Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Barbara Nolan, author of the new Year of Pagan Prayer. Our modern month of October was an in-between time in the ancient Pagan world, a period of both endings and beginnings. To the insular Pagan Celts, it was the end of the year, before Samhain ushered in both the last of the harvest and the beginning of a new cycle of time. For Pagans in the Mediterranean world, it was a time when the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone were honored at the Thesmophoria (thez-mo-FOR-ee-uh), a Greek women's festival that seems to have celebrated both the harvest and the sowing of future crops, which could take place more or less together in Greece.

The second annual Witchies Award Nominations have been announced, and voting is now open (ends 10/31/21).  Several Llewellyn authors have been honored for their work: Outstanding Witchcraft Book of the Year (General): The Book of Candle Magic, by Madame Pamita Outstanding Witchcraft Book of the Year (General): New World Witchery, by Cory Thomas Hutcheson Outstanding Recipe/Formulary Book of the Year: Curative Magic, by Rachel Patterson Outstanding Recipe/Formulary Book of the Year: Kitchen Witchery, by Laurel Woodward Outstanding Pagan Book of the Year: The Horned God of the Witches, by Jason Mankey Outstanding Pagan Book of the Year: Do I Have to Wear Black?, by

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Leslie Sampson, author of the new Find Your Twin Flame. The overwhelming belief in the twin flame universe is that a locating your twin flame on Earth is required to be fully connected or "in union" with your twin flame. But the plain truth is that twin flames are never disconnected. Whether your twin is on Earth (or even in some other universe) or on the Other Side, you can connect with them. After all, they're the only other soul in all of creation that matches yours exactly. You have a direct line to them. Let me tell you a secret. Lean close; let me whisper it to you, because you haven't it heard before now. Are you ready? You are

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Liz Williams, author of the new Modern Handfasting. Many of the couples whom we handfast ask us to acknowledge Venus in the ceremony. It's a logical choice, since she's one of the great Classical love goddesses. But lovely though the image is, there's a lot more to Venus than a smiling naked woman on the half shell: her worship was found in many different forms across the Roman world, and in the Greek pantheon in her earlier form of Aphrodite. Paphos in Cyprus and Cythera in Crete were the centres of the worship of Aphrodite. Her statues were often modelled on courtesans, and were thus a little bit scandalous. One of the oldest rituals