• Meditation (brief, long, guided visualisation, breath - any and all work extremely well for me)
• Creativity (crocheting, drawing, writing, etc.)
• Being out in the garden or park or along the canal
• Reading email and surfing the web in small, restricted bites
• Music, laughter, silliness

The fantastic Ronald Hutton made a half hour documentary about Gerald Gardner for Australian tv. Here it is:

Click to view

Mesolithic life before Stonehenge found at Amesbury

19 April 2013 Last updated at 00:26

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Aerial archaeologist Ben Robinson visits Amesbury in Wiltshire where excavations have revealed that the history of people living in this location dates back much further than previously thought.

New evidence from the dig, at a site called Vespasian's Camp, ( Read more... )

The usual differentiation between prayer and meditation - in Anglophone cultures, at least - seems to be the assumption that prayer is active, petitioning, and externally focused, while meditation is passive, listening, and internally focused.

This has not been my experience for many, many years.

( Read more rambling and incoherent ideas )

Hie thee over to BBC Radio 4's website and listen to mythographer Marina Warner's 10-part series on the Brothers' Grimm and their quest for the primal fairy tale: episode 4 of Grimm Thoughts is just ending, and the previous episodes are available for the next few days.

Brilliant.

Not sure how long this radio programme is being archived for, so snap it up now (wherever you are in the world):

"India has a new deity, the Goddess of English, worshipped by former Untouchables who see the language as their deliverer from poverty and ignorance. Zareer Masani investigates.

The English language and the educational legacies of the Raj ( Read more... )

• Finally saw the Muppet film! We love the Muppets. Who DOESN'T love the Muppets? Only people who can't laugh, that's who. And I worry about them

• sabrinamari suggested I post a link to this excellent article by Hystery on the historical debt owed by modern Paganism (and feminism, and Theosophy, and...) to a group American Quakers - the comments section is worth ( Read more... )

Officially my favourite version of the Ganesh Maha Mantra, by Shankar Mahadevan

Click to view

Totally different pace than my own practice (108 repetitions takes about 20 minutes. Apparently. Doesn't feel like it), but there's something mesmeric and intensely, sensually spiritual about the arrangement and the quality of the singers' voices.

As an aside, I do love ( Read more... )

The earth mother of all neolithic discoveries

John Lichfield

ParisSaturday 10 December 2011

( Read more... )

Thoroughly enjoyed this discussion of fairies, folklore, and the changing face of fairies from Radio 4:

Away with the Fairies

Listen now (30 minutes)

Availability: 6 days left to listen

Last broadcast yesterday, 13:30 on BBC Radio 4.
Synopsis
Dominic Arkwright asks why fairies, once threatening and scary meddlers in human affairs, have become innocent, ( Read more... )