CINQUEFOIL: (Pontentilla reptans)

Also called Five Fingered Grass, Creeping cinquefoil, and Five Leaved Grass. The rootstock was cooked as a vegetable by the Celts and Native Americans. Applied to sore areas, the fresh plant relieves pain. A root decoction is used in anti-wrinkle creams. A wash reduces skin redness, freckles, and sunburn. The powdered root and leaf are used to stop internal hemorrhaging. The powder also makes an astringent  for mouth sores and treats diarrhea. Taken with honey, it relieves sore throats, coughs, and fever. Take one-quarter to one-half teaspoon at a time, or twenty to forty drops of the tincture. The leaves can be steeped using two teaspoons per cup of water for twenty minutes, or one ounce of the root can be simmered in one and a half cups of water for twenty minutes. The dose is a quarter cup four times a day.

Black Haw

Viburnum prunifolium

The American plant known as the black haw is native to the American continent, and it is believed to have been in traditional use for preparation of many types of herbal remedies as well as a source of food by the original Native Americans – though documentation is scarce. The black haw is a shrub or more correctly a small deciduous tree which can reach a height of five to fifteen feet when fully mature. The plant is characterized by its red brown bark and the grooved branches. The black haw plant also bears a number of characteristic flat topped white flowers and in season many shiny and blue black berries, the black haw berries are very juicy and used in many Native American food preparations.

Dream Catcher Instructions

To Native Americans, dreams were messages sent by sacred spirits. According to legend, the hole in the centre of a dream catcher web allows good dreams to reach the sleeper, while the web itself traps the bad dreams until they disappear with the first light of morning.
The following steps will help you to create a personalised dream catcher.

Pagan Sexuality and Sexual Freedom by Brenda Loew

Old Traditions Live Today!

 
Pagans like me who believe in, talk about and practice sexual freedom are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
As individuals, and as Americans, we pagans have the freedom to choose the manner in which we express our personal eroticism and sexuality. For example, some sexually free individual pagans believe in a tolerant alternative worldview that promotes the use of free will with no sexual manipulation or sexual exploitation of any kind. Sexual freedom, as opposed to sexual slavery (no free choice; no free will; coercion), means mutually respectful, consensual acts of intimate adult sensuality and sexuality, between or amongst trusted, equal partner(s). In the purest pagan tradition, a sexually free individual leads a lifestyle that “…harms none, it is permissible.”

Brujeria

Brujeria. For many, it is nothing more than the Spanish word for witchcraft. But for a growing number of North Americans, Brujeria is something much more complex–it is a religion, not unlike Wicca.

Muhammad

From a Baha’i book by ‘Abdu’l-Baha:

Americans and Europeans have heard a number of stories about the Prophet which they have thought to be true, although the narrators were either ignorant or antagonistic: most of them were clergy; others were ignorant Muslims who repeated unfounded traditions about Muhammad which they ignorantly believed to be to His praise.