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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in wheel

 

 

When my father died at the end of August, he left me a wheel of cheese.

We're big cheese-eaters in my family. Several times a year, I would open the front door to find a box of cheese waiting on the doorstep. À propos of nothing in particular, Dad would have decided that his son needed some cheese, and would send it along accordingly.

Cheese is a sacred food: sacred, in particular, to the Moon. Moon, milk, whiteness: it all fits. (Not to mention cattle, with their crescent-decrescent horns.) When they say that the Moon is made of green cheese, it's a reference to a wheel of ripening (“green”) cheese. Because the cheese isn't ripe yet, it's still uncut, i.e. round, like the full Moon.

That, of course, we refer to a round of cheese as a “wheel” is in itself a prime indicator of sanctity. To pagans, the Wheel—meaning the Cycle—is a prime symbol of Being. Time is a wheel, the world is a wheel, life is a wheel. To pagans, it's all wheels.

The last box of cheese that my father sent me before he died included a large (= five pound) wheel of Baby Swiss. It's sat in the refrigerator for months now, because once a wheel of cheese is cut, you've got to use it up, and there's no way that I could eat that much cheese before it would start to mold.

Well, Yule is coming up. One of the many things that I learned from my father—not from what he said, but from how he led his life—is that your job as a man is to see that your people are taken care of. If that means that you have to work two jobs, you work two jobs. If that means that you have to pick up a gun and shoot someone, then that's what you do. Not because you want to shoot anyone, not because you want to work two jobs. You do it because that's what it means to be a man.

I was never the son that my father expected; I never married or had a family. In the end, every man has to find his own way to manhood. There are many ways to be a man, and Dad always had the love to let me be my own kind.

So, Yule. We don't usually exchange gifts in the coven anymore—thank Goddess, we decided to discontinue that as-if-Yule-weren't-already-stressful-enough practice several years ago—but this year I've got something very special for everyone regardless.

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Mr. Posch, I'm really sorry about your Dad's passing. Having lost both parents, as a fifty-something man, I can empathize. Your

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

A friend's high priestess sent her a beautifully crafted wooden wheel for Yule. An apt gift, certainly.

(Witches are big into wheels. Life, Time, Space: for us, it's all Wheels.)

Naturally, my friend called her up to thank her.

My friend: What's the symbolism of the ten spokes?

(The Witches' Wheel usually has eight.)

High Priestess: No, it has eight spokes.

MF: No, it has ten.

HPss: (Changes subject.)

Myself, I was pretty disappointed to hear this story.

(Talk about a teachable moment. When your student asks you a question that you can't answer, what should be the first words out of your mouth? Obviously, "Well, what do you think?" As a teacher, you don't teach stuff; you teach thinking.)

First off, I was disappointed that the woman hadn't looked carefully enough at the wheel—it was a gift, after all—to realize that it had ten spokes rather than the canonical eight.

Second, I was disappointed that she didn't know the symbolism of the ten-spoked wheel.

Third, I was disappointed that she didn't try to bullshit her way out of it.

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Paganistani Children's Games (Winter): Wheel-Tag

It's Deep Winter, and we're well into the holiday thirtnight known variously as Yeaning, Ewesmilk, and February Eve*. If where you live is anything like where I do, the snows lie piled deep.

Ergo, it's the perfect time to play Wheel Tag.

Wheel Tag is just like regular tag—non-binary “It” and all—but you play it on a track in the snow.

Here's how you play.

Lay out a Wheel in the snow and tromp it down well (or, if you're ambitious, shovel it out). If your track is relatively small, make a Wheel with four spokes. If you've got room to spread out—the snow on top of a frozen lake is ideal for this—go with eight spokes.

Then pick an It, and away you go. Remember: you have to stay on the Wheel. Anything that happens off-Wheel doesn't count.

Like most traditional kids' games with a grounding in ritual, the purpose of the game is to play itself through and start over again, around and around: like the year, like Life. Like a Wheel.

