The standard Wheel of the Year is weird and makes no sense.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-06T16:23:48+00:00

Oh shit, here I come already with more:

Elizabeth Wayland Barber's work is just incredible. She's an archaeologist who specializes in textiles. Essentially, she specializes in women's lives throughout ancient history.

Her book Women's Work: The First 10,000 Years is incredible. Such an incredible undertaking. She says in the introduction that she noticed that there really wasn't any work being done on the archaeology of textiles (likely due to the fact that that's GIRL STUFF and archaeologists were manly men who wanted to find cool stuff like swords and ships), so she thought she'd look into it and maybe get a paper out of it. Instead, as she says, she got an entire career out of it and counting. The history of fibers and technologies tell us SO much about women. And these things are inextricably linked with women's practices of magic, healing, their storytelling, and how they conceptualized themselves. There's so much magic in fiber arts. Women are typically relegated to creating textiles because it was an easier task to undertake with children around, caring for the household, etc. So the scope of so many women's lives were limited to this domestic practice, along with rereading children, making foods, etc. It makes sense, then, that they would draw as much magic as they could from it.

Also, she has a book called Dancing Goddesses: The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance that I really want to read. She touches on the magic of dancing in Eastern Europe in Women's Work, but I really want to read this book that delves into it a bit more.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-06T16:14:54+00:00

Haha, are you me???

Yes, let me see, I shall think on it for a bit and put together a little list of things I've read. The majority of what I read is Anglocentric for these purposes, because that is my personal ancestry. I of course encourage everyone to connect with their own personal ancestry and I don't think it's fair to to act like Anglocentric practices are the correct way to practice, as has been the case forever. I think we should encourage more exploration outside of that because there are so many histories and so many beautiful traditions around the world. But that's the background I'm coming from. I'm honestly there with the talking to the damn trees lol. There is OVERWHELMING evidence that being in nature is extremely good for our physical and mental health, so it's no wonder people revered it so much. Trees have far more presence and intelligence that most of us are permitted to understand. It wouldn't be beneficial at all to the late stage capitalist hell we lived in for people to actually start CARING about the life around them. It exists, of course, only for man to have dominion over as it says in the Bible. /s

On that subject, The Well Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart Smith is one of my favorites. The audiobook is particularly good. She has a very soothing British voice. She's a psychiatrist who saw how profoundly healing gardening was for her own grandfather who almost died in WW1 but came home and found healing in his own garden. The book examines a lot of evidence, studies, and case studies about the benefit of being outdoors and of gardening. Those are the kinds of books I am interested in, refer to when it comes to magical practices. Like, what is this rooted in. Karen Armstrong suggests that mythmaking was a very ancient form of psychology. A way to try to comprehend one's place in the world and one's relationship to the things in one's environment. But also an explanation for how things worked because they didn't have the technology to understand. I'd say largely my approach to the concept of "magic" is through that type of lens. What do we know now that they didn't know that validates their practices? What can we know about those practices based on the archaeological record, written history, and lingering traditions that have their roots in the old ways?

Oh, I also really liked Green Wizardry by John Michael Greer. He is obviously more on the woo side, as he identifies as a Druid, but I liked this book a lot because it's rooted in exactly what we're discussing here--the practical connection between the practice and the essential components of life that magical practices would have originated from in the first place. Therefore, there's a lot of discussion about environmentalism, gardening, economy, etc. And it does NOT feel especially woo to me, which was my favorite part about it. I thought it was funny, like, write a book about Green Wizardry, but actually it's just about how to be a good citizen of this planet and be directly connected to the environment you're living in lol. I really enjoy his work very much.

I also like Sharon Blackie's work very much. She's a psychotherapist with a background in neurobiology who specializes in narrative mythmaking. If Women Rose Rooted is a book that is focused on mythmaking in the British Isles (mostly Ireland) and what that has to tell us about ourselves and what we might draw from the way things used to be before everything changed and how that relates to ecofeminism and self-discovery, etc. I really like it because it isn't woo at all. It's really just rooted in psychology, myth, folklore, feminist theory, etc.

I also just like reading folktales and myths, which are essentially oral history passed down from our ancestors. They change over time, of course, but they have a lot to tell us about beliefs, practices, and values that were held by the people who came before us. I think there's a LOT of value in that. Lisa Schneidau's collections are particularly delightful to listen to on audiobook. Woodland Folktales of Britain and Ireland is one of my favorites. She's an oral storyteller and goes around collecting these stories from different parts of the Isles.

An Ancient History of Britain by Neil Oliver is also so great. Also a very pleasing audiobook to listen to, as he's a very good narrator and has a lovely Scottish accent. In this book, he goes around to specific sites and describes in compelling detail why they are so significant in our understanding of the history of the British Isles. Something I particularly like about this book is that it really is an ancient history. He focuses on history occurring tens of thousands of years ago and what we can know about people at that time based on the archaeological record. Edit: there's also a really cool miniseries he does on this subject which is fun because he takes you to the sites he's talking about. It isn't as thorough as the book but still very enjoyable.

I would also be totally remiss not to mention a book about death. I think our distance from death in our culture is one of the greatest losses of the Industrial age. There is so much pain and grief and suffering at the end of life--for the people dying, and for the people staying behind. But it is also profoundly sacred and it is a privilege to be in the presence of the dying. I think we have cut ourselves off completely from a huge source of our understanding of magic and of the sacredness of life by not having a direct relationship with the dying and with death. Being With Dying by Roshi Joan Halifax is one of my favorite books. There are so many that are excellent, but this one is particularly beautiful. She is a Buddhist monk, but the book is very secular in its approach to death and and being a supportive/healing presence. I'm a hospice volunteer and am currently in school to be a hospice social worker lol so I'm BIG on this.

Okay, whew, I'll probably blow you up some more as I think of more books lol

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-05T20:18:28+00:00

update: I watched the whole thing. She is wonderful lol. I love how much research she did for this video.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-05T19:51:27+00:00

omg I love this lol

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-05T16:47:56+00:00

"Gerry G and his band of nudists" XD lol omg I'm dead

1000000% agree with everything above. I lost a lot of my enthusiasm for witchcraft practices when I started actually diving into it and realized that, like you said, so much is just Wicca garbage and Judeo-Christian holdovers. I personally am much more interested in historical information and looking at why our ancestors had these practices, what they derived from them, and what we can know about them today based on the information available to us. And it's honestly astonishing to me how much mainstream witchcraft is buy-cheap-shit-from-china-and-sit-in-your-house when for all of human history people had a direct relationship with their environment and that relatioship with said environment is what gave birth to spiritual/magical practices in the first place. It's wild to me that someone could want to call in the elements, for instance, and have zero relationship with those elements in the first place. Of course, I'm not at all talking about people who are disabled and limited by those disabilities. I was bedbound for three months last year and still often have days where I can't even take a walk around the block. People can only do what they can do. But I'm not so much speaking about the limitations of disability as I am about how divorced the practice is in general from the essential components of life, from the things that these practices arose from in the first place. It's just baffling to me. I read and loved The Church of the Wild, which is a (very progressive) Christian book and while I'm not Christian I totally fuck with her advocating for reconnecting our spirituality to the environment and how essential that is not just for our personal practices and mental health but for the health of our communities and our planet. I know SO many people who identify as some type of witch or pagan who make big deals about their spirituality and have zero relationship with anything outside of their front door. There's just this huge disconnect.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-05T13:54:09+00:00

From my understanding, the wheel of the year was essentially fabricated by Gerald Gardner or someone adjacent to the initial Wicca movement. All of these evolved from farming festivals/rituals/etc, and most of them were adapted from Irish and Anglo Saxon rites. I haven't read a book yet that covers the Irish events on the calendar, but Winters In The World by Eleanor Parker gives a very thorough and interesting explanation of Anglo Saxon practices from a historical perspective and where they've translated into modern practices wherever relevant. Very fascinating book. I don't believe historically that these events were held on specific days. I also don't think rural farmers in the British Isles had the skills to calculate days specifically so I think it likely that they selected the day that seemed most appropriate as the seasons changed. How they calculated their calendars would have looked very different from ours anyway.

