Word Searches & Postcards

I have created a few things that I am actually selling on the Internet.

1. Devotional Word Searches: Do you want an alternative activity to make available to ritual participants who don’t do meditation? Would you like to mix it up at your home shrine a bit? I made single-page (and a few double-page) word searches centered on various pagan and polytheistic holidays, plus a few deities. These word searches were sparked by an idea that I had when I was working on a handout for my professional section during our annual conference in late spring, and putting a word search on the back of the program was an unexpected hit.
2. Polytheistic Holiday Postcards: I am not an artist. I am, however, someone who sends greeting cards and postcards. One thing that has frustrated me for a long time is how few winter solstice greeting cards are designed for mailing. For example, I bought some a few years ago that were printed on black paper (why do white-ink pens write so horribly?), and the mailing envelopes were a dark golden color that I ended up having to affix tape to so I could write an address. This year, I decided to change that by doing something myself. I first tried creating some designs in linocut before realizing that I hated the smell of the paint (🤢) and kept stabbing myself due to being out of practice, so I doodled some designs on my Supernote and used those instead. I didn’t order that many cards to sell because I have no idea if I’m just a snail mail outlier or not. If I’m not, I might do these for other holidays as well. For instance, maybe for Anthesteria, I can do another bike design that has a pannier on the rear rack with some flowers and wine bottles in it.

Both the postcards and the word searches are on Etsy.

I have big issues with consumerism, especially spiritual consumerism, but in the spirit of helping people connect with one another during a loneliness epidemic, providing some options to support community fun and accessible spirituality seems like a great way to do this. Postcards eliminate the stress of having to find a correctly-sized envelope, which will just end up in the recycling anyway, for messages that don’t contain very private information.

Etsying aside, I am continuing my practice at my shrine, and I encourage you to maintain your own connection to the Gods in whatever way feels most sustainable to you. Sometimes, when the news feels overwhelming and I despair that our democracy will survive its fascism fever, I think of the lines from Robbie Robertson’s “Take Your Partner By the Hand” (from Contact from the Underworld of Redboy) where he says, “She described it as like being locked in a car / With a madman behind the wheel / And the radio tuned to static.” It’s at times like these, when there’s the most violence and distress, that it becomes most important to keep at one’s daily shrine practice to be the foundation for whatever fate throws our way.