We are very pleased to announce that the forthcoming 3rd Annual Goddess Celebration for Women will be held on February 6th, 2010!  The goddess in focus for this event is Kuan Yin, Mother of Compassion.

Each year the events are more and more popular and exciting, and you can read all about the next Goddess Events Arizona event on our Calendar of Events page, where you can get more information, sign up for a reminder email notification, and as always keep up to date with all the various local events of Pagan persuasion!

Read more about Kuan Yin, Mother of Compassion: 3rd Annual Goddess Celebration for Women

In the coming weeks, there will be lots of changes coming to DesertMoonCircle.com, which means of course that there will be some outages while the software that runs the site is upgraded.

The upgrades will bring much needed bug fixes, welcome usability enhancements and an exciting new look and feel for the coming dark half of the year.

We hope that if you attempt to pay us a visit during one of the outages that you will try back again shortly afterwards as the outages will be relatively short and Gods willing, painless as well!

Thanks everyone for your understanding, and I'll be seeing everyone around! · Code Monkey

The Northern Winds will be open on Monday, May 25th for the Memorial Day holiday and are offering free Runic success spell kits with any purchase of $10 or more (limit one per customer).  The kits contain a 'gold' dollar, a candle, incense and instructions on how to perform the spell.  The kits are available for a limited time only, and are available while supplies last, so come early to be sure to get yours!

Fantasia will also be offering free prosperity stones and mantras with any purchase of $10 or more as well.

Both stores will be open from 9-4 Memorial Day.

Our apologies to everyone who signed up for a Vendor Page.  During configuration of the Vendors Page feature, some issues with the software came to light that posed a security risk.  We have contacted the manufacturer of the software and let them know what was going on and were promised a fix would be available soon, so in the meantime, the Vendor Pages feature will be put on temporary hold until the software has been patched properly.  Again, we express our sincere apologies to anyone seeking to use this community feature, and vow that once the software has been fixed to no longer expose our member's data that it will be installed and thoroughly tested before being made available once again.  Thanks for your understanding!

The publishing kit for vendors participating in the Vendor Pages program should arrive in participating vendors inboxes by the end of this week.  Information inside the kit will include sample banners, sizing charts, descriptions of how to edit your page and various other pieces of information.  If you have signed up for the Vendor Pages program and haven't recieved your publishing kit by the end of this week, please send an email to the site administrator and the information will be forwarded to you as soon as possible.

Thanks to all of the vendors who have signed on to participate, we look forward to helping you build your business!

Well, our Seeker search for the upcoming Year-and-a-Day classes is finally coming to a close, and what an experience it has turned out to be!  We received inquiries and communicated with approximately thirty individuals interested in joining us for a year of learning and discovery, more than twice the number of people than we had previously anticipated!

We must say that throughout the entire process, we have met and communicated with some of the most exciting and interesting individuals out there, and we would have loved to offer a slot in the upcoming classes to each and every one of them in, but alas, we cannot keep them all.  Through a grueling process of elimination, our nearly thirty inquiries had to be whittled down to a more manageable number, and in the end it came down to an individual’s alignment with our own beliefs, past participation in group working, and personal experience.  We are proud to say that there wasn’t a single person that we would have turned away, had it not been for the overwhelming response to our Seeker opening.  Every single candidate was an amazing person.

There is much to rejoice in the fact that we have witnessed a strong Pagan community that is evidently growing steadily, and we are proud to say that we have come face to face with some of the individuals who will help shape the future of the faith. We encourage them to continue to share their knowledge, energies and enthusiasm with others through continued participation in public events, classes and rituals, and wish them well in their continued search for a group in which they can grow and thrive.

We have contacted all individuals whom have been accepted into our Year-and-a-Day classes.  Thank you so very much to everyone we met for the opportunity to get to know you better, and we hope to see you again in the future when our Year-and-a-Day program commences once again.

Please join us in congratulating Barb Berkemeier, the lucky winner of our 2009 Imbolc giveaway, featuring a beautiful handcrafted Prosperity Wand from Touch of Mystic Wands!

We have been in contact with Barb, and will be meeting her shortly to present her with the Prosperity Wand, so be sure to check back often for pictures and updates!

Congratulations, Barb from the Priests and Priestesses of Desert Moon Circle, and all of us here on DesertMoonCircle.com!  We hope the wand brings prosperity and happiness to you always!

A winner has been drawn for our Imbolc Giveaway!  Stay tuned here to find out who the lucky winner was, as we will release their name once they have been properly contacted!

Thanks again to all those individuals who participated, and thank you to the many new people who came out to check out desertmooncircle.com in the process of registering for eligibility!  We hope to see you all enjoying the community features here on desertmooncircle.com!

We have received the wand for our Imbolc giveaway, and boy, let me tell you is this wand beautiful!  James did such a fantastic job on this wand, what a work of art!  I also had the opportunity to briefly meet and speak with James, and had a chance to look over some of the other wands that he has made over the years, all just as or more beautiful than the wand that awaits one lucky winner of our Imbolc giveaway.  So I encourage you, if ever you were interested in adding a wand to your magickal tools, this is definitely the man to speak to.

That reminds me too, having glanced at the calendar I see that there are only a few days left to register to win this gorgeous wand, so if you still haven't registered and would like a chance at winning this marvel of craftsmanship, be sure to get yourself registered on the website before noon on February 1st.  Good luck to you all!

