Dark Wings Descending

This book is far and away my favorite book regarding the history of modern Pagan witchcraft and also happens to be written by my favorite author on the subject: Ronald Hutton. While I can understand why many modern Pagans may have been offended by his assertions, I truly believe that it is a book that should be read by anyone that has described them self as Pagan. Even if one does not follow the path of Wicca, it is a crucial book to dispel any romantic notions one may carry about the practice: an unbroken lineage of witchcraft which dates back until ancient times, or that in ancient times society was matriarchal, or even that Gerald Gardner possessed a doctorate degree). It’s a dense read in nature, but remains pleasantly absent of the fluff one can expect to find in many modern Pagan books. It is an honest work of historical literature.
Hutton has established a high standard of scholarship in Pagan research that was regrettably absent from previous works whose authors have attempted to write on the subject. Hutton makes no attempt to pander to anyone; he neither romances modern witches, nor does he condemn them for their practices to appeal to the common reader.
The book itself is divided into many chapters which are grouped into two large sections: Macrocosm and Microcosm. The Chapters which fall under “Macrocosm” discuss the larger pieces of the witchcraft puzzle. They discuss how the modern pagan movement started in the hearts of poets and romantics who longed to return to nature in order to escape the industrialization of the modern world. Popular poets at the time (Such as Keats and Shelley) were largely responsible for sowing the seeds of naturalism through study and admiration of the Greco-Roman deities. It is through this method that many of the native British deities (and those of ancient integrative texts by the Romans in Britain) became synonymous with those of foreign origin. Chapters discuss how Wicca established the archetypal God and Goddess, how it’s High and Low Magics were constructed, and which folklore and witchcraft figured in to form a sort of patchwork quilt of reconstructed traditions. Together, they set the groundwork for modern witchcraft.
In the section “Microcosm”, Hutton discusses the heavy hitters and founders within the modern Witchcraft movement such as Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, Aidan Kelly, Margaret Murray, the Folklore Society, the Golden Dawn, and many others who worked to establish order and contributed in their own ways to make Wicca an official religious movement. The book goes on to discuss the problems with communication and scholarship, and how sometimes new books were written based upon the fabrications of others which were taken as fact. Over time, a lot of the truths of modern witchcraft had been diluted and legitimacy had been lost.
A sampling of some of my favorite quotes are:
“It is an irony that, by contrast, many modern pagan witches identify themselves much more closely with traditional cunning craft, and yet, despite some linkages (which will become plain later), in their case the differences are greater than the similarities. They have much more in common with the stereotypical images of witches in the nineteenth-century popular culture; the very beings who were regarded as the natural enemies of the charmers and cunning people, representing the opposite aspect of magic.” -page 111
“The overwhelming majority of these have been agnostics, atheists, or individuals who answer to the name of Christian but do not attend church except for rites of passage. When I have informed such people of my research, far and away the most frequent question which they ask of modern witches is not “From what social and economic group are they drawn?” or ‘What motivates them to take up such a spirituality?’ or ‘How does their religion compare or contrast with others?’ or even ‘What do they believe?’ It is again and again, ‘Do their spells really work?’ –page 271
Hutton forces us to re-examine the popular ideas that are presented both from the now-classical works on the occult and challenge many modern perspectives and extract the truth from the lies. It is an especially valuable work in a time in which modern Pagans are plagued with bad stereotypes by misinformed individuals. In order to correct this, we absolutely must come together and review all of our sources for appropriate scholarship and honesty rather than accept the diatribes produced by people with pet theories who use Paganism as their venue to push their agenda. I really appreciated Hutton’s objectivity and unwillingness to soften blows to flawed scholarship, no matter how much they are loved by the masses. In that sense, his serious attempts at establishing real historical scholarship for the Occult and Paganism is both groundbreaking and significant.

(word count 797)

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Mabon: The Celebration of the Harvest Home

Beneath the sweltering sun of late summer, the fruits of the planting season have ripened. The golden grains of once-green stems sway beneath the winds of tumultuous weather as they lay in wait for their reaping. The wheel of the year having turned once more, we arrive at Mabon: the celebration of the second harvest and the Autumn Equinox.

