Author Archives

Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (www.barbaraardinger.com), is a published author and freelance editor. Her newest book is Secret Lives, a novel about grandmothers who do magic. Her earlier nonfiction books include the daybook Pagan Every Day, Finding New Goddesses (a pun-filled parody of goddess encyclopedias), and Goddess Meditations. When she can get away from the computer, she goes to the theater as often as possible—she loves musical theater and movies in which people sing and dance. She is also an active CERT (Community Emergency Rescue Team) volunteer and a member (and occasional secretary pro-tem) of a neighborhood organization that focuses on code enforcement and safety for citizens. She has been an AIDS emotional support volunteer and a literacy volunteer. She is an active member of the neopagan community and is well known for the rituals she creates and leads.

• The Holidays Are Coming: Let’s Celebrate the Saturnalia by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on December 5, 2021 • ( 7 )

  Here we are in December—and what a year 2021 has been. Let’s not even think about what we’ve survived—continuing pandemic, climate change, people with guns, violations of voting rights, the Orange T. Rex still at large. No no no. Let’s… Read More ›

• From the Archives: Gods of War by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on November 28, 2021 • ( 7 )

  Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,500 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost… Read More ›

• Fireless Altars and Crone Encounters By Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on November 10, 2021 • ( 21 )

  

  We’ve just entered November, the beginning of winter, the season of darkness. Twenty-odd years ago, I led a group of students through the Wheel of the Year in a class I called Practicing the Presence of the Goddess. (I also… Read More ›

• Looking Again at The Magic Flute by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on October 3, 2021 • ( 20 )

  

  I have just spent a week watching four productions of Mozart and Schikaneder’s 1791 opera. Four in a row! Now we all know that I adore musical theater more than almost anything else in the world. Operetta. Nelson and Jeanette…. Read More ›

• Teri Gray—Linked Up For Animals: An Interview by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on September 5, 2021 • ( 7 )

  

  My friend Teri Gray loves animals. All animals. Like us, she sees the dangers many animals are facing today, and she’s taking action to help them. I recently interviewed Teri, who you will see is a very smart woman who… Read More ›

• Occult Adventures with Walter Troll – A Truly True Story Part 2 by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on August 1, 2021 • ( 9 )

  

  Read Part 1 of this story here We want you as our earth slave. I put the pendulum away. I went into Charles’s bedroom and watched TV with him. But I was addicted. First thing Saturday morning—back to the pendulum…. Read More ›

• Occult Adventures with Walter Troll -A Truly True Story Part 1 by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on July 31, 2021 • ( 9 )

  

  I was born into a Republican, Calvinist, working-class family in Ferguson, Missouri, and was a teenager during the 1950s. Nothing remotely “spooky” or occult about my life. I was fortunate to discover the Unitarian Universalist Association during my freshman year… Read More ›

• Practical Lessons in Kindness from the Grasshopper and the Ant by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on July 4, 2021 • ( 7 )

  

  (With apologies to Jean de La Fontaine for significant changes to his fable) Note: We watch TV or read posts on the social media, and what do see? People attacking other people. People with guns shooting other people. Racist and… Read More ›

• Juno—Women Need Your Power Today! by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on June 6, 2021 • ( 9 )

  

  Just as each Roman man had his genius, or guardian spirit of masculinity, so did each woman have her juno, or guardian spirit of femininity. Juno ruled every woman’s life, every feminine occasion. In the civic life of Rome during… Read More ›

• A Wish-Fulfillment Dream by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on May 2, 2021 • ( 24 )

  

  Rest awhile, Dear Reader, and dream along with me. We’re standing on a corner, call it Main Street, Any City, USA. We’re chatting, passing the time of day, being happy we can stand among other people without the fear of… Read More ›

• Thrice-Born Athena, Pt. 3 by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on April 4, 2021 • ( 25 )

  

  Note: If you’ve been reading Athena’s story for the past two days (link to Part 2 here), you know what’s happened to her before her third birth. You’ve read her version as I heard it in my mind and wrote… Read More ›

• Thrice-Born Athena, Pt. 2 by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on April 3, 2021 • ( 9 )

  

  Read Part 1 here. Note: This part of the story concerns what nearly everybody who has read the mythology knows about the Goddess of Wisdom. But what you’ve read in, say, Edith Hamilton or Robert Graves is the patriarchal version…. Read More ›

• Thrice-Born Athena: A Secret History (Part 1) by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on April 2, 2021 • ( 16 )

  

  Note: Inspired by Mary Sharratt’s excellent post on February 13 about the heroine’s journey and by Elizabeth Cunningham’s beautiful novel The Wild Mother (who is Lilith), I took a dive into my archives and found this story about Athena, which… Read More ›

