To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

creating sacred
    time you ensure that your spirituality remains a part of your
    routine throughout the most chaotic periods of your life.
    However simple this commitment may seem, there may
    be an occasional week when even that is impossible. You
    have to make a sudden trip to the emergency room, either
    for yourself or for somebody else. Or you discover that your
    basement has flooded. There are things that can disrupt even
    the easiest commitment. When something like this happens,
    attend to the problem but make your sacred time the next
    highest priority. If you put it off any longer than absolutely necessary, you diminish its worth.
    Step 4: Sacralize Daily Activities
    You have connected with your gods and your ancestors.
    You have created a sacred space—an altar—where you can
    approach them, and have set aside sacred time to do so. When
    you have done all of this, the time has come for your next
    action, which is to expand your spiritual awareness beyond the
    altar and more fully into your life.
    This is the goal of Hal Sidu. Holistic tradition entreats us
    to integrate our spirituality with the rest of our lives. Just as your physical body is sustained by the air you take into your
    lungs throughout the day, your spiritual body is sustained by
    the mindful actions you take to sacralize your daily activities.
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    These simple actions will help you connect with Spirit from
    the moment you awaken until you go to sleep in the evening.
    The third chapter of this book is devoted to the daily rit-
    uals that every Pagan can use to integrate his or her spiri-
    tuality into a daily routine. Your personal routine, however,
    is unique to yourself, and for this reason you should strive
    to develop unique ways to sacralize the activities in your
    own life. Hopefully the suggestions in the third chapter will
    inspire you to do just that.
    As a writer, for example, I spend much of my day sitting
    at my computer. More often than not this routine begins
    with a fresh cup of coffee. The coffee helps wake up my
    body, and the act of writing itself stimulates my mind, but
    what of my spirit? I want to bring my entire being into the
    process of writing; to integrate my body, mind and spirit. To
    do this, I set aside a moment for prayer, saying:
    “Woden, World Wanderer,
    Let my words be true,
    That they might bring honor to my folk
    and to the elder ways.
    Ic bidde the nu.”
    The last line is pronounced “eech biddeh they noo” and is
    Old English for “I ask you now.” Woden, if you are not famil-
    iar with Saxon tradition, is a god of inspiration and magic.
    His name gave us our word for the fourth day of the week,
    Wednesday (Woden’s Day).
    You can see here how this little ritual is unique to my
    own daily routine. It takes the form of a prayer because that
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    reflects my spirituality. A Wiccan author might do something
    similar by casting a quick, simple spell. I direct the prayer
    to Woden and finish this with an Old English expression
    because I am a Saxon Pagan. A Gallic Pagan writer would
    more likely direct his or her own prayer to Ogmios, a Celt-
    ic god of eloquence who was worshipped throughout Gaul.
    And of course the purpose of the ritual itself is directly relat-ed to my profession as a writer. Saxon Pagans who work as
    salespeople, or nurses or research scientists would devise
    entirely different rituals more appropriate for their respective lifestyles.
    Your unique rites to sacralize daily activities need not
    be limited to your work. In the following chapters we will
    explore a variety of ways to re-connect with the earth, and all of them involve imbuing otherwise mundane activities with
    a sacred mindfulness. Whatever hobbies you might have—
    jogging, playing a musical instrument, art, keeping tropical
    fish—can be sacralized.
    Tropical fish, you say? Well, why not? Whenever we inter-
    act with other creatures we connect more