My Indoor Sacred Space

Meditation Area and Altar

Just thought I would share some photos of my indoor sacred space. My altar is movable for ritual purposes. I also have a ten foot sacred circle in my backyard beside my herbal bed which I like to use during the summer. I love this meditation spot, especially since I added the huge pillow I made from some leftover black fleece. It's big enough to comfortably accommodate me and my granddaughter Jainee...although most of the real meditation happens after she goes to bed! lol I should take pictures at night with all the candles lit...it's gorgeous and so peaceful. :D

My Working Space

This is my working area where I do things like put spells together, journal, make jewelry, read tarot and do other divination as well, and work on my Book of Shadows. It's funny, this room is across from our main bathroom in the house and if the door's left open by accident, I always find our guests wandering around in fascination. LOL I even catch my husband in here sometimes when he thinks I'm elsewhere. I guess everyone wants a little magick in their lives, whether they want to admit it or not! ;D

Paintings In Progress

I LOVE to paint! My favourite medium is watercolour, but I've been recently dabbling in oil. These are the two pieces I'm working on at the moment. On the right is a black and white graveyard scene that I'm doing in watercolour. The one on the left is of Dunlace Castle ruins in Ireland. I'm painting it from a photo my best friend took from her last visit...she grew up just a few miles from there. :D That one is being done in oil. It's taking forever...I just added the basic colours in the castle and grass and will be putting in more shading as it dries. So far I'm hating oil! LOL Next time I think I'll try acrylic.

My Pagan Church

Sunset as Viewed From the Front Door

There's no doubt in my mind that I was a lucky child...I was born in paradise! This is the view from our front porch deck on the farm at sunset. How can you not feel connected to something higher than yourself when you're surrounded by this every day?

I miss the farm as much as I miss my parents. It's so profound to know that this half section of land is still here, and will remain forever, but they're gone...as are my grandparents before them who broke the land with their own hands. We're so insignificant as human beings. Why is that so hard for us to understand? Our egos are so huge it's sickening...we destroy the beauty of nature every day with a sense of entitlement.

Behind the Bull Pen

I don't like to be openly negative about other faiths, but I believe in my heart that this sense of entitlement originally comes from monotheistic religions such as Christianity. After all, the 'good book' says that man is to have domain over all the animals and plants, right? As a pagan, following the path of the green witch, the plants and animals are my fellow parishioners...and Gaia is my minister and church! I don't put on my Sunday best to show up my neighbours when I worship, I throw on my runners and grab my granddaughter to go for a walk out back...every day, not just on Sunday. Why would I ever feel entitled to destroy that?

My Dad in the Smoky River Valley <3

My father taught us how to work the land to give us crops and vegetables and to ALWAYS respect, honour and appreciate the animals we raised who sacrificed their lives to feed us. Dad taught us the skills needed to farm and ranch, but I always had that innate connection to the land...my pagan church. We never hunted for fun...ever. He always said he preferred to shoot wildlife with a camera. ;D

He passed this land onto us, my sister and me...he said it was our 'birth right'. I often questioned that. What makes us so special to have a 'right' to own a piece of Gaia? She should be everyone's, not just ours. However, I realize now years later, that this little piece of her might just be safest in our hands...we won't destroy her with ego. She'll remain in my family's possession and will be cherished until long after my granddaughter passes on. At least she'll be safe until then.

Witchcraft? Really?

The first time I'd ever heard of witchcraft in a sense other than in Disney fashion (as I write this, I'm transported back to my 7yr old self, sitting in the theatre with my little sister and parents, watching the moment when the ugly old hag handed Snow White her poisoned apple.) was when my step mother boasted about putting a 'spell' on my Dad. They'd had an argument earlier that day and as he was mowing the front lawn afterwards, the mower ran over a stone that spiralled up and cracked the living room picture window. She was spouting off something about having cursed him and that was why it happened. I believe I was maybe 11 or 12yrs old at that point, and living in a predominantly Roman Catholic community, I'd never even heard of 'real' people being able to perform magic before. What was she talking about? Automatically, I just thought she was nuts...like everyone else did...but over the next couple of weeks, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked her what she'd meant by that statement. She was from a big city, a few provinces over, so I entertained the thought that she just might have had a larger world view than anyone else in my life at that time. ;D

She simply said "I'm a witch" and for the first time since she'd moved in with us, she excitedly brought me into their bedroom and showed me her book collection on the subject. Looking back now, I know she really wasn't a witch, she'd just bought a few books on the subject and liked to pretend she was something she wasn't, but that small incident was evidently going to have such a huge impact on shaping my spiritual development in the future. My curiosity grew and I would spend hours learning as much as I could from any books that I could get my hands on. As my knowledge grew about witchcraft, I began to understand the connection between the craft and nature...it wasn't about having a relationship with a personal God who should be feared and obeyed... and that struck a chord deep within me. I came to discover much later in life that this was likely the link between my 'indigenous soul' and my present life incarnate.

