Mabon

September 21, 2008 at 12:15 pm (Celtic, North America, Pagan)
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“Blessed be, by the Lady and the Lord, on this Mea’n Fo’mhair. It is the time of the second harvest, one of fruit and wine abundance. Tonight holds equilibrium of all things. Everything is in balance with one another. God and Goddess, Life and Death, Light and Dark.”
Immortal Boundaries, Aubrey Jones

References to the Welsh god Mabon ap Mydron (Mabon, Son of Modron, or ‘Great Son of the Great Mother’) date back well over a thousand years. Today the name Mabon conjures up images of ancient Celtic rituals, of the fruits of the harvest, of flickering flames beneath an autumn moon.  So I was especially surprised to find that ‘Mabon’—in reference to the autumnal equinox—dates not to the Dark Ages, but to the Disco Age (a dark age in its own right), the 1970s.

The holiday Mabon was coined by a grad student, Aidan Kelly, as part of a religious studies project. Kelly was following the Celtic and pagan tradition of naming holy days after gods and goddesses. Lughnasadh honors the Irish sun god Lugh. Beltane is believed to originate from Ba’al. The spring equinox is named for the German goddess Ostara, from which our word Easter also derives.

There was a holiday known as “Mabon’s Day” in Wales in the 19th century. But that holiday was named for William “Mabon” Abraham, a labor leader responsible for improving miners’ working conditions in Wales, (Mabon is a colloquialism for “young leader” in Welsh) and took place on the first Monday of each month.

Since the 1970s, the autumnal holiday Mabon has gained wide acceptance as a Wiccan and neo-pagan celebration in North America. The Celts, however, didn’t observe the autumnal equinox as much as the cross-quarter days of Lughnasadh (early August) and Samhain (Halloween), the latter of which was Celtic New Year.

The “Second Harvest” is known by many names: Cornucopia, Wine Harvest, Harvest Home, and the Feast of Avalon.

Avalon, one of the many Celtic names for the Land of the Dead, literally means the “land of apples…Celebrating new-made wine, harvesting apples and vine products, and visiting burial cairns to place an apple upon them were all ways in which the Celts honored this Sabbat.

Edain McCoy, Celtic Myth & Magick

It’s a joyous celebration, but whereas the spring festivals celebrate birth and fertility, at the time of the harvest, Mabon participants remember their ancestors.

A similar tradition exists in Japanese culture. On the equinox, the Japanese visit the graves of their ancestors. It is known as O-higan, or “the Other Shore.” Buddha is believed to walk the earth when night and day are equally divided.

Mabon is also known by variants of Fomhair. In Gaelic, the months of September and October are the only two to share a name: Mi Mean Fomhair and Mi Deireadh Fomhair: mid-harvest month and end-harvest month.

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Lammas and Lughnasadh

August 1, 2008 at 3:55 am (Celtic, Europe, Pagan)
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Today is Laghnasadh Day! Not to be confused with Lasagna Day, which was Tuesday.

Also known by its more Christian name, Lammas, aka “Loaf-mas”, Laghnasadh marked the time of year villagers would celebrate the first Harvest, on or around August 1, by baking and sharing bread from the first grain of the season.

Lughnasadh is a cross-quarter day—days that fall directly between equinoxes and solstices—the others being Imbolc (Candlemas), Beltane (May Day), and Samhain (Halloween).

The holiday would have been celebrated by the Celts starting at sundown (on the 31st) until the following day.

“Beth Owl’s Daughter” points out that July 31 is also Harry Potter’s Birthday! Coincidence?

Today the ancient pagan tradition is carried on by wiccans and is becoming increasingly popular in neopaganism.

from http://jksalescompany.com/dw/wicca_calendar.html

 

http://thunder.prohosting.com/~cbarstow/lammas.html

Lughnasadh recipes

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A Midsommer Night’s in Denmark

June 23, 2008 at 12:00 pm (Europe, Pagan, quarter days)
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The Scandinavians never pass up a chance for a good bonfire. Midsummer Night, or St. John’s Eve as it’s sometimes called in Denmark and Norway, is the perfect occasion. The holiday has little to do with St. John the Baptist, other than falling just before his saint day. In the 10th century Baltic and Scandinavian countries replaced the traditional names of Midsummer with allusions to the feast of St. John the Baptist, which fell on June 24.

In fact the tradition long pre-dates Christianity’s entry into Scandinavia. Midsummer was originally a tribute to the pagan sun god, and the bonfire represented defeat over darkness.

In Scandinavia, darkness hovers over the landscape for much of the year. On Midsummer Night however, it can stay light until midnight; in parts of Norway it can stay light for weeks at a time in late June, hence the name Land of the Midnight Sun.

For hundreds of years Midsummer Eve torch processions were common. Other rites centered around nature. Midsummer was viewed as an auspicious date for fertility. Farmers prayed for a bountiful harvest while maidens collected special herbs and plants, including St. John’s wort.

I must gather the mystic St. John’s wort tonight-
The wonderful herb, whose leaf will decide
If the coming year shall make me a bride…

“The St John’s Wort”, old German poem

In some towns, villagers would light a straw-covered wheel afire and roll it down a hill to be extinguished in the river. Across Poland and the Baltic, maidens would toss herbs into the fire to protect them from evil spirits in the year to come while young men would jump over fires to display their bravado.

Today the holiday is a time for community to come together around the bonfire and sing patriotic songs such as “Vi elsker vort land”, also known as Midsommervisen.

We love our land
Our midsummer most
When each cloud over the field sends a blessing
When the flowers are in bloom
And the cattle drags the plough
Giving gifts to laborious hands…

…Every woman, every man can
Find an example of love for life!
Let the times grow old, let the colors fade
We will however draw a memory in our hearts
From the North so rich in legends
A glory shines across the world…

http://www.phrasebase.com/forum/read.php?TID=6947

To this day Danes continue to burn a straw witch effigy atop a bonfire on Midsummer Eve, a tradition borrowed from their German neighbors in the late 19th century. The witch effigy represents evil spirits, but to some the throwback eerily recalls the Danish witch burnings of the 1600s.

Other names for Midsummer Day and Eve:

Denmark: Sankt Hans aften (Hans is the diminutive of Johannes or John.)
Norway: Jonsok
Poland: Sobotka, Swietojanska, Wianki
Eastern Poland/ Ukraine: Kupalnocka, Kupala
Russia: Ivan Kupala

http://www.netglimse.com/holidays/summer/midsummer_or_litha.shtml

http://www.epinions.com/content_1470341252

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/st_johns_eve_hypericum.html

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Mayday Mayday

May 1, 2008 at 4:51 am (International, Pagan, cross-quarter days)
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I remember in elementary school being told we didn’t celebrate May Day anymore because it was a Russian holiday.

Not only was this a lame excuse not to celebrate a holiday, it also wasn’t true.

Back in the day, seasons were determined, not by equinoxes and solstices, but by the days that fell directly in between, known as “cross-quarter days.” The first cross-quarter day of the year is Groundhog Day, between winter solstice and spring equinox. The second is today, May Day, which once marked the beginning of summer.

May Day traditions such as creating floral wreaths date back to the Romans, and survived well into the 20th century, including dancing around the Maypole and crowning a ‘May Queen.’ 

May Day, Marin County, 1909 

Mizzou, Missouri, 1911

May Day was celebrated by numerous European cultures for hundreds of years.

In the 19th century May Day became a standard date for workers to re-negotiate contracts with employers. One reason may be because it was one of the few days off workers had that wasn’t a Sunday (church day) or religious holiday. Thus, as communities got together to celebrate, the workers–usually the fathers of the family–could also unite for better wages or working conditions.

Over time May Day was adopted by (or hijacked by, depending on your political slant) communist, socialist and labor groups. 

For this reason May Day fell out of favor in the U.S. where the first of May is celebrated with other, more patriotic holidays, including:

Law Day

Loyalty Day

National Day of Prayer (1st Thursday in May)

and the more casual ‘Lei Day.’

Of these, Lei Day is the oldest, the Hawaiian version of May Day, dating to the 1920s. Loyalty Day, Law Day, and National Day of Prayer were officiated in the 1950s under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

Labor Day in the U.S. celebrated instead on the first Monday in September.

Even though May Day was seen as a communist import in America, it was in Chicago, Illinois, that May Day gained notoriety as a day for workers