Beltane baking

Happy Beltane to everybody!

The above picture shows a "Hefezopf", which is something like plaited milk bread, according to my dictionary. I was inspired to bake something for this year's Beltane by a recent post on Owl's Court.
Hefezopf is a family recipe - I learned it from my mother, who learned it from her mother. I never bothered to find out whether it goes back longer than that, but I like it. In its standard version, there are raisins included. A more fancy version would have a nut filling instead.

Late in the night

Today I wrote an essay about my personal symbology, which ended up being an essay on how I think magic works. It has forced me to think about my theory of magic again. This is what I like about taking classes or studying with a group - it makes me think anew about things that are floating around in my mind anyway - which leads to getting new ideas.

Journey

My religious journey started in the catholic church - that is the faith I was raised in. However, I have always been reading everything I could get my hands on, and one day one of those books was Starhawk's "Spiral Dance". It took me years before I would actually call myself a Wiccan, but from that time on, I walked that path. I met the Gods, I celebrated the seasons and I read every book on magic and witchcraft I could find.
Some years later, I joined a group of Gardnerian Wiccans. It took me a year to acknowledge that this group - and probably the Gardnerian system, at least as I had come to know it - was not right or healthy for me. However, I came to know the joy of celebrating and working together instead of solitary only, which is something I am deeply greatful for.
Dissappointed with british traditional Wicca, I began to look out for other traditions and ideas. Today I am a member of Universal Eclectic Wicca (UEW). This tradition holds that truth can be found in a lot of forms and places. We practise ethical eclecticism with a strong academic tendency. I feel comfortable in this tradition, and while it is a pity that I seem to be the only German member, I am happy that there is at least an active online community. I have worked through the First and Second Circle of the Coven of the Far Flung Net (CFFN), the online learning coven of the tradition. Recently, my Third Circle project has been accepted, so now I am working on that.
There is always another path to journey on.

Songs in the wind.

My first post...
This is my first try at a blog. While I intend to write something every now and again, I will not make any promises yet as to how often I will post something.

What are the topics you can expect? I am a Wiccan, and I will probably talk mostly about my journey along that path. That might include a progress report on my current project - I will talk about that in more detail in another post. Additionally, I intend to give some reviews of the books I am reading. Apart from magic and Wicca, that might also include fantasy novels, since that is what I like to read for entertainment. Currently, I am reading "Reaper man" by Terry Pratchet.

Apart from those topics, I intend to publish my random musings about everything that comes to my mind. These will be my Songs in the wind, sent out in the hope of touching some souls and maybe hearing an answer sung back to me.

Oh yes, and I like to write poetry, so it might be that every now and again you will have to put up with some poem of mine.