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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in tribe of witches
Those Old Witch Songs Are All a Little Bit Sad

There's a round that we sing in the Spring about new life rising up again out of the darkness:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain:

wheat that in the deep Earth many days hath lain.

Love lives again, that with the dead hath been:

love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

The tune is delicate, poignant: a song of joy in a minor key.

This is no ignorant joy, a happiness too inexperienced (or too stupid) to know anything different. This is the joy of the wise: the happiness of those who know life and all the sorrows that it must inevitably bring, and yet choose joy.

Witches are well-acquainted with trouble. As a people, we've seen many, many sorrows down the long years, nor (alas) are they over yet. As we must, we remember them all.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Name (Tribe)

There's a conventional usage in the First Nations press which I think, for various reasons, would be a good fit for the pagan community as well.

There it's customary to identify someone both by name and by tribal affiliation:

Winona la Duke (Anishinabe)

Arvol Looking Horse (Dakota)

This makes perfect sense. In traditional societies, you don't just need to know who someone is; you need to know who her people are as well. In traditional Dine (Navajo) culture, when introducing yourself to a fellow Dine, you mention not just your own name, but your maternal and paternal clans as well. This gives you not just an identity, but a context.

Since pagans come in different kinds, it seems to me that this makes sense for us, too:

Isaac Bonewits (Druid)

Alison Harlow (Feri)

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Happy Summersend

We don't know whether or not the Anglo-Saxon Hwicce—the original Tribe of Witches—celebrated Samhain.

If they did, we don't know what they called it.

It's generally acknowledged by historians that, both demographically and culturally, the Hwicce emerged from a Keltic-Germanic meld. If so, and if they kept Samhain, they may well have called it something like Samonios.

Among their latter-day descendants, the November quarter-day generally goes by one of two names: Keltic Samhain and Germanic Hallows.

Samhain (however you choose to pronounce it) is an Irish name for an Irish festival. The word's original meaning is not entirely clear; likely it derives from samh, “summer.” Folk etymology would read it as “summer ends” or “summers' end.”

It's a good name, an ancient name, but it is and will always be an import.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Nicely put, Courtney; I thoroughly agree. Our work, it seems to me, is not just to know and to transmit the Lore faithfully, but a
  • Courtney
    Courtney says #
    I've always been okay with the name Samhain b/c half of the modern Wheel came from the big Celtic festivals. But I'm also not look

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Who Are the Ancestors?

We all have many kinds of ancestors.

Ancestors of the loins. These are our physical forebears.

Ancestors of the heart. These are those forebears whom (for whatever reason) we love, though they are no blood kin.

Ancestors of the head. These are our intellectual forebears.

These are only some kinds of ancestors, of course. (The ancestors of the tongue are our linguistic ancestors. Those of us of the Tribe of Witches have forebears in the Craft: the ancestors of the blood.) We are all the children of many lineages.

As pagans, we are intimate with our ancients. Living by their lore, we engage with them in our every waking moment.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Chris Sherbak
    Chris Sherbak says #
    It's ADF, there's no consensus. But we were satisfied to see the trend picked up by other Groves so we're happy. (wand drop)
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Ah, pagans. Did a consensus ever emerge, or is it still an issue?
  • Chris Sherbak
    Chris Sherbak says #
    We say "blood" vs "loins" but .. ya. Oddly, this was a somewhat controversial idea in ADF not many years ago when we did the main

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Old Blood Calls

The Sabbat is the true paradise...where there is more joy than I can express. Those who go there find the time too short because of the pleasure and happiness they enjoy and, having once been there, they will long with a raging desire [un désire enragé] to go and be there again.

(Jeanne Dibason, 1630)

 

The Old Blood calls.

The Sabbat: the ecstatic adoration of the incarnate Horned God, the witch's True Paradise.

For nearly 25 years, the Midwest Tribe of Witches has gathered regularly—at the requisite irregular intervals—in immemorial Grand Sabbat.

Plans for Grand Sabbat 2018 are already under way.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Reborn to the People

What do you say when someone dies?

I've been rereading Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin's monumental The Masters of Solitude, a landmark of 20th century witch fiction. It's set 1000 years in the future, and eastern North America is largely populated by various witch tribes.

Among them, when someone dies, you express the wish—or is it a prayer?—that he (or she) be reborn to the tribe.

Reborn to the Shando. Reborn to the Suffec. Reborn to the Karli.

It's a deep witch longing: if I'm to be reborn, let it be among my own.

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What Is a Witch?

What is a witch?

Is a witch something that you are, or something that you become?

Is witchhood from within or from without?

Can anyone be (or become) a witch, or only certain people?

Do you have to undergo initiation to be a witch?

Can you stop being a witch?

From whence does witchhood derive?

Is witchcraft a religion?

If not, does the Craft have religious implications?

Are witchcraft and Wicca identical?

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