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Every culture needs an opening phrase that says: This story is set in mythic time.

“Once upon a time” says: folktale, not myth.

“In the beginning” is the wrong world, and (moreover) a mistranslation.

“In the Dreamtime” is profound, but it's someone else's profundity.

So lately I've settled upon “When Earth was young....”

It's a resonant phrase, this. Few are older than Earth, and surely none that we know (or love) so well. “Old as Earth,” we say. Surely when Earth was young means long ago, before things were as they are today, which is always a good way to begin a story.

I love that the phrase makes Earth a character in our story. We're the pagans; for us, Earth is a character in every story. Even if the story isn't directly about her, she's still a necessary character. If the story were directly about her, I would probably start off with a variation: Back when Earth was a girl....

I've even heard myself use the phrase in satire, as a way of making fun: In the early days of Paganistan, back when Earth was young....

Here's the best part of all, and the part that makes it mythic: we all know that time ourselves. We know it because we've seen it. In fact, we see it every year.

“In the old days....”

Lots of New Pagan narratives begin this way: implicitly, if nothing else. Back in Pagan Days, you see, we used to....

Then follows the story of what we did or thought or hoped for, back when Pagandom extended far.

In the old days isn't good anthropology. Good anthropology requires specifics of time and place. In northern Staffordshire during the 1850s.....

But in the old days isn't anthropology: it's myth. Back in the Pagan Dreamtime, in the days before May Eve, the young bucks would spend time in the woods building May bowers. That way, you'd have someplace (relatively) private to bring your sweetheart back to after the bonfire revels.

Or so they say.

Don't mistake in the old days for history, although it may be that too. When pagans talk about the Old Days, we're not really talking about how it was.

What we're really talking about is how it's going to be.

It is Lunasa in a week's time. Here in Ireland the hints of autumn have come early. The billberries are already plump. My husband has cut down some rye grass for me to make harvest decorations. The rowan berries are already reddening.  Everything in nature feels a bit rushing the season, early, out of sync somehow. The actual weather has been bucking previous summer trends as well.  We have had long spells without heavy rain, only soft smatterings, more extended bursts of sunshine than unusual, but also warmer and more humid spells, with lots of oppressive low cloud. Which may not be so unusual since our celestial, astrological weather is pretty maverick right now, too. But this summer season has also felt like an extended dreamtime to me.

I know that in some places readers are drowning in record rainfall. My friend in Arizona has endured 50C/120F days with only water condensers to cool them down. The hot, humid NE USA means my friend with MS is very grateful for supermarkets that are open 24/7; she has to avoid the heat of the day to do shopping since that might trigger an episode.

Banaitja is the next divinity on the Atheist’s list. Unfortunately, I can find extremely little about this divinity. I know Banaitja is an Aborigine creator deity from the Northern Territories…but that is it. I can’t find whether it is a title, a name, male or female or even something else. As I was searching I kept reading about the Dreamtime. The concept caught my imagination. I offer up the following in tribute to Banaitja: