I just got the word that I’ll be making a presentation at the Pagan Alliance’s 1st Annual Conference on Earth-Based, Nature-Centered, Polytheistic & Indigenous Faiths, 2011 Theme: Gender & Earth-Based Spiritualities. The conference will be on Saturday, September 24 in San Francisco (the page linked to above has all the conference details, but the time [...]
birth
A Ritual for Childbirth and Naming
By Sarah Spells for Childbirth and Naming Before my second son was born, I did these spells. At the time, I wanted my husband and son to feel that they were important parts of this journey that I was more obviously taking. When I started the ritual, I repeated the blessing, over and over, and [...]
A Birth Altar
Our son was conceived very deliberately in a ritual designed to bring forth the baby that visited my partner and myself in a series of dreams. So when the time came for birth preparation, of course we wanted to have him born that way-intentionally and in a sacred context. One of the ways we devised [...]
Review: Bless This Child
“Here, under my heart you’ll keep till it’s time for us to meet…” –Erica Mann Jong (33) Edward Searl is a Unitarian minister and the editor of Bless This Child: A Treasury of Poems, Quotations and Readings to Celebrate Birth. He writes that the collection, “gives voice to the many hopes and wishes that accompany [...]
How to make birth art
Note: Were you inspired by Amy Swagman’s birth mandalas yesterday? Read this short essay in which she describes how to start making birth art of your own. The state of mind you’re in when you create artwork is the same state of mind you are in when you labor and birth. It is a fluid, [...]
Birth mandalas
Pagan Families reader Sarah wrote to recommend Amy Swagman’s Birth Art Mandalas. I was stunned by them and immediately wrote Amy to ask if I could share them here. She said yes! Making birth art can be a beautiful spiritual practice. My partner and I made birth art when we took a Birthing From Within [...]
What’s in a Name?
by Kira Nuit Imagine one of your kid’s friends at the door asking “can Floribunda come out to play?” Or, when young Floribunda gets into trouble, imagine how you might feel barking out, “Floribunda Oregano Sunbeam!” I’ve heard some names on the playground that I would not want to holler out my back door at [...]
On Being a Holy Mother
‘Holy Mother, In whom we live, move and have our being, From you all things emerge and unto you all things return…’ This is the beginning of a prayer I learned from T Thorn Coyle just before becoming pregnant with my first child. It is only a slight twist on a biblical verse Acts [...]
Walking the spiral
Scenes from the labyrinth The kids all banged on their drums and shook their rattles, following me on the snaking path into the center of the labyrinth and back out again. It was a noisy, sloppy, joyful, sunny couple of minutes. Rewind one year to find the scene of me leading a group of adults [...]