PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form
Recent blog posts

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

The Square: Geometry, Symbolism ...

OK, we're going to throw the bones in order to determine the god's will in a given matter, but first we have to give the bones a ground.

The ground is always either circular or square. Can anyone tell me why?

Good: it's a horizon, a world in microcosm. The horizon is a circle, and the square marks out the four directions. Circle and square are analogous: the circle is a curvilinear square, the square a rectilinear circle.

(Incidentally: these days people mostly cast circles, but back in the days of our people's wandering—nomads don't have fixed holy-places, mostly—our temporary sanctuaries were square.)

So, we begin by spreading out the casting-cloth on the ground. The casting-cloth is square and woven of linen. Why linen? Anyone?

Good: it's the ancestral fabric. Wool would be the other good option here. Either way, we're talking Web of Wyrd imagery here, right? The weaving of Fate? Of course, that's something that's intrinsic to our divination.

(In days before weaving, I suppose you'd have used an animal skin, but of course it would need to be the whole skin of a small animal, not something cut from a larger hide, right? Be thinking about why that might be, and what animal you'd want to use; we'll discuss it further next time.)

So, you lay out the casting-cloth. If we were outside, we'd align it with the corners pointing to the four directions, but since we're indoors, we align it with the corners pointing to the four walls.

Can anyone tell me why we lay it out like this, instead of with the four sides of the cloth parallel to the walls?

Last modified on

Fishing in Minneapolis Northwest

 

A priest, a minister, and a witch go out fishing one day.

The Sun comes out and it starts to get hot, but it turns out that the sunscreen has been left back in the car.

“That's OK,” says the priest, “I'll go get it.”

He climbs out of the boat, walks across the water, and gets the sunscreen out of the car. Then he walks back across the water and gets back in the boat.

The minister doesn't say anything.

After a while, they start to get thirsty, but the water, too, has been left in the car.

“That's OK,” says the witch, “I'll go get it.”

She climbs out of the boat, walks across the water, and gets the jug of water out of the car. Then she walks back across the water and gets back in the boat.

The minister doesn't say anything.

Finally it's time for lunch, but the food, too, has been left in the car.

“That's OK,” says the minister, “I'll go get it.”

He climbs out of the boat, and immediately sinks like a stone to the bottom of the lake. The priest and the witch pull him back into the boat, and he sits there sputtering.

“How come you two can walk on the water, but I can't?” he whines.

The priest smiles at the witch.

“Should we tell him about the rocks?” he asks.

The witch looks puzzled.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Let's face it, the ancestors were head-hunters.

According to the Roman geographer Strabo, writing in the first century BCE

The Gauls practice a custom common to many northern tribes. In battle, they hang the heads of their slain enemies around the necks of their horses, then at home they hang them on pegs in their houses.

The practice persisted for a surprisingly long time. While in Scotland, I paid a visit to the Well of the Seven Heads, where in 1663 a McDonald war-party stopped to tidy up the severed heads of seven clan rivals before presenting them to their chieftain.

Of course, the McDonald Himself probably didn't hang them around the Great Hall afterward.

What, I ask myself, would it be like to live in a home with severed heads hanging from the walls? While, say, you were eating dinner?

Surely they must have cured them in some way? Surely the stink would have been prohibitive otherwise? ("Oh Luvernios, not another one!") Of course, the old Celtic roundhouses lacked louvers—smoke-holes—over their central fires; smoke just percolated out through the thatch. It would have made for a smokey house-place, but also have kept down insects, and made an ideal environment for preserving meats. I suppose, with time, the heads would have dried and smoked along with the sausage and hams.

I look up into the eyes of the Green Man hanging above the computer. Like many pagans, I have many in my home: maybe 30 or so. (Every time I try counting them, the total is always different.)

Green Men we call them, but let's face it: they're Green Heads, mostly. In my own way, I suppose, I'm as avid a collector of heads as the doughtiest Celtic warrior.

Last modified on

young woman open black car door ...

The Minnesota Foot-Tap

 

How to Get into a Car: Summer

(Beltane to Samhain)

 

  1. Open car door.
  2. Sit in seat.
  3. Swing feet into car.
  4. Turn on ignition.
  5. Drive off.

How to Get into a Car: Winter

(Samhain to Beltane)

 

  1. Open car door.
  2. Sit in seat.
  3. Lift feet and tap together two or three times. (This is called the Minnesota Foot-Tap.)
  4. Swing feet into car.
  5. Turn on ignition.
  6. Turn on heat.
  7. (If necessary, get out of car and brush snow/scrape ice off windows. Then open door, sit, lift, and tap as above.)
  8. Drive off.
Last modified on

Deflategate 2018 Already Losing Air ...

 

AP: Minneapolis

Watching the Superbowl makes you stupider.

That's what a new study at the University of Minnesota shows.

“The long-term evidence is irrefutable,” says Dr. Stefano Pozzo of U of M Fairview Hospital. “More than 30 years of clinical data demonstrate a clear correlation between football-watching and loss of intelligence.”

IQ tests administered before and after watching the Superbowl show a clear decline of intellectual capacity in virtually all watchers, ranging from a loss of 2-3 points to as many as 25 points.

“The real surprise,” said Pozzo, “is that anyone should be surprised to hear this. Any objective observer can see that American football is a stupid and brutal game. It makes those that play it stupid and brutal, and—as the evidence now shows—it makes those that watch it stupid and brutal as well.”

In fact, data suggests a strong correlation between football-watching generally and cognitive decline among fans, but for some reason Superbowl watchers are more strongly affected.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
My Monster Powers February 2025 part 1

I look like me. As the weight melted off, thanks to my Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) , the bones in my face re-emerged. One day I happened to look in the mirror over the bathroom sink while I was washing my hands and was startled to see-- me.

"I look like ME." I said it out loud.

...
Last modified on

The Witches' Procession (Lo Stregozzo ...

 

Agostino Veneziano's enigmatic 16th-century engraving Lo Stregozzo (“The Male Witch”) has been mystifying viewers for nearly 500 years.

Four naked, muscular young men rush at a run into a wetland. (Note on the upper left the ducks that their coming has disturbed.) In their midst, an elderly woman, also naked—a witch? Hecate-Diana, the witches' goddess?—holding the witch's signature emblem, the bubbling cook-pot, rides the articulated skeleton of an large animal of indeterminate species (horse?). Beneath her mount, a thickset older man on all fours, also naked, awkwardly attempts to straddle two animated skeletons, also of indeterminate species.

There's much to unpack here, and I hope to do so in a future post. For today, though, I'd like to examine more closely the engraving's mysterious title.

Numerous copies of the etching have survived the centuries. Museums generally title it either "The Carcass" or “The Witches' Procession,” but that's not what Lo Stregozzo means.

Google-translate Lo Stregozzo and you'll get: “the sorcerer.” Well, kind of.

The word is clearly masculine singular. (Lo is the form that il, “the,” takes before Zs and certain Ss.) Stregone is the masculine form of strega, a (female) witch. Some would translate “wizard.” Me, I'd say “warlock.”

What about that ending, though? (Pronounce that double Z as ts, as in pizza.) -Ozzo in Italian is a (masculine singular) “augmentative suffix”: the opposite of a diminutive. It tells you that something is “big.” Whether or not we want to take this literally is another matter.

The same suffix occurs in maritozzo, literally “big husband,” a kind of central Italian sweet bun, and panuozzo, a stuffed Neapolitan sandwich. Draw your own conclusions.

So, the big question: who is the eponymous “big warlock” of the title?

Last modified on

Additional information