Mabon, perhaps moreso than any other of the festivals on the widely accepted Pagan Calendar year, is a joyful celebration of community and the true reward that comes of hard labor. It is a time of coming together as a community to acknowledge the accomplishments of hard work to enjoy the freshly harvested fruits that it yields; a time of good food, good company, and thanksgiving. The festival is a blending of Celtic and Germanic traditions that coincide with the Autumn Equinox; the time when day and night hold equal time with one another. The neo-Pagan term ‘Mabon’ was coined in recent years by Aidan Kelly in reference to a Welsh god, Mabon ap Modron, whose name derives from the Brythonic and Gaulish name Mapanos. However, the equinox harvest celebrations were not only limited to the world of the Celts; it was also celebrated in ancient Greece as a celebration of the harvest of the grapes and grain, and to the colder northern reaches of Europe, the Norse began the celebration of Winter Finding. In fact, it is fair to say that most cultures in the northern hemisphere celebrate this time of the second harvest in ways unique to their own local customs and flavor. While the equinox itself takes place on a singular day, the harvest festival season spanned the time of nearly a month as dictated by nature herself.

In the ancient British Isles, the very early autumn was simultaneously one of the most stressful and rewarding times of year. After a few months of lighter field work, it was a time to buckle down and harvest all of the crops that needed reaping. The reaping itself was performed by hand, and once the corn had been felled there was only a small window of time to gather the fallen grain before the next rains fell. Every able bodied man, woman, and even child was out in the fields reaping and gathering as quickly as possible. Games quickly grew out of the hard labor, and homesteads began competing with one another over who could finish the task of harvesting their crops first. As help was often necessary, travelers and members of other families would often work in exchange for a share of food and drink. Other larger farmsteads partitioned some of the crop off to the smaller farms and their families under them. Once the act of reaping the entire field had been completed (a task largely dominated by men), the task was then turned over to the women to glean the remainder of the crop. Gleaning is the act of gathering remnants of the harvest from the field, which was even a legal right in nineteenth century England, and often the women of the town would elect a ‘harvest queen’ to organize the gleaning efforts.

Perhaps one of the more controversial of the harvest celebrations was the ceremony and mystery surrounding the last sheaf of a crop. Many of the beliefs of ancient religious significance have been lost to time, although there is still evidence to suggest that there is a decidedly religious aspect to the festivals following the harvest. Some communities believed that the spirit of the fallen grain would concentrate into the last standing few, and so that last sheaf would have its own personification of the crop-that-was. In this sense, the essence it carried would bear some form of the power of the spirit of the crop. Others believed that the last sheaf bore a different sort of symbolism unrelated to religious notions: that it was the final stretch of the hard work that had been done, and it became as a trophy of the harvest experience. Belief in the significance of the last sheaf, of a crop varied by region, and as such each region also applied their own custom as to its treatment. Much of the time, it is transformed into a humanoid shaped corn dolly. (The corn referenced here is not the maize we are familiar with in North America, but the grain crop of old.) These dollies were offered a place of honor in the harvest home, included in parades and festivals, and sometimes presented to other homesteads who’s reaping had not yet concluded as a jesting reminder to ‘hurry up the process, our reaping is already finished’. Ronald Hutton tells us that the dollies were given names appropriate by region, such as: the Cailleach, Carline, Carley, Wrack, the Old Witch, the Queen, the Mare, the Maiden, the Hare or the Gander. The names support the supposition that the dolly was believed to possess an animism which represented the spirit of the crop, or even a grain goddess whose name has been lost to time.

