Thoughts on Attenborough’s A LIFE ON OUR PLANET and Some Platonic Reflections on Food Waste for Earth Day 2024

Last Sunday, I watched David Attenborough's autobiographical film about his career in wildlife documentaries, where he is still going strong as he approaches 100. All of us have likely heard his voice even if we may not know who he is. Attenborough, it turns out from interviews, was once skeptical of climate change, and his …

A Contemplation of Celestial Data

On Friday, I encountered a BBC program of data sonification feature from Slow Radio, "A Sonic Journey Across the Universe." It got me thinking about the ways that I reach for astronomical concept-symbols when I write hymns and how celestial concepts fit into the ways I engage with the Gods at my shrine and in …

A Retro on the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

Reflections on the total solar eclipse, visiting family, and growing up pagan.

Reconnecting with old prayer habits

Today, for the first time in a long while, I knelt at my shrine and felt around for the faux velvet bag that keeps the prayer beads I purchased for Hermes five and a half years ago. They are made of bright metal and white-gray spiderweb jasper, and I bought them on Etsy a bit …

A Measure of Beauty from Proclus’ Euclid commentary

There is left only the conclusion that soul draws her concepts both from herself and from Nous, that she is herself the company of the forms, which receive their constitution from the intelligible patterns but enter spontaneously upon the stage of being. The soul therefore was never a writing-tablet bare of inscriptions; she is a …

Two Interesting Books and a Few Other Things

I have been fairly quiet lately, and there are several reasons for that. First, the more I reflect on Proclus' passages about using one's voice to speak hymns and on speech/disclosure, the more I am conscious of needing to spend the time and energy that I have on what is worthwhile. I'm finding myself reluctant …

Prayer is Beautiful

One of the Gods whom I've been praying to daily since the beginning of the new year is Polymnia. The impulse started when I was reading Davi Kopenawa's The Falling Sky back in December. Fulfilling the impulse to pray to her has been very good despite all of the confusion of health loose ends and …

In Which I Make Anatomical Votive Offerings

In antiquity, anatomical votive offerings were given to the Gods, typically to Asklepios and other deities whose cultus was interwoven with healthcare before the temples were destroyed. When I was diagnosed with something that needed to be surgically removed, though, due to the long tradition of her association with gynecological matters, I decided that I …

For Polymnia

Polymnia, you are everywhere, veiled beauty,and when you sing, you sing the truth:that every action is an intricate hymn,from the hum of particles dancing as atomsto the choreography of the body's cellsand the lightning-quick fire within us.May we hear your words' droning hum within,coax them from our contemplations,mute the noise of desolation and desertion —silence …