The Web of Blessings

River Devora is a multi-trad spirit worker, healer, Gydhja, Seidhkona and Santera. She has been an active member of the Bay Area pagan and polytheist communities since the early 1990s, and has led classes, rituals, workshops and other programs locally and nationally. In 2013, she founded South Bay Heathen Shenanigans, a ritual and learning group for folks interested in the spirituality, magic and folkways of pre-Christian Northern Europe. She initiated as a community priestess with Waxing Muse Coven in 1996, initiated as a priest of Ochun in 2011, and has oaths of dedication sworn to Odin, Freyr, Loki, Juksakka, and the Morrigan. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her extended human, animal and spirit family.

Wide as the Night Sky: Mediumship and Collective Identity. Also, Odin.

River Devora in The Web of Blessings

min read 11

I was going to write an article about an individual versus collective sense of self, about the importance of becoming proficient at shifting one’s understanding of self/identity from one of a singular identity to one of a collective identity as a tool to help deepen into connection with the Gods and Powers. I got at least 4 wobbly paragraphs into it, struggling to try and figure out what exactly I was trying to say. But…

Embodying the Sacred

River Devora in The Web of Blessings

min read 5

Each tradition and culture has its own understanding of the relationship between the physical body and the soul: some see the body as vehicle or vessel for the soul; some believe that the body is the physical manifestation of the soul and the source of our human magic; others believe the body houses a soul that is incomplete without the context of family, community or environment. Culture itself is enacted by the physical body through…