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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Hwicce

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Thews of Witchdom

The old-time Tribe of Witches didn't have a separate word for “religion.”

Or “tradition.”

Or “morals.”

They had one word for them all.

The Hwicce—the Anglo-Saxon tribe (and later, kingdom) that (according to some) gave rise to the name and lore of today's witches—spoke their own dialect of Old English, the language which (after a crossbow marriage with Norman French) gave rise to Modern English.

Living in a state of cultural wholeness that we can only fantasize about today—what culture critic Stephen Flowers would call “integral culture”—their word ðéaw denoted many of the shared things that together make a people a people: Religion. Custom. Tradition. Usage. Virtue. Conduct. In the plural, it also meant virtues, (good) manners, morals, morality.

Imagine a world in which all these things were the same thing. That was the world of the witches.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Language Remembers

Tiw. Woden. Thunor. Frig.

Until recently, no one in the English-speaking world had worshiped these gods for a thousand years. But all this time they've been hiding in plain sight. Their names are on the tongues of every English-speaker whenever we say the days of the week.

The language remembers.

The Old English word ós, cognate with Old Norse áss (singular of æsir), designates a '(pagan) god,' and so fell out of use after the coming of the new religion. But all those English names that begin with Os—Oswald (“god-rule”), Osbert (“bright god”), Oscar (“god spear”) among them—have kept the word alive.

The language remembers.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Lords and Ladies

According to Edred (“Bad Boy of Ásatrú”) Thórsson's ground-breaking 1999 work of revisionist witch history, Witchdom of the True, those seeking Keltic origins for Wicca are barking up the wrong tree of life.

They should instead, he says, be sniffing around the roots of Yggdrasil. Historically speaking, the Lord and Lady of modern Wicca, he holds, are actually none other than Frey and Freyja.

It's a contentious idea, especially among contemporary heathens.

We don't know whether or not the heathen English worshiped Frey and Freyja. It's certainly possible that they did, but we have no proof. (Anglo-Saxonist Stephen Pollington calls the evidence "circumstantial.") Considering how little we know about pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religion, the lack of evidence doesn't prove much.

If, however, the Hwicce—the Anglo-Saxon tribe which, according to maverick archaeologist Stephen Yeates, gave rise to modern witchery—did indeed know Frey and Freyja, we can say what they would likely have called them. Both Norse names have cognates in the Old English word-hoard.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Mother Night

“Mother Night”: a resonant name. Midwinter's Eve: the night that gives birth to the rest of the year.

To the Hwicce, the Anglo-Saxon tribe ancestral (some say) to today's witches, it was Módraniht: the Night of the Mothers. Anglo-Saxonist Philip A. Shaw relates this to the Germanic cult of the Matronae, attested on the Continent in more than 1000 inscriptions (Shaw 41). Many contemporary heathens accordingly offer to the dísir (female elves) and human foremothers at Midwinter.

The phrase (in the singular) entered modern English by way of Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 novel of the same name, the tale of a Nazi collaborator, which took its title from Goethe's Faust (1:3). “I am part of the part that was everything in the beginning,” Mephistopheles tells Faust, “part of the darkness that gave birth to light: light that in its arrogance challenges Mother Night [Mutternacht] and claims the possession of space” (Fairley 21).

Mother Night: the Void, the Primal Darkness. “Diana was the first created before all creation,” says Charles G. Leland in Aradia: The Gospel of the Witches. “In her were all things; out of herself, the first darkness, she divided herself; into darkness and light she was divided. Lucifer, her brother and son, herself and her other half, was the light” (Leland 18).

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Let no one doubt that the Asgardsrei ("Asgard's Ride") still rides the skies of the American Midwest during the Thirteen Nights, j
  • Paul B. Rucker
    Paul B. Rucker says #
    Bravo for the further explication... I attended a lecture ("Yuletide-- a Time for Tomten") at the American Swedish Institute last

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Why We Speak English

In this season of the ancestors, I remember Horse and Hench, the legendary brothers (some would say, lovers) who led their people to the Promised Land.

England, that is.

You may, perhaps, know them as Horsa and Hengist, as they would have been called in their own day: literally “horse” and “stallion.” Hench is a worn-down form of hengist: a henchman was originally a hengist-man, literally a horse (or stallion)-man: i.e. a squire or groom.

Some would claim them as historic figures. J. R. R. Tolkien—himself a Hwiccan lad— certainly thought so. But of course it's not that simple.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Witcheries

Consider the suffix -ry or -ery,*  which comes to us from Latin (-arius) via Old French (-er, -ier) via Middle English (-erie) and, attached to a noun or verb, can mean either a craft, study, or practice (husbandry, midwifery), a collective plural (Jewry, nunnery), or a place in which a particular activity takes place (bakery, hatchery).

So witchery can mean:

  1. Witchcraft,

  2. Witches collectively, and

  3. Witch Country.

     

One of my favorite lines from the Charge of the Goddess has always been: For behold, I am Queen of all Witcheries. Apparently there are multiple witcheries, and She's queen of them all. Andrew Mann said of Her in 1597: She has a grip of all the Craft. That's quite a claim.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
World's Witches Get Official Tartan

AP: Minneapolis, MN

If Steven Posch has his way, the witches of the world will soon have their own official tartan.

“Hopefully, it will be a done deal by next Samhain [Halloween],” he says.

“The process is surprisingly straightforward,” he adds. “You submit your pattern to the Scottish Registry of Tartans. If it's not already on file, you send them a swatch, pay the fee, and—yan, tan, tethera [one, two, three]—it's official.”

Is the Witch tartan an ancient pattern?

“The Dobunni [the ancient British tribe which, according to some, are ancestral to the witches of today] must have had their own traditional plaids,” says Posch, “but those have all, alas, been lost to the mists of time. This Witch tartan will be a new one, designed by a select Midwest artist.

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Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Lizann Bassham
    Lizann Bassham says #
    Your posts never cease to amazing and amuse me - thanks!

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