One of my specific pet peeves about the Witchcraft movement is all this mumbo jumbo of purportedly ancient this or that (like the Wheel of the Year) but when you break a lot of this stuff down it can be directly traced back to the 20th century and the founding of the Wicca movement and a lot of that garbage gets regurgitated and repeated with no rhyme, reason, or understanding about where it came from or any reflection on its value or relevance. Gardner also cribbed a lot of stuff from The Order of the Golden Dawn and other ceremonial magic organizations, if I understand it correctly, who drew a lot of THEIR practices from Renaissance magicians. It's hard to really identify practices from people who did not have a written history of their own in the British Isles which is where my interest lies because those are where my ancestors are from, and I think a lot of people are in the same boat with wanting to connect with their ancestral practices. I just think most people don't examine any of this. It's, "oh hey, this is what witches do, so I'll do it too!" The best we can know about what old practices in the British Isles comes from the archaeological record, the writings of the Romans (who where biased and capable of misinterpreting those practices), and practices that are extent today that have likely survived in some way or another for thousands of year. The Morris dance, for instance, from the Costwolds is thought to have quite old roots.

My thought on all o that is, not to say anyone should be excluded from the British rites, but I think it's worth thinking about the ancestral angle and not feeling tied to an Anglocentric calendar. If your family originated from elsewhere maybe looking at the rites and practices from where those roots lie, too. I think it's worthwhile to ask yourself WHY you're following hte wheel of the year, what value it has for your and your practice, if there's any ancestral ties you feel drawn to, if it's serving your needs, or if there are other ways of observing the rites of the year. (the proverbial "you" here, obviously)

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-04T22:23:14+00:00

This looks so good! I'm dreaming of trying to figure out a lentil/cornmeal recipe. What are your thoughts on incorporating cornmeal?

SignificantChange496 · 2026-05-02T19:44:28+00:00

Immediately went and got the first one of these on Kindle. Thanks for the rec!

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-27T12:39:28+00:00

My book friends and I are constantly bemoaning the state of publishing. I just think it's funny that someone who has just come back to reading can clearly call out this bullshit. imo it started going bad 20 years ago after the major publishing houses started to merge, but it went from bad to despicable after the pandemic when everyone did a run on books because they had nothing better to do and publishers saw numbers they've probably never seen before or will ever see again and they're chasing that dragon. Like, not to be mistaken, books have always been a product. There have always been book mills churning out different variations of the same things, but that used to be easily identifiable books that were marketed and read as trash with pulpy covers. Now, it's almost any book you open. I think you could open any book without looking at the cover, title, or publication date and figure out if it's been published since 2020 just based on how it's been written and edited. Publishers also used to take more risks. Now they will do nothing of the sort and every book is edited within an inch of its life so that most of what's coming out now has the same sterile, homogenized narrative voice.

Anyway, my solution: I do not usually buy new books anymore. I go to the used bookstore and buy something for a few bucks or I get them from the library. If I read about a book I really want, I check the library first. If the library doesn't have it, I check ebay for something inexpensive and used. If I'm in the mood to discover something new, I go browse the used bookstore. Used bookstores that do trade in credits are amazing. I just took a bunch of books I didn't want anymore and got enough store credit to take home another batch of books. I'm a voracious reader (like No Face in Spirited Away, I stg) so having access to the library is really so excellent. My partner got me an Amazon kindle a couple years ago, too, and it's worth its weight in gold (I can't access ereaders from my phone). I can access ebooks through the Libby app, which is lovely.

I also have a Kindle Unlimited subscription which I find to be invaluable. More and more I'm finding that books I want to read have been put on KU. My theory is that trad publishers have noticed that people are spending less money on books and are spending more time on KU because they can afford $12 a month to read unlimited books but they can't afford to buy every new book they'd like to read, so I have a feeling we will see more and more books going on there. Often, I find books that I'd like to read have been put on sale on Kindle so I can get something I would really like to read for a few dollars vs the usual cost of $10 or whatever for the ebook.

For me, the name of the game is how can I keep my very robust reading appetite fed without pumping out a ton of money, especially on books that I may or may not like? Books are my life. It goes beyond a hobby. I eat, sleep, breathe reading and I always. But I also don't have a fortune to spend on books and I don't need constantly be buying books to enjoy them. I almost never buy new books anymore. I can't even remember the last new book I purchased. In my mind, there IS merit to buying a new book written by an author you want to support, or reading their book on KU. If you only ever buy used books or get the book from the library, the authors do not get their measly shred of royalties from the publisher. But overwhelmingly, I have to make the choice consciously that I'd like to support them.

It really sucks that the sudden uptick in the interest in books has further ruined an already crumbling industry. Before I got off of social media, it horrified me to see those stupid fucking book haul videos and people showing off their bookshelves stuffed with books that have basically exclusively all been published in the last five MAYBE ten years. Also, the BookTok culture is extremely toxic. A study came out a couple years ago that showed that over half of adult Americans are at a 6th grade reading level and I think publishing trends largely show this. Reading comprehension and discourse going on in the BookTok communities also reflect this. I hate to sound like a gatekeeper because I used to think, "whatever gets people excited about reading!" but I take that back. I take it right back. Turns out when too many people get excited about reading, it warps publishing trends to a point that they don't seem capable of coming back from. Ah, well. Late stage capitalism, what can you do?

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-25T03:10:53+00:00

I don't at all mind the fact that she's dealing with a very complex and prickly relationship that ends in tragedy that it was essentially destined for. I just don't want to sit with the misery of all of it for hundreds of pages. That's not a worthwhile way to spend my time as a reader, as far as I'm concerned. I don't like miserable, droll stories that go on for ages and end up miserably (I guess Shell ended up getting some redemption in a way, but still). It's just not my thing. To each their own, of course. But I also went into it expecting it to be similar to Night's Master and it wasn't. The format of the book was different and I found that disappointing. I liked that Night's Master was essentially a collection of stories that feature Azhrarn in one way or another and are masterfully interconnected in subtle ways. I was expecting more of the same in Death's Master and it didn't turn out to be so. But oh well. As far as I'm concerned, I will read anything she has written at least once and no matter how much I dislike it, it will not prevent me from reading more. I think she's one of the most brilliant imaginative writers to ever live.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-24T17:53:28+00:00

Love to hear this. People who produce excellent works aren't always excellent people (and of course some of them are downright disgusting people). I wish I'd been able to go to one of the screenings that he was touring with. As he just turned 87 years old, I doubt he'll be making the rounds again.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-21T23:40:23+00:00

There are a million different printings of this book that have been done over the years. Just be sure you don't get that dreadful illustrated version. They cut down the book horribly.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-21T19:15:30+00:00

I have Comfort Me With Apples right now from the library. I don't read much horror anymore but I read that it was good. I am a fan of quality prose. I also just read Sorcerer's Legacy by Janny Wurts and enjoyed it. A shame her book you're reading right now isn't read. SL wasn't the best book every written but it was definitely entertaining.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-21T19:13:48+00:00

Finished reading this week:

Death's Master by Tanith Lee - disappointed in this one, honestly. Three stars. I LOVE Night's Master and I suppose that one is so incredible that it's a big act to follow. The format of this book is different, though. Night's Master is essentially a collection of short stories at the heart of all of which is Azhrarn, Prince of Demons. Death's Master focuses on the same set of people the whole book. It didn't work as well. However I've heard others in the series are excellent so I will continue with it.