My Spiritual Indigenous Bloodlines

From a time before I was even able to read, I was obsessed with all things aboriginal. I would sneak the Encyclopedia under my covers with a flash light at bedtime and spend hours imagining that I was actually there in the pictures...playing all those games with the other children, helping to cook meals with the women in the camp or fishing and hunting fowl with other boys using our home made spears and bows & arrows. It was the strangest feeling...I knew it was just a book, but I could literally sense the warmth of the sun on my face and the dust beneath my bare feet as I flipped through it.

Danezaa Chief  with his family 1899

During this time in my young life, I often had a set of recurring dreams about being on a very high hill with a native woman and preteen girl, picking berries on a beautiful day with the sun shining and a soft breeze in the air. We were always laughing and singing while we worked. In the initial dreams, I was just there, I just assumed I was 'me' in this dream having fun picking berries. I didn't realize until many dreams later when I saw 'myself' from an outside view that I was actually a little boy of roughly the same age as I was in real life...about 6 or 8yrs old.

For some reason, I always felt connected to a male energy as well whenever we would play 'Cowboys and Indians' as children. (Yes, I AM old enough to be able to use those terms and still hold some sort of political correctness in my statement! lol ;D) Of course there was never a question of which side I would choose to play on and I felt an intense sense of pride in playing that role. Every time I could play as a child and young teen, I was playing something connected to an aboriginal existence, that was just where my interests were I suppose.

Danezaa Tipi near Peace River, AB 1899

I am 42yrs old this year, and nothing has changed. My wind down time in the evening before bed is spent on Youtube going through videos of Jingle, Round and Warrior dances from Powwows! lol After a lot of research, I am learning that the Danezaa people were the ones who inhabited the lands where I was born, prior to 1793 when Alexander Mackenzie first made contact with them. I look at the pictures dated from the late 1800's of women and children sitting outside their tipis in the cold winter and I am moved to tears...and I can't explain why! Was I there in a past life? I do believe in reincarnation...could that explain my obssession?! My half Cree niece calls me her 'White Indian' Aunty. I don't have a drop of native blood in me, but I feel in my SOUL that I am!! So I suppose that's why I've become comfortable in saying that I have spiritual indigenous bloodlines. ;D I don't know how else to explain it...

Where Is She?

Losing someone so close to me at such a young age began my initial search for life after death. I wanted reassurance that my Mom was somewhere...anywhere...other than in the frozen ground that we had left her in at the tiny community cemetery down the road. Being only 8 or 9 years old and having no conventional religious practice in place in our family, I really didn't know where she was.


I still vividly remember her funeral 33yrs later, how strange I felt, how void of emotion I was. As I sat there in the front row of chairs in the hall beside my little sister and Dad, all I could think of was wanting to play tag outside with the girls from my Brownie group. They were all there because Mom was our leader. The feeling of guilt would wash over me every time someone would come over to hug me and say they were sorry for my loss. I wasn't sad for some reason, never shed a tear that day and actually didn't until many years later. It was as if my gut was telling me not to worry. 


It wasn't that big of a deal, she wasn't REALLY gone after all. She just wasn't here...

A Simple Introduction

Hello there! *smile*

My name is Rhonda and I grew up in northern Alberta. My little sister and I were the only children in the family. Our dad was a proud 'dirt farmer', his own words, who really had no belief system when it came to worshiping a higher power. In fact, I remember times when my grandmother would come to dinner and insist on saying grace. While she prayed, my dad would interrupt her with "The food on this table was put here by MY hand, no one else's!" We would quietly snicker to ourselves as my grandmother would completely ignore Dad and continue to pray while he passed the roast chicken to us in a huff.

Our mother died when I was 8 years old, so we don't really know if she followed any personal faith, but we do know that her parents didn't. Her mother spent more time volunteering at her local Legion than any church in the area. My great grandmother was part of the Seventh Day Adventists. I do remember her following some special diet that my aunt told us had to do with her religious beliefs.

After our mom passed, my dad's mother would have us stay with her for summer and holiday visits. During these visits, she would take us to her Catholic church and at one point she even secretly baptized us in her bedroom with some holy water she'd smuggled out. *smile* Apart from the odd 'church picnic' afterwards, that was pretty much the extent of our education on religion!