I am very fortunate to be marrying into a Chinese family so I have been learning about the traditions. Coming up this week is the official celebration of the Harvest Moon. In China, the full or Harvest Moon in October is celebrated with mooncakes, which are offered to the Goddess Chang-O, the Lady in the Moon. This is the time when wheat and rice are harvested, making it an important time of thanksgiving for food to have on hand through the winter season.
The rice and the wheat are baked into cakes that look like the big round moon up in the sky and are used as offerings, along with melons and pomegranates, to the goddess. The women making the mooncakes put their intentions into them by whispering secret wishes into the batter. The unifying action of blending and mixing the tasty cakes represents family harmony. One sweet aspect of this ritual is the selection of a young girl to enter the “heavenly garden.” At the ritual feast for the goddess of the Harvest Moon, this young lady becomes the prophet of her family and community, and she is urged to share her visions about the coming year and the prosperity of the village or the land. Feasting on mooncakes and other ritual foods is followed by games and singing under the bright light of Chang-O’s moon. Here is a traditional wish for the season
The term witch’s ladder has a few meanings, but here I use it to designate a spell made by tying knots in a length of cord. Various items, such as feathers and beads, might be tucked into the knots.
It occurred to me that perhaps a witch’s ladder could be made not by making knots and inserting items into them, but by spinning a cord—actually creating a cord using the ancient art of spinning fibers together—while spinning into the fibers a length of strong thread onto which beads had been strung.
After all, there must’ve been a time in history when a witch’s ladder was not necessarily made by tying knots in a cord, but by actually creating a cord using the ancient art of spinning fibers together. That seems inevitable, given the magic inherent in spinning.
Outdoor altars are usually of a temporary nature and are all the more lovely for it. The beach is a wonderful place to set up a one-day altar on driftwood with seaweed and shells. There, unless the beach is too crowded, you can commune with the water deities and seek your deepest reaches of spirit. Forest, farm, and meadow offer earth and sky and the sanctity of our mother earth upon which to build your altar. As you do so, reflect upon your connection to the ancients, We follow in their footsteps.
Whenever you begin a new project, or if you hit a roadblock in an ongoing endeavor, you should call upon the Goddess, the god Pan, any of the three Fates, or the nine Muses, each of whom can guide you toward your personal wellspring of inventiveness. Recite aloud:
Holey stones are part of a long magical curative tradition in the UK. Different regions of the UK used the stones for different uses, throughout the country holey stones are known as hagstones, witch stones, snake stones, Druids stones and mare stones to name a few. These stones were used to curing eye issues curing diseases in cattle, protecting horses from night-hags and preventing nightmares and to help children through teething (which in the 1700-1800's in Glasgow, Scotland was the cause of a considerable infant mortality).
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
