Men's Spirituality

I audible gasped and cringed when I heard you offer up AJ Drew's books on male spirituality. I realize you're not familiar with that point of view (y'know, being a girl and all). The rest of your list is pretty good, honestly, but AJ's books? FULL OF CRAP. FULL OF CRAZY. He's ... a terrible author and his books reflect that.

My personal favorites on that list are Sons of the Goddess and Path of the Green Man. Of course, being a gay man in the Craft, I lean towards those books more naturally.

I'm not sure if there are any men's retreats that aren't specifically for gay men (Between the Worlds is for men-who-love-men) except [i]possibly{/i] Midwest Men's Festival (though I don't know how spiritual it is), but I think it'd be interesting to see how straight men in the Craft deal with being in the Craft and their perspective.

Thank you for hitting on this topic. I'd love to hear more podcasters take on the subject.

~ Daystar ~

H i Daystar!

In reading your post, your statement about straight men got me thinking. Being that I am a straight man that practices the Craft, I at first wondered just what you were talking about. Now, admittedly, information for the male Pagan is in short supply. Ingenuity and the will to Love Mother Goddess and Father God goes a long, long way. The information is there, and in many forms. The base message in every book applies to everyone. My beliefs are not governed by my sex, my sexual orientation, the color of my skin, my income, the clothes I wear or the music I listen to. My beliefs are governed by my heart, soul and mind. Together, they tell me that Mother Goddess and Father God is in us as well as all around us. Magick is real and can be used to hurt or heal. These are things I know are real, for me, I know it deep inside. I have a hard time understanding how a person can say that another person's beliefs are not valid, just from their appearance.

Hey, William,

I apologize for the extreme lateness of this response. I had meant to send it in August when your comment came through, but I was gearing up for BTW and it went completely out of my head.

What I meant by the sexual orientation thing is that because both Christopher Penczak and Michael Thomas Ford are gay, I tend toward their books more than I would, say, AJ Drew's Wicca for Men (*shudder*) or Isaac Bonewits' The Pagan Man. A good deal of that is because I tend to support GLBT authors, but also because I like their writing styles much more.

I'm sure there's more that I wanted or needed to say, but I can't for the life of me figure out what to say nor how to say it. I would, however, love to hear more from your point of view. :-)

Hi Daystar,

Thanks for getting back to me. I understand how life can get hectic.

Have a Blessed Samhain!

Daystar, if you don't mind me asking, what do you have against AJ Drew?