Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Jason Mankey, author of The Witch's Book of Shadows, The Witch's Athame, Transformative Witchcraft, and the new Witch's Wheel of the Year. Ask most Witches what their favorite Sabbat is and the most common answer is nearly always, "Samhain." I love Samhain, too, but my favorite Sabbat is actually Yule, and for a variety of reasons. While Samhain tends to focus most exclusively on the harvest and the dead, there are all sorts of different ways to celebrate Yule. It might actually be our most diverse Sabbat, and its roots are genuinely ancient. Our culture generally thinks of Samhain as the most "Pagan" of the Sabbats, but the truth is, we

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Linda Raedisch, author of Night of the Witches, Old Magic of Christmas, and the new Lore of Old Elfland. [caption id="attachment_16705" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The Rumpelwichtelbaum at the Viking Museum in Haithabu, Germany.[/caption] When my editor asked me if I had any special wishes for the cover of Lore of Old Elfland, I told her what I didn't want: elves. If there absolutely had to be elves on the cover, I said, they should be well camouflaged, covered in lichen, tucked away among the roots of trees. Then I thought of what I did want: a tree, and not just any tree, but one particular European beech now known in our family

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by A. Paul Miller, author of The Mindful of Calm. As we lead up to the holidays and start to think about our Christmas lists and what we want to put on them, it is a good time to reflect on what we already have and for what we should be grateful already having. Let me share an experience with you that I always remember when I get the urge to want more. Several years ago, while visiting a friend in the hospital who was recovering from a stroke, he mentioned how much we can take our health for granted. I suddenly found myself telling him about this experience I had previously had. An evening spent ironing: yay!! The wardrobe was empty, and I

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Kristy Robinett, author of several books, including It's a Wonderful Afterlife, Tails from the Afterlife, and the new Born Under a Good Sign. My interest in the zodiac began in my early years when my eyes wandered away from the comic section of the newspaper to the horoscopes. It continued into college when I did a paper in my psychology class on the differing personality types according to the astrological signs. One day after class my psychology professor handed me a flyer. "I thought you might be interested in this class," she said. "It's not connected to school, but after reading your passion in the paper, I had to share." The