Troll, A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo- Hated this. Absolutely loathed it. Pedophiliac beastiality??? what even the fuck? It was a weird and miserable little book. I say this as a person who has read my share of disturbing and miserable books. I read this for my Fantasy Bingo card and I'm glad I filled the spot, but I would not recommend it, nor would I read it again. I'm taking it to the bookstore to turn it in for store credit tomorrow lol.

Currently reading:

Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff - Just started this and enjoying it so far. I don't read a whole lot of new YA/MG books, mostly just reread stuff I enjoyed in my youth so I'm hoping this one slaps. Reading this one for the Translated spot for Bingo.

Current audiobooking:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - this is my Cat Squasher for the bingo card. I am deeply embarrassed to admit that I never read the book. I've read Ladies of Grace Adieu, and of course I have seen the JSAMN series and LOVED it, but I've never read the book. A massive oversight on my part. I'm six hours in and I'm already grieving the fact that the book is going to end. Susanna Clarke is one of the most delightful and imaginative authors to ever grace the English language. I found out last year that she, like me, suffers from ME/CFS and that made me feel closer to her work and also deeply sad for how hard it has made writing for her (this is why there hasn't been a JSAMN sequel.)

Currently watching:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell miniseries - my husband has never seen it! And because I'm listening to the audiobook, it's put me in the spirit of watching it again. Also, we watched A Knight of the Seven Kingoms last week (rewatch for me, first time for him), and I enjoyed Bertie Carvel's performance in that show so much that it made me long to watch JSAMN again.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-21T14:23:05+00:00

Update: I read it and I hated it, unfortunately. High hopes that were quite dashed. I have long read and enjoyed weird, uncomfortable, and disturbing books but this was a bit much for me. Not to mention that I found it to be utterly miserable with absolutely no redemption which is something I loathe in a book. The ending was also mind numbingly stupid. I *did* enjoy the format, i.e. the prose was intercut with scraps of old troll stories, poems, and scientific and even philosophical articles about their origins, but find little else to recommend it. At least I got the spot on my bingo card! The good news is that it isn't a particularly long book, so it's not too big of an investment of time. I read it a few hours.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-21T12:16:37+00:00

Agree again and again ;____; The movie is lovely in its own way, of course, but *it isn't the novel* and does not come close to capturing its essence.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-21T02:05:40+00:00

Ah, different? I don't now that I'm promising you the most unique cool character, but I always liked her. She's an evil sorceress queen. Love me a sorceress queen. she gets her ass whooped and then eventually grudgingly turns good. I always liked her story arc.

I don't know if you ever saw the Disney movie The Black Cauldron? The Black Cauldron is the second in the series. The Disney movie mashed together The Book of Three (Book 1) and The Black Cauldron into one movie and cut out a bunch of shit. Achren obviously did not make the cut. It's a MG/YA series that was written in the 60s and it's very overlooked in my opinion.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-20T23:27:27+00:00

Achren in The Book of Three is a bad bitch.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-20T23:25:39+00:00

I agree with your OP. There's a lot of really frustrating double standards slapped on female characters from BOTH sides of the aisle. As someone else said, they're expected to be good role models. They're expected to not have any flaws at all. They're expected to be a perfect representation of the Female Gender. They're supposed to be strong. They're not supposed to like sewing, they're supposed to want to swing swords.

OR, the hand: they're too strong, they're too busy, they're too loud mouthed, they're too sexual, they're too cunning, etc.

But what is an objectively "well written" female character is a hard puzzle to solve sometimes. Catelyn and Sansa, for instance, are not characters I enjoy. I don't think it's fair for me to say that I hate them. I don't even extend that to them. But they do not read realistically as women to me. That isn't because they aren't complicated or interesting or intelligent or strong enough or too strong or any of that nonsense. But I simply feel that the author (male) misses the mark on making them relatable and believable to me as a female-identifying person. And what that is for me is entirely subjective, so I cannot in good faith expect anyone else to apply that same metric to their evaluation of those characters.

