We still have more than a month to go, but before you know it Yule will be upon us again. While we sit at home sipping hot cocoa around the fire, shoveling the snow or snuggling into a down comforter, remember on this Veteran’s Day that many of our troops will be stationed in much hotter and much more dangerous places during the Yuletide. Instead of a quiet, dark time for reflection, they are faced with challenges many of us couldn’t imagine. There are plenty of civilian and religious organizations that support American troops by sending them care packages and cards, or donating food for their struggling families, throughout the year. Today I’m going to highlight one such group

Recently a woman filed a suit against her former employer, Bath & Body Works, alleging that she was fired due to religious discrimination. So far, neither Bath & Body Works nor the manager who fired her have gone on record with a public response, so I will just briefly explain what the plaintiff claims, keeping in mind that this is just one side of the story. Gina Uberti says she was fired last November after speaking with her manager about a vacation she took. Uberti says that for the past six years, she has taken a week off every year to celebrate Samhain in Salem, Massachusetts, and her absence in 2008 was both planned and approved by a previous manager nearly a year in

As I mentioned a few posts ago here, Cunningham’s Book of Shadows is now in our warehouse and being shipped out to stores all over the world. I thought I’d share the quirky story of its discovery for those of you who haven’t gotten the book yet and read deTraci Regula’s first person account, contained in the appendix. If you really want to know how we are happening to publish a book by an author who has sadly been in the Summerland for many years now, you’ll have to start with my boss, Bill Krause. Bill is Llewellyn’s Publisher, which means that he oversees the day-to-day operations of acquiring and publishing books. (Carl Llewellyn Weschcke continues as Llewellyn’s owner

Guest post by Lupa Of all the books Ted Andrews wrote, perhaps none was as well-known—or as often recommended—as his seminal work on neopagan animal totemism, Animal Speak. Like so many non-indigenous totemists, it was the first book I ever picked up on the topic, back in the mid-1990s when all I had access to in my small town of origin was a little hippie-owned health food store. While texts on Wicca and ceremonial magic were a bit too "spooky" for these rural folks, the warm, cuddly topic of animals was alright, wasn't it? Okay, maybe "warm and cuddly" isn't the right description. But Andrews had this way of making the information accessible to just about anyone who picked it