Dowsing for Divinity

When I was a kid and artificial intelligence (AI) was firmly in the realm of science fiction, asking whether AI could become conscious seemed like an interesting philosophical problem, but mostly irrelevant. Why did the Butlerian Jihad destroy all “thinking machines”? Why did humans hunt the androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The AI and robots of older science fiction stories are…

We watched the film Ammonite last night, about Mary Anning the geologist and a fictional lesbian relationship with another geologist, Charlotte Murchison. (Spoilers after the jump.) Continue reading Review: Ammonite

June is Pride Month in Canada. And it is not just an excuse for a party, but an opportunity for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to be visible, and to celebrate our wins over the years, from greater social acceptance to same-sex-marriage. Continue reading Happy Pride Month

…and unreasonable responses to them. There’s a general pushback on diversity, equity, and inclusion right now, but even so, I find it startling to see some of the unreasonable arguments put forward for rolling back perfectly reasonable adjustments to help disabled people and neurodiverse people to be comfortable. Continue reading Reasonable adjustments

I have finally decided to take the plunge and start my own publishing company. It’s called Vox Clamantis Books, and you can follow it on WordPress, Instagram, and Facebook. Continue reading New publishing venture

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that my grandpa Harold was a conscientious objector. I’ve even found a newspaper clipping about his tribunal hearing. So I was pleased to see this poem about conscientious objectors shared on Facebook today by a friend. Continue reading Conscience

Among the general onslaught upon the rights of minorities and the right to protest, it may have escaped people’s notice that the USA is currently seeking to erase trans people from public life in a variety of increasingly cruel ways, and the UK and parts of Canada are not far behind them. In this climate, then, it matters deeply if a transphobe is platformed at Pagan events. Continue reading…

I dreamed that a child had been writing an essay and referred to dogs as people. The child had shown their teacher a draft of the essay and the teacher had corrected people to animals. The child asked me what to do. I suggested adding a footnote that they believe animals are people and that it’s an ontological category mistake to think they’re not. Continue reading Animals are people

It has now been 12 years since the publication of my book, All Acts of Love and Pleasure: inclusive Wicca, and obviously a lot of developments led up to the publication of that book. So I’d like to just go through a few of the key developments that led to inclusive Wicca. Wicca was founded in or became public in the 1940s. It is no secret that Gerald Gardner was homophobic. However, …

It is generally agreed among academic historians that midwives were not generally persecuted as witches across all the areas where witchcraft persecution occurred. David Harley (1990), “Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-witch.” Social History of Medicine, Volume 3, Issue 1, April 1990, Pages 1–26 Continue reading Midwives as witches

There are so many great fictional books to read about witchy, occult, and Pagan topics. Some of them are also written by LGBTQ+ people, and/or feature LGBTQ+ characters! Continue reading Witchy & Pagan fiction

I’m not in very many Pagan groups online for multiple reasons: they’re full of misinformation about the history of Paganism and witchcraft, which I don’t have the energy to counter; there’s a LOT of anti-Wicca stuff in there; there’s a lot of people asking for spells, and the effort required to explain why a magical intervention might make things worse is too much, and not what they want to…

I recently read an excellent dystopian novel that seems scarily prescient. It’s the first part of a series set in a world where 95% of the population has been killed by a respiratory virus. As a result, giving birth is compulsory. Continue reading Dystopian fiction has been moved to current affairs

I wrote this poem 23 years and one day ago, about the Iraq war. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Looking at the cherry blossomJust opening on the black branches:Fragile stars in the February wind. Continue reading Mirror revisited