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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in pagan authenticity

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 For many Hawaiians, lava flows are a time to honor, reflect

The Real and the Store-Bought

If you want to see what real paganism—as distinguished from the store-bought kind—looks like on the ground, check out this article about Traditional Hawaiian response to the current eruption of Mauna Loa.

In a sacred version of volcano tourism, Hawaiian cultural practitioners are making pilgrimage to the lava flows that are the living presence of Madame Pele, both to witness, and to honor, the ancient Power that (literally) made their islands.

There, they make offerings of dance, chant, and prayer, as well as offerings of a more tangible kind: bottles of gin, red scarves, ti leaves, money, tobacco.

A goddess is present, and so we go to meet and to honor her. That's what the real thing looks like on the ground.

 

Standing With Our Backs to the World

 

I think of a Samhain ritual that I recently attended. The best I can say for it is that it was well-intentioned.

The ritual, rightly, began at sundown. During the Summer, from the ritual circle in its sacred grove, you can't see the Western skyline for the leaves; but now, with the trees newly naked, the setting Samhain Sun stood, splendid, upon the horizon.

A god was present, but no one paid any attention. (Well, I did: I slipped out of the circle, made the wonted observances, and—unobtrusively, I hope—slipped back in.) No, we were too busy casting our circle to notice, standing—as is, alas, all too often the way of neo-pagans—with our backs to the world.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

Several decades ago, writer Paul Kingsnorth went to West Papua to document the physical and cultural genocide being perpetrated on the local Indigenous peoples by the Indonesian army.

Traveling with some men of the Lani tribe, he (and they) came to a break in the trees, where they saw

a great sweep of ancient forest rolling off towards the blue horizon. Blue, green: there was nothing else. Everything could have been here at the Creation.

Spears on shoulders, the Lani men turned and sang together, quite matter-of-factly, a song that, Kingsnorth later discovered, was a song of thanks to the forest (Kingsnorth 16).

That Song of the Forest has haunted him ever since.

 

His life since then—assiduously documented in yearning, visionary prose—has been a search for what those tribesmen had, a state of being which his ancestors also once had, but which has long since been lost: a living community in spiritual relationship with the Living Land.

He left environmental activism, moved his family to a remote farm in western Ireland, hooked up with the local Alexandrians. (I gather that Alexandrians are thick on the ground in Ireland.) Still missing the Song of the Forest, he left the Alexandrians, and was recently baptized into the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Well, Paul, I wish you luck in your journey, and the Sun and Moon on your path. But what would you say if I told you that I could teach you the Song of the Forest? Not the Lani Song of the Forest, but the one that our ancestors used to sing?

 

In truth, I can't teach that song, to him or to anyone; I don't know it either.

Yet.

But here's the thing. Kingsnorth seems to have despairingly concluded that, since it's been lost, it's lost forever. But my experience over the past five decades leads me to conclude that, though we may not know the Song now, some day we will.

No, I don't know the Song of the Forest—yet. But let me tell you some of the songs that I do know.

I know the song that you sing when you see an eagle.

I know the song that you sing when you make offerings to the Fire.

I know the song of the Mask that the Horned wears when He dances among His people at the Grand Sabbat.

Fifty years ago, I didn't know any of these songs. Now I do. For this reason, I feel confident that our Song of the Forest is on the horizon, only a matter of time.

 

Ten years ago, a young woman—now a friend and colleague—came to ask me to be her teacher.

Naturally, I asked the question that you always ask under such circumstances: Why me?

Because what you have is the real thing, and I want it, she replied.

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  • Helga Hedgewalker
    Helga Hedgewalker says #
    So mote it be, and the sooner the better!

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

Time: The night of Holy Saturday

Place: A village in rural Greece

 

In the plaza outside the village church, the folklorist waits, along with the gathered villagers, for midnight, when the priest will come to the door and announce the resurrection of Christ.

The folklorist turns to the old, black-shawled yiayia (grandma) standing beside him.

Soon Christ will have risen, he says.

I hope so, she replies earnestly. Otherwise, we'll have no bread to eat this year.

 

Several things strike me about this story, which is a true story or, at least, was told to me as true.

First, the (one gathers, distinct) possibility that this year Christ might not rise.

Second, the conviction that the god's rising, or lack thereof, will affect the health of the crops.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

On the face of it, paganism sounds pretty easy.

You pick some god or goddess from Long Ago and Far Away. You buy a statue, you light some incense. Voilà: paganism.

But, of course, that's not paganism at all. Go ahead, buy all the statues and light all the incense that you want to.

Long Ago and Far Away, statues and incense: that's not paganism. That's a cartoon of paganism. At best, it's a place to begin.

Real paganism? Oh, that's much harder.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 Image result for tapers burning

How many Old Craft witches does it take to change a lightbulb?

—If candles were good enough for the ancestors, they're good enough for me.

 

A buddy had signed up for a correspondence course in a certain Wiccan trad. I asked him how it was going.

He told me about the first lesson. It was all about what color candle to burn in order to get what you want: green for money, purple for passion, that sort of thing.

Well, at least you've got to give them credit for going for results from the very beginning.

He says nothing; neither do I. I think about the definition of authenticity that a couple of friends and I hashed out over the course of one particularly gratifying weekend together years ago: Contextual cognitive resonance. I ask myself how long dyed candles have been around. Early to mid “20th” century, maybe?

Colored candles. This is your witchcraft?

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  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Back in the Paganolithic. I remember those days fondly.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    When I was very young we had some candles that were white with thin coats of colored wax on the outside. I think it was in the la
Does the Name Match the Claim? Using Historical Linguistics to Assess Claims of Pagan Continuity

Every word tells a story.

Unfortunately, it's not always the story that we want to tell.

Back at the end of the last century, it was not uncommon for pagan groups to claim unbroken continuity with the paganisms of the past. When someone makes such a claim, one way to test what they say is to look at the vocabulary that they're using to see if it matches their claims.

To take one preeminent example: in the 60s and 70s media witch Sybil Leek claimed to be high priestess of a Keltic tradition group in Hampshire's New Forest called Horsa Coven.

(Sorry, but after nearly 50 years in the Craft, I still cringe when I hear the term "high priestess." Talk about hokey.)

Now, “Horsa” has a pleasingly archaic sound to it: unsurprisingly, as it's an Anglo-Saxon/Old English name meaning “horse.” The fact that the name is Anglo-Saxon, however, sits uncomfortably with her claims of a “Keltic” tradition.

Horsa was the name of one of the two legendary Anglo-Saxon brothers who led their people to the Promised Land of England. (His brother was reputedly “Hengist,” which means “stallion”; the word survives into modern English as the first syllable of henchman.) The implication, I suppose, is that the tradition goes back to Anglo-Saxon times.

If so, the name itself disproves the claim. If the name had survived in continuous use since ancient days, it would automatically have modernized to "Horse." The fact that it didn't is proof that the name is a modern one, chosen for its archaic sound. Interestingly, one can say the same for the word “Wicca.”

Back in the early 90s, a group in the English Midlands calling itself Tuatha de Cornovii claimed to be a survival of the Iron Age Keltic tribe of the same name. Does the name match the claim?

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Card Tables of the Gods: Paganism, Good and...Not So Good

The festival organizers had chosen the one mostly flat place on the slope between the woods and Turtle Creek on which to lay out their ritual circle. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, it went downhill from there.

Mistake Number One. They'd designed their Circle using the "Quarter altar" model, with four card tables, one per quarter, each covered with a schmatte in a garishly bright “elemental” color.

On the living body of the valley's natural beauty, the cheap and artificial tables and cloths stood out like an open wound.

Moral Number One. When it comes to the gods, only the real and the beautiful are worthy.

Mistake Number Two. The landscape had a distinct and palpable flow to it, from the forest above to Turtle Creek below, and back again, running roughly ENE by WSW.

Unfortunately, the organizers had decided to lay out their Circle with a compass, thereby placing the Card Tables of the Gods in due East, South, West, and North.

Completely out of rhythm with the land around it, this skewed circle in fact impeded the valley's natural flow rather than augmenting it.

Moral Number Two. Regardless of what the books may say, real sacredness inheres in working with the landscape.

OK, Posch: so how would you have done it any better?

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