Hecate wonders if we can expect similar scapegoating of Pagans and Witches, especially if they are women, in the bad weather expected in the future. Along the way, she has this to say about the squabbling over the number of people killed as witches in the Inquisition:

That someone may have made a calculation error in the exact number of women killed and tortured as witches hardly seems to me to undo the importance of the fact that it was most often women being burned as witches, and that those burned were often women who were (take your pick) single, vulnerable, uppity, had something worth stealing, etc.

Mary Magdalene Within: Joan Norton’s May 5 post, "The Next Piece of Story," tells about Mary Magdalene and her family arriving "in their new land on May 24," according to legend, in a boat without oars or rudder.

Walking on Fire: In her May 9 post, "Sisters of the Wind," Blogger Myfanwy has a vision of a wormhole that clears her personal path "within the Reality of the Divine Feminine."

A Weblog for Our Mother God: The latest post on this anonymously-written, undated blog is "Our Mother God Returning to China," which tells about this year’s Mazu (Ma-Tsu) festival in Taiwan, and the increased interest in the Chinese heritage of Goddess worship, not only by the Chinese people but also by the government of the People’s Republic of China.

Knitting Sex and God In her May 2 post, blogger Anna writes of her concerns about "New Tory regime a risk to rights of women and gay people." She also writes about the New Frontiers church in the UK that she was raised in.

Gorgon Resurfaces: In a May 5 post, "Moving Along Further," LaughingMedusa announces she is moving her blog. In her new blog home, Medusa Musing, where she blogs as gorgon50, her May 10 post, "Internet Outage" is about being disconnected from the Internet for a while, which she feels has it advantages. OTOH, she writes:

Still, having read Judith Laura's latest e-book about Goddess and what she likes to call the Flow of the Goddess, I am looking at this kind of information media in a whole new light. Computers are a particularly Goddessy form of communication with its intricate matrices and weavings

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