In Witch Country, even games are profound.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Let's Build a Wheel-Cairn

You know that cairn that we've been talking about building? The one where people can depose the ashes of the dead?

Well, here's an idea: let's build it in the shape of a Wheel.

Check out this wheel-cairn from Sälle in Fröjel on the island of Gotland (Sweden). (It's about 2000 years old.) Let's build one like this, oriented East-West, big. I'd see the spokes and rim as maybe a foot high, the Hub- and Quarter-cairns higher.

It's a Sun Wheel, of course. That makes it a prayer. As the dead go West with the Sun, so too may they be reborn with him in the East.

And it's the Wheel of Time, the Wheel of the Year. As time, as the year, move in a circle, so may those who were be reborn to the People.

The Wheel, of course, is also the Journey. The dead have a journey to make. As our people have followed the Sun, traveling from East to West, so do the dead continue their journey.

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Wheel Dance

At the very heart of our Yule each year turns the Great Dance of the Wheel, the dance of the Sun's Rebirth.

Listen while I tell of it.

Wearing holly, the circle of men faces outward. Wearing ivy, enclosing, the circle of women faces in.

The two circles take four steps toward each other, then four steps back.

Then the circles wheel. One moves sunwise, the other, widdershins.

(There's a metaphor to be savored here, but that's for later.)

Again the concentric circles expand and contract. Once again they wheel, reversing direction.

Then repeat.

The song that accompanies the dance tells the seasons of the Sun's life: winter, spring, summer, fall, and back again to winter. In one infinite instant, the Sun is begotten, born, begets, and dies. Like the dance, the song wheels, returning again to its own beginning. In the end, it becomes a round, turning and turning on itself.

In this way, we work our magic.

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  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Good question, Ian. I would think that what you wanted to wear and where you wanted to dance would be up to you. Tradition is fixe
  • Ian Phanes
    Ian Phanes says #
    What would you do if a non-binary person (like myself) wanted to dance?

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Sun Wheel

It's one of our people's oldest and most sacred symbols.

If anything could lay claim to the status of "universal pagan symbol," this might well be it.

Yet in Pagandom at large, they're few and far between.

The Sun Wheel. The Sun Cross. The Wheel Cross.

The equal-armed cross in a circle. It's the Sun. It's the Wheel. It's the coincidence of harmonious opposites. Male and female. Rounded and straight. Rectilinear and curvilinear. Up and down. Horizontal and vertical. Movement and stillness. Technology and Nature. Heaven and Earth.

In the Sun Wheel, Time and Space meet and embrace: the world with its four quarters, the year with its four seasons.

Such a deep and ancient symbol. Wherever has it gone?

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Winter

(Art by Barbara Bargiggia)

Ah, January. In like a lion roaring exciting resolutions and plans, out like a tired bear hibernating in a Winter cave. New or continued schedules after the holiday break quickly become rote trudging performed in the icy cold of the bleakest part of Winter. Short days don’t seem to hold enough of the activities we wanted, and we find ourselves playing catch-up with little energy input from Sun or Earth’s abundance. Plans for early bed and early rising fall to the freeze-out of not being able to stop finishing tasks until after bedtime. Or to a seized-up will. Emotions expand and freeze, slicing with icy edges the hearts of these organic creatures trudging through the dark, cold, short days. It’s enough to make you want to hole up and wait it out. Let Spring bring the fuel and the will to rise again.

Until the crocuses or groundhogs peek out and whisper of Spring’s coming, it seems a natural time to pause and rest, perhaps do inner-work in the quiet space of our own heads and hearts. Light a fire in the hearth and stir pots, stare into the fire, find underworld songs rolling around your tongue, and find tangles in your forgotten hair.

But the time does come to fetch more firewood, or you’ll freeze. The stirred pots eventually give forth sustenance and medicine and more will need to be added or you won’t eat tomorrow. There’s life in there, and it demands to live. It has slowed, but it will move… even in the cold, even in the dark, even before any message from Green Spring arrives to promise quickening. This isn’t death, it’s just a pale rehearsal. With a glowing ember inside.

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