In honor of the Imbolc Sabbat approaching at the end of the month, DesertMoonCircle.com has joined with Touch Of Mystic Wands to bring you a very special giveaway... a one-of-a-kind custom handmade cedar Wand of Prosperity to help see you through these tough economic times!  As always, the only thing holding you back from winning this beautiful handmade wand is that you must be a registered user on DesertMoonCircle.com to be eligible to win, so if your not already a registered user, be sure to get yourself registered to have a chance to win!  Click on the banner above for details!

What's even better is that James McDonald, the artisan and master wand maker responsible for our awesome prize has documented the entire process of turning an ordinary piece of wood into a beautiful and powerful magickal tool!  If you would like to see a preview of the wand that we are giving away to one lucky winner, or are just interested in the unique process that James goes through to create these magickal works of art, be sure to check out the article that James submitted to us - he documented the whole thing with photos and narration of just what is happening along the way!  Be sure to check it out!

It appears that with the full moon comes a bounty of fantastic things to do this weekend for those so magickally inclined.

Friday night, January 9th there is another awesome class from The Northern Winds, this weeks topic will be Synergy - it's a metaphysical support group led by Alan Schneider.  There is a $5 suggested donation, so please show your support and donate!

Also on Friday, the New Beginnings group meets up.

Saturday rolls in with the Healthy Spirit Expo hosted at VisionQuest books and spills over into Sunday for a weekend packed full of stuff to do at VisionQuest.

Finally, we have the public Drum Circle and Full Moon Ritual hosted by the Falcon-Wolf Norse Alliance that also takes place on Saturday evening!

Whew!  That's a lot going on!  To keep abreast of public events, be sure to check out our Calendar of Events for more information on the events listed above and get a heads up of other items of interest happening soon!

Congratulations to CrystalSparrow, the winner of our Northern Winds Gift Certificate giveaway!  We look forward to meeting you and presenting you with your gift certificate at The Northern Winds!

Look forward to more giveaways and contests throughout 2009.  Congratulations once again, CrystalSparrow, and thank you for joining us here at DesertMoonCircle.com and taking part in building a strong Pagan community!  What a way to kick off the new year! 

Happy New Year from your friends at Desert Moon Circle!

We wish you and your family a Happy New Year, and may you find prosperity, peace and happiness during 2009!

Well, the new year is upon us once again, and while some may abhor the uptaking of resolutions, we here at DesertMoonCircle.com are looking forward to 2009 with great enthusiasm, with a few resolutions of our own!

2008 was a great year for us, we came into our own as a coven; we made many, many wonderful new friends; we participated in a bunch of fantastic activities and events, we found a beautiful home for our covenstead with a room dedicated solely to ritual and coven use; we launched DesertMoonCircle.com; we exceeded our expectations and goals here on DesertMoonCircle.com by a long, long shot; and best of all, we initiated six new Priestesses and Priests into the community!

We anticipate that 2009 will bring more of the same things that have made DesertMoonCircle.com a success during it's infancy, and have made the Desert Moon Circle Coven itself stronger, wiser and more closely knit than ever before.  We have many, many new Seekers joining our family this year, and we look forward to participating and helping them along the way while they find their path.  We are thrilled at the prospect of expanding our family further, which in turns means that we will have new Desert Moon Circle Coven brothers and sisters out lending a hand and doing their part to help build a stronger and more unified Pagan community!

We also look forward to bringing you more great local coverage of Pagan events, interviews with movers and shakers within the local Pagan community, more giveaways and contests featuring local Pagan owned or Pagan friendly vendors, and continue to build a strong meeting place in DesertMoonCircle.com for the entire Arizona Pagan community to come to learn and grow with each other!  We look forward to serving you, the community, and ask that you join us in making 2009 a fantastic year that will always be remembered!

Blessed Be,
Desert Moon Circle coven and the staff of DesertMoonCircle.com

We had the pleasure of attending last month's New Moon Creations meeting, and we weren't sure what to expect as this is a relatively new group.  What we found was a well-organized evening of fun, craftsmanship and fellowship.

Be sure not to miss this December meeting, as you can tell from the article, we had a fantastic time - and you may just, too!

Our friend Dragon is our most trusted authority on crystal information. If ever you have a question about a stone, gem or crystal, Dragon is the man to ask. So when I heard that he was starting "crystal of the month" articles, and the first crystal was my favorite, Jet, I practically begged Caria to ask his permission for us to reprint it here.  Luckily, he agreed and we have some fantastic information to share with you about Jet...

...and Uncle Sam??

Uh huh, that's what we thought, too.  You had to know they existed, but you never really hear anything about Pagan groups on military bases.  That is, unless you are a Pagan in the military yourself.  And it just so happens, Desert Moon Circle's own Priestess Delphy is a recent veteran of the United States Air Force, and she provides us with an interesting look at Desert Sky Open Circle, held locally at Luke Air Force Base.  Very interesting stuff, indeed.  Click on through to read the whole story!

An interview with Bob Sommers of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ!

Learn a bit about Changing Hands' history, the selection they offer, the fantastic events that they sponsor and what they have to offer the Pagan community!

Be sure to check it out and keep an eye open for more articles as they appear on desertmooncircle.com!

Photo courtesy of Tempe Daily Photo