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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Old Craft mythology

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Say It with Symbols

The sabbat site was off a rural road. We needed something to mark the entrance, something that would say, to those in the know, “Here Be Witches."

A sign?

A bunch of helium balloons?

In the end, I nailed a deer skull to the top of a fencepost. From every tine, a long red ribbon fluttered.

Even the youngest among us can read that rune.

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Earth and Her Two Husbands: A Folk-Tale of the Latter-Day Hwicce

Well now, Earth had a dilemma on her hands, and no mistake.

Two she loved, and how to choose between them?

Sun: so beautiful, so steady, him of the piercing insight.

And Thunder: so passionate and irascible, so wild and unpredictable.

And how to choose between the two?

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Bad Boys

I was regaling a friend of mine with Old Craft tales of the god of the witches. Being Wiccan, she hadn't heard most of them before.

“Wait a minute,” she says. “So: he sees that we're cold and hungry, and he steals the fire of heaven to warm and to feed us?”

“Right.”

“And he kills his own brother because they're both in love with the same woman?”

“That's what they say.”

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Daughter of Sun and Thunder

Sun lives in the east and walks to the west. A god of regular habits, his nature is warm and dry.

Thunder lives in the west and walks to the east. His nature combines both fire and water: a volatile god, much given to outburst.

Unlikenesses such as these are wont to breed fierceness in both love and battle.

And having battled and loved, the daughter of their reconciliation is Rainbow.

(So they may do; after all, they are gods.)

Rainbow is a gentle and well-loved goddess, giver of golden joy. Daughter of reconciliation, she champions unity among peoples.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Tale of the Horned Skier

If ever you wondered who in ages of ages first invented the art of skiing, this 4000-year old petroglyph from Rødøy ("Red Island") in Norway should leave little doubt.

That wily old Guy with the Horns: father of arts and sciences, wellspring of human culture. Is it not he who brought us Fire and instructed us in its use? Is it not he who taught us to hunt, and gave us the Old Law: to take no more than is needful, and to kill both quickly and ruthfully?

The story of how he taught us to ski has been lost to time. Can we doubt, though, that it was originally a hunter's tale?

It may be that the tale of the Horned One, the Two Serpents, and the First Skis is not, after all, lost beyond all recovery.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Robin of Sherwood: An Appreciation

12th century England, the yeomanry crushed beneath the heel of their Norman overlords. Shooting a deer to feed your family is a capital offense. The people cry out to their ancestral god to free them.

And Herne, ancient god of the forest, hears his people's cry. He calls a dispossessed young English nobleman, Robin of Loxley, to be his son and to lead his people in their struggle against Norman oppression.

This is the heady premise of Richard Carpenter's landmark Robin of Sherwood, which aired in the UK from 1983 to 1985, the first television series to be shaped by the newly-emergent paganisms of the West. In the process, it transformed forever both the Robin Hood mythos and modern paganism itself.

That's a lot to say for one TV series.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Well, I don't usually endorse non-pagan businesses, but...um, there's this company named for a large South American river.... Loo
  • Anne Newkirk Niven
    Anne Newkirk Niven says #
    Steven, where the heck did you get ahold of the series? I've been looking for it on DVD or Blu-Ray for ages, to no avail.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Primal Fire

There's no true religion without fire.”

Robert Cochrane

 

A horn calls: the Voice of Thunder, speaking the Primal Word.

 

A young man runs in, bare-chested. He's carrying a torch. The flame streams behind him as he runs, like the tail of a comet.

He rings the clearing once, then darts to the center and lights the laid and willing wood.

And so we begin.

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