Announcement: Gaol Naofa Relaunches and Celebrates Five Years

"While it may seem we’ve been quiet for a while, much has been happening behind the scenes as we’ve celebrated five years as an organisation. Our council has been very busy, creating new content for this site, as well as for private use by the members of Gaol Naofa. All of the site documents have been updated and restructured. While much of this site will still be familiar to our long-term readers, there is a lot of new material here.

Notably, we have substantially revised and expanded The Gaol Naofa FAQ into an 89 page pdf document that addresses many of the common questions about Gaelic Polytheism and, specifically, our Gaelic Polytheist Lifeway (Ár nDóigh Bheatha Ildiach is Gaelach / Ar Dòigh-Beatha Ioma-Dhiadhach Ghàidhealach) as practiced by the core members of Gaol Naofa.

New articles include “Rowan and Red Thread: Magic and Witchcraft in Gaelic Cultures” (pdf) — an in-depth look at practices and terminology in both historical and contemporary Gaelic cultures, as well as an upcoming piece on the Triple Flame of Brigid."

Please see the entire announcement here: http://www.gaolnaofa.com/

Publication Alert: "Cornerstones of Wisdom"

Hey everyone! My essay ‘Cornerstones of Wisdom: Poetry, Permanence and Wildness in Gaelic Polytheism’ (p50-53) was published in the latest issue of Written River. Hope you guys will take a look :) Right now it's only available in online viewing, but soon there will be print copies to order, if you'd rather have a hard copy.

Lá Lúnasa is fast approaching

And so my thoughts are turning towards the harvest season ... corn is growing tall in the fields of our local farmers and we've already harvested about a cup of blackberries from my grandfather's brambles but sadly the kiddies ate them before I could get a taste. Our tomato plants are finally beginning to yield fruit and though the persimmon tree (see the photo in last post) won't be ready to harvest until early autumn, fruit is steadily growing on its branches. And not to mention all the flowers in the garden, particularly the zinnias. As soon as the heat allows, I'm going to check our wild blackberries, cherries and bilberries to see how their progress is coming along. This was our first year trying strawberries but the deer are eating most (though they are turning out rather weensy anyways)...

Aside from how the garden is progressing and all the rain we've been blessed with, I've been spending lots of time with family (Fourth of July was great, despite some drama from a certain family member who looks for every opportunity to blow things out of proportion), working and writing. One book is in second draft stage with the betas and another is the entering planning/research stage. I also submitted a 12-photo digital portfolio to Written River: A Journal of Ecopoetics and I'm pondering on sending in a few poems. So overall, things are oddly quiet and busy all at the same time.

And thus I leave you with a photo I took of the absolutely stunning sunset we had here on June 9th. Moments like these almost make me forget about the humidity ... almost ;) How's summer treating everyone else?

wherein I prove I'm alive

So, it's been a while since anything of merit was posted here. To update you all: I moved back to Alabama from Tennessee in mid-February and since then have been buried deep in writing projects. I'm not talking about them right now but hopefully one should see publication by the end of the year. When I have downtime, I'm normally spending it with family, or behind the camera lens (okay, if I'm completely honest I do spend some of that downtime being a vegetable lol).

A good chunk of my time in late April was devoted to helping my community. I live in one of the town hit by the tornadoes. Half a mile from my home was almost completely wiped out and we were lucky to only be brushed by the outlying winds, but we still have some damage. We as a community are healing, and that's the good thing.

Outside of that, things have been happening, I'm just keeping a lot to myself (and within my group of close friends) but I hope to get back to posting here soon. Out of curiosity, what would you guys like to read here? Might give me some ideas for future posts :)

Article: Ritual within Gaelic Polytheism

After a lot of work, Annie and I are pleased to announce that we’ve finished the article on “Ritual within Gaelic Polytheism”. It is now available here on the Gaol Naofa website.

And I want to say a BIG thank you to Thomas and Kathryn for giving us such wonderful feedback as we worked on it!

An Liuthail: A Ritual

Showed one of my rituals to Tomás today to see if perhaps he would want to put it on the Gaol Naofa website and he loved it, so it's now online if anyone would like to check it out: An Liuthail (The Lustration). This is something I developed (based on Carmina Gadelica #23) to perform before all rites and as a rite in itself if the times called for it.