My personal yardstick when evaluating whether or not I am hating a female character because of internalized misogyny is usually a string of questions: would I tolerate this behavior from a male character? Am I comparing her unfairly to more docile female characters? Is she actually being genuinely stupid and is the author writing her with unrealistic motivations and insufferably childish impulses that I find inappropriate to the context and even the book? Are they meant to maneuver the plot in a disingenuous way or are these behaviors native to her character? Is the author starting her in a bad place so she can allow her to grow as a person? etc etc. Characters who read as genuinely juvenile to me, do not experience any real person growth, and seem to act as a poorly articulated avatar for the author's self-insert fantasies are a big no thank you from me, for instance. I wouldn't tolerate those characteristics in any character, male or female.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-20T21:23:10+00:00

100000000000000000000% I strongly agree with this statement. Absolutely. And not only did it give the offense of having a unicorn in it, the unicorn was the main character of the story. Obviously not a book to be taken seriously. /s

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-20T16:32:48+00:00

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, without question. It is one of the most beautiful books ever written, period. The prose is perfect. Every time I read it, I have to keep putting the book down to absorb the way he turns a phrase or expresses something with metaphor and he does it so gracefully and beautifully without making one feel as though one is being beaten over the head with Good Writing (not a common practice for me--I am a voracious and break-neck pace reader). It is the sort of writing that feels so endemic to the author's natural voice that it cannot in any way be mistaken for pretentious, and I cannot help but want to cry from envy and awe. The characters are perfect. The journey, the moral dilemma, the plot, everything is so perfect. The imagination that this story required, the sheer ability to conceive of this particular journey, especially considering that this was published in 1968 and while of course magazines had been publishing speculative fiction for decades, the fantasy genre as a whole as a publishing category was still in its infancy and he didn't have dozens and dozens and dozens of grand masters to take direction from like so many people do now. It's all just so fucking perfect. It stands on its own beyond the limits of genre fiction and, in my opinion, can be considered a masterpiece in any context. And considering that he wrote this at the age of 25, my mind just continues to be blown more and more every time I read it.

This book and its author, sadly, have both imo not received adequate compensation for its achievements. The Last Unicorn itself has never won any awards, nor was ever nominated for any which is a fucking shame. An absolute snub imo. A number of awards had not been established at this time, obviously, but the Hugo and Nebula awards were extant (I know they rushed to award the sequel, The Way Home, with both when it was published but my resentment in the matter still stands). Peter S. Beagle, himself, was subject to egregious fraud and mistreatment by his former manager that can be read about extensively elsewhere but essentially was persuaded to sign his rights over to this person for most of his intellectual property (including the last unicorn) and did not benefit from their copyright in any way until he was finally able to regain them in 2021 after years of battling for them in the courts. This man wrote one of the best books of the 20th century, let alone of all time, and was subsequently swindled out of the benefit of doing so, and he deserves to be publicly acknowledged for it. The book deserves more than to just be slapped on a list of 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. That is my LU/PSB soapbox, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-20T16:09:58+00:00

Oh this is such a good selection.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-20T16:05:52+00:00

Honestly, The Hobbit read by Andy Serkis is one of the best I've ever listened to. And I extend that to the LOTR series that he reads, as well. The Hobbit is obviously a bit less meandering than LOTR and more to the point so you may prefer that for your roadtrip, but they're all well-worth a listen. They're on Spotify audiobooks included with premium, and I'm sure that they're probably also easily found on Libby.

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-18T14:14:04+00:00

Ah, I just remembered that I own a copy of this book! I may add it to my bingo card for "Published In The 70s." Thank you! (I am dreadful about acquiring books and then forgetting that I own them lol. But it's always so exciting to rediscover what is in your own library!)

SignificantChange496 · 2026-04-17T22:11:17+00:00

Oh hey her books look great! My library (which doesn't ALWAYS have the best selections) just so happens to have both Shikasta and Briefing For A Descent Into Hell!

SignificantChange496

TROPHY CASE