• What’s Done Is Really Done by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on March 7, 2021 • ( 13 )

  

  This is an encore performance of a satire I wrote in November 2019, when I thought Trump’s sociopathic behavior was at its height. Little did I know. Little did we know. Only a year later, following the 2020 election, we… Read More ›

• A Handy Spiritual Practice By Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on February 7, 2021 • ( 25 )

  

  Here’s a simple spiritual practice that I’ve been doing for longer than I can remember. During the regime of the Orange T. Rex, I started doing it at bedtime to calm my mind so I could go to sleep. We’re… Read More ›

• It’s Time to Revisit A Christmas Carol By Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on January 3, 2021 • ( 11 )

  

  Scrooge … became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew…. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them;… Read More ›

• It’s a New Day By Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on December 6, 2020 • ( 14 )

  

  It is just past mid-January. The almost-ex-prez is sitting at the desk, staring at his smartphone. It begins shaking in his hand. There is a pile of documents on the desk, his Sharpie lying on top. The Sharpie suddenly rises… Read More ›

• Happy Thanksgiving by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on November 1, 2020 • ( 11 )

  

  Will our families gather for Thanksgiving feasts this year? Will aunts and uncles and cousins come from near and far to sit around our dining room tables? Does anyone have a table that’s big enough for social distancing? As I… Read More ›

• The Quality of Mercy by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on October 4, 2020 • ( 10 )

  

  The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes… This speech (Act IV, scene 1) from The… Read More ›

• “We Must Have Music” by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on September 6, 2020 • ( 8 )

  

  In 1936, Sir Noël Coward (1899-1973), one of England’s greatest and most prolific songwriters and playwrights, wrote a song for a play called Shadow Play, which is part of a series of ten short plays gathered under the title Tonight… Read More ›

• Dr. Signature’s Whoopee Pack by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on August 2, 2020 • ( 11 )

  

  As I write this in late June, the news is still pretty depressing. Pandemic. Politics. Corruption. No no no. I can’t write anything current and cheery, so here’s another bit of distracting nonsense from my so-called archive. Back in the… Read More ›

• Practical Lessons in Kindness from the Grasshopper and the Ant by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on July 5, 2020 • ( 8 )

  

  (With apologies to Jean de La Fontaine for significant changes to his fable) Note: I first posted this story in 2016 and posted it again in 2019. As the pandemic drags on and the huge orange Tyrannosaurus Rex in the… Read More ›

• The Eldest, Truest Olympians by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on June 7, 2020 • ( 15 )

  

  Scene: A comfy lecture hall in the temple on the summit of Mount Olympus. The feminist historians have taken their seats. The eldest Olympians rise to speak. Let us attend to their words. I am Hera, Queen of All, Daughter… Read More ›

• Going With the Wind by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on May 3, 2020 • ( 17 )

  

  The wind changed during the night. Even as they slept, the Witch and the Ladies of the Magic Mirror felt it and stirred in their beds. Kahlil the raven, who was sitting on the roof, felt it, too, and as… Read More ›

• “Not If But When” by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on April 5, 2020 • ( 8 )

  

  As I’m writing this early in March, the CDC has recently said of the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) that it’s a question of “not if but when” the epidemic will strike the U.S. As we know, it started in… Read More ›

• A Modest Proposal by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on March 1, 2020 • ( 14 )

  

  In 1729, the Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), who was already widely known for his political polemics and satirical pamphlets and highly ironic letters to and about the literati of Georgian England, published “A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children… Read More ›

• Let’s Celebrate a God and a Goddess for February by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on February 2, 2020 • ( 7 )

  

  Back around the turn of the century when I was writing Pagan Every Day, I did a lot of research. I had to. I had to write something for every day of the year, including leap year day and a… Read More ›

• Let’s Try Creativity This Year by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on January 5, 2020 • ( 9 )

  

  As usual, I’m writing my post a couple weeks before you’ll be able to read it. I bet we’re all wondering in mid-December if 2020 is really gonna happen. Will we still be living in a civilization? Will there still… Read More ›

• Archy and Mehitabel by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on December 1, 2019 • ( 10 )

  

  Archy the Cockroach and Mehitabel the Cat were introduced to the world in 1916 by Don Marquis, a columnist for the New York Evening Sun. Marquis was more than a mere columnist; he was a social commentator and satirist admired… Read More ›

• Metamorphosis and a Press Conference: A Kafkaesque and Shakespearean Fantasy about an Unreal Individual by Barbara Ardinger

  By Barbara Ardinger on November 3, 2019 • ( 7 )

  

  Donald wakes up too early. Feeling confused and disoriented, he looks around the room. His bed has disappeared! He seems to be lying on the floor. Why? he asks himself, how’d I fall off my king-size bed? The floor (uncarpeted??)… Read More ›