In modern times, the traditions of harvest festivals and corn dollies are retained and given new life as symbols of a time long past, before the birth of mechanized farming. The spirit of these autumn harvest festivals have carried on through fairs held in farming towns and in Christian churches who aimed to offer a celebration with which to boost the morale of the community. Houses and public buildings are bedecked in the trappings and fruits of the season to help rejoice in hard work and good company. It is a time to give thanks for all of the hard work that has been achieved, take comfort in knowing that all are prepared for the oncoming winter, and enjoy the good bounty of the harvest.

References:

Hutton, Ronald The Stations of the Sun, Oxford University Press 1996

The Asatru Alliance: http://www.asatru.org/ Asatru Holidays, The Asatru Alliance of Independent Kindreds POST OFFICE BOX 961, PAYSON, AZ 85547 USA/VINLAND

Nilsson, Martin P. Greek Popular Religion: Rural Customs and Festivals (1940), http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gpr/gpr06.htm

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My Home Shrine

This is my altar as of April, but it changes depending on the season and whatever my prayers are focused on at the time. It’s in my bedroom, right next to my bed so I see it in the morning and when I go to bed at night.

As of April 09

Starting on the left and working right:
As a photographer and an artist, I use a lot of photos on my Altar to personalize it. The first photograph is of a large oak tree in the pouring rain I photographed a while ago in dedication to my Grandmother.  A bag of various stones lies in front, which I use for practical purposes.

The large green bottle is an incense burner that I love because it’s pretty worry free.  The fallen ashes gather in the bottom. Just behind the incense bottle is a bottle of Tullemore Dew Whiskey, which  my patron and I share on occasion, and other times strictly as offerings to Her. The photograph leaning against the Whiskey is one that I took at my childhood beach house of a tree that I’d become familiar with on the shore of the Potomac River.

There is a cluster of smoky quartz in front of that, being a practical rock that I use for a few things like meditation. The forefront there is a stone candle holder with Celtic cranes carved in, and a black candle for meditation and illumination. There’s a lighter there for me to light the candle with. (I only use black candles on this altar.)

The large blood red statue is of my patron goddess, The Morrighan. The piece is central to my altar, located as close as possible to the flame to cast Her shadow on my wall. (My altar is very shadows oriented.) Just next to her, I have a black wire tree that holds a number of my spiritual necklaces so I can charge them up. It also casts an interesting shadow on my wall.

You might notice that I have a fountain there. It too, is shadow oriented and casts the shadow of two trees on the wall, plus the wire one that casts a third tree. The fountain in itself represents fire, well, and tree. It is glorious for meditation.

The dried flower in front was collected from the camelia bushes at my Grandmother’s house. Fond memories. There’s a little tangerine quartz point, a crystal quartz point, and a tumbled lepidolite that followed me home one day on my head. Don’t ask.

Beneath the entire thing is a holographic black placemat that is covered in ravens. When you move around the altar, their wings flap. SOMEWHERE hidden in this picture, there’s a little raven statue. I feel like I should be saying “how many ravens can you spot in this picture?” because there are quite a few hidden throughout.

The Lamp is a functional light source. Not too much to be said about the lamp. I intend to add more as I collect the pieces I require to represent Panther and Bunny. And I think the time is quickly arriving that I have …something….present for Athena. We will see what the future holds.

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Fertility

At first glance, fertility can seem one saucy little Virtue. However, fertility is really the ability to bear fruit. Creativity, Inspiration, and the ability to act as catalyst from which many things spring is the primary function of being fertile. Its focus lies on the value of reproduction and cultivation.

Fertility of the mind and of the body is governed by creativity and passion. It is where our soul’s fire is located and our ability to thrive from our interactions with what we are given.  Take into consideration the analogy of a fertile field versus the fertile human mind: When seeds are sewn under the correct conditions (thanks wisdom!), life will grow there.  A barren land is as devastating as a barren mind; nothing can grow there and it will remain that way unless cultivated. To achieve fertility, one must learn to listen to inspiration and act as a conduit of spirit. Whatever spirit moves you, allow yourself to be moved. Make something of nothing and dance in the fire of your soul. Surrender to the waves of spirit.

(179 words)

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Moderation

Moderation is a Virtue that acts as the key to all Virtues. Aristotle inferred that moderation was desirable if a person wished to be virtuous because it was neither too much or too little. As a general rule, all things should be done in moderation, as an overabundance of something can create a fulsome lifestyle of excess and waste. A shortage of something creates starvation and incompletion.

Moderation speaks to us of our appetites for everything. I strive to live my life in moderation except for a few caveats worth mentioning. For me, sometimes ‘good enough’ is not nearly enough. I do not wish to settle for anything but excellence, although I am not always left with a choice in the matter. One cannot become a great person if one cannot exceed the norm. I suppose that I am an advocate of moderation of extremes; allowing extremity when it is not destructive to one’s integrity and goals.

On the Christian standard, Virtues and Vices are opposite one another on the spectrum, and yet they are told that they are to strive towards Virtue. In Druidism, as in all things, we seek the third option rather than the duality we often see reflected elsewhere. Moderation is our ideal for excellence, whereas Christianity strives for the unattainable goal. Not to be critical of Christianity; I grew up Catholic and old philosophies die hard.

Today, I have explored the 9 ADF Virtues, and the Catholic virtues in detail to discover how I truly felt about them. I prefer imperfection if it is honest, because I find honesty is important to achieving Excellence. I often see Excellence as indicating over-achievement, but I see it a bit more as careful attention and management of one’s appetites; knowing when it’s okay to be moderate and when to give all you can.

Living a warrior lifestyle of excellence and achievement (physically and mentally) sometimes crosses paths with the more druidic path of intellectualism and scholarship. Using moderation, I try to find a healthy blend of the two, as I feel they serve somewhat different functions.  I frequently put my all into everything I do, while still maintaining the careful knowledge and consideration necessary to understand my actions and the impact they will have.

(375 words)

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Hospitality

I find the concept of hospitality as a virtue almost as integral as wisdom is as a virtue. My entire life I was raised by my Grandmother to offer good hospitality because of the human need we have for comfort, stability, and kindness. Hospitality can be defined as the social art of kindness.

My father’s line descends from a long and somewhat goofy line of Irish Catholics, and so my Grandmother was raised in the Irish traditions of hospitality as well as some of her own invention. To be hospitable is to pay kindness to others in the hopes that it will be reciprocated. A gift for a gift is the family standard.

Hospitality as a Virtue can be relegated to the home hearth: treating visitors with kindness, making them comfortable, feeding them, entertaining them, respecting them.  It is the art of making a house a home to your family and friends. As an act of love for others, it never became tiring. Chores were not chores, rather they became actions that signified one’s appreciation for others.  It is a proud tradition that I strive almost constantly to achieve, and continue to persevere through my failings.

It was absolutely essential to cultivate a welcoming and stable environment for family and friends, especially during the rearing of children. In my own life practice I attempt to make friends as comfortable as I am able when they are here, provide good food and entertainment and try to accommodate them as best as I can. When one seeks to lead a virtuous life, it is necessary to find sanctuary; there is very little that can compare with the sanctity of the home.

(279 words)

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Perseverance

Perseverance is the art of never giving up. It is stubbornness, steadfastness, and holding on through whatever obstacles life presents you with. Perseverance can sometimes require a lending hand from Courage when the path ahead is concealed.

Growing up by the sea has leant me special insights as to the value of perseverance. I liken the virtue to that of a lighthouse keeper; a person who’s dedication and perseverance is a literal matter of life and death. In modern times, lighthouses have largely been converted to automated, unmanned towers. In older times though, the lighthouse had to be lit and remain lit, which required 24 hour care and maintenance from a living person. The light must never go out, or people will die. While giving up does not always result in loss of life, it does guarantee that the initial goal will never be realized. It is an automatic failure. The vision will be lost, and courage will not have been tested.  Without perseverance, one cannot expect to dedicate themselves to anything including becoming a virtuous person. True happiness is not automatic; it is a reward.

Perseverance runs hand in hand with dedication, as both are qualities that will see a person through to the end result.  No matter how bad the storm gets, how high the winds blow, how powerful the waves crash against you, none of that is as important as sticking to your path and enduring it; both for your sake, and the benefit of others you share your life with.

(254 words)

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Integrity

To have a sense of integrity, one must first have a healthy sense of honesty with oneself.  It is important to accept the reality that we are all composed of flaws and boons, and in knowing oneself it becomes easier to understand and relate to values. It is the ability to maintain a functioning level of personal honor and worth.  Sometimes this requires the assistance of some of the other Nine Virtues, such as Courage when facing off with an opponent that might challenge your worth or values.

Once a set of values have been acquired, Integrity becomes the act of not selling yourself short, and not settling for less than your worth.  It can be seen as the avoidance of acquiescing to actions that might compromise your beliefs.

Beliefs, value and integrity; all three speak to us of involvement with morality. Is morality truly the meaning of integrity in the strictest sense of its definition? I believe that it’s more than that. Morality indicates a set of values which occur outside the realm of Virtue. Morality is subjective; it can vary from culture to culture and morph over time to coincide with popularly held beliefs of the time. Morality is nearly synonymous in today’s world with Dogma; a Greek word adopted by much of Western culture to explain the ‘rules’ that outline a faith. Certainly, one with a good sense of integrity would stick to such a system of morality if they had adopted it, but morality is a human invention that must be learned.

What is to become of those people who do not have access to an already existing set of morals to ascribe themselves to? Do they lack integrity then because of the absence of established social mores? I don’t think they do. Integrity speaks of more than morality alone; it also speaks of personal honor and worth.

Integrity can sometimes lead us to the dangerous waters of pride and egoism, just as well as worthlessness and stagnancy. To hold good integrity, one must be moderate and lie somewhere between the two. How do you determine whether or not your own integrity has been compromised? Without a good sense of honesty, it’s difficult to tell. Remember your worth, and your intuition will guide you.

(376 words)

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Courage

Courage is the ability to do what you are afraid of; to face what you fear most and know will likely cause you great pain or suffering. For me it is crossing high bridges, or observing the view from high atop any man made structure. It is holding a snake in the palm of my hands and observing the beauty of the beast, while seeking to calm the storm in my stomach that screams for me to run as far from it as I can. It is speaking up when others are afraid to, and acting when others are afraid to act. It is standing in front of a group of your peers and singing even when you feel their eyes upon you. It is holding a chronic diagnosis in your hands and knowing that it will likely end you, you keep living.

Courage is giving away your heart  in love when you know that it will be broken.

To some, these actions may seem foolhardy for someone who would be afraid of these things. They don’t understand why we face the challenges that they are too afraid to do again and again. And why do we do this? For some, it is a call to valor. For others, it is positive self affirmation.  Ultimately positive reinforcement to affirm one’s worth helps us to achieve our goal of happiness. This is especially true in today’s society where it is harder than ever to love oneself; an act alone that takes courage.

(251 words)

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Vision

The importance of vision is the ability to see the whole picture, and imagine greater. Vision helps you set goals, while the other virtues help you realize them.  Vision itself does not discern greater value for good plans or lesser value for bad plans, only the ability to imagine.  The creation of goals also lies alongside (and sometimes crosses into) the realm of the value of fertility.

As a member of the ADF today living in a nation in which Pagans (and especially Druids) are in the minority, it is important to have a clear cut goal for the future. Our collective vision may be a mission statement, or a proclamation of intention, but it is important to be able to view the entire picture to make our growth as a religious organization a reality. Having a clearly focused goal increases its chances of being realized.

The other important aspect of vision lies within the literal context of the word. Vision is also the value of having sight beyond mere sight. Vision can be the art of viewing an idea presented to you through inspiration or divinatory means. Through divinatory tools and adherence to the other virtues, this virtue can be cultivated and honed into a truly valuable asset. The realm of vision is that of what lies beyond the reach of our normal sight distance, figuratively speaking.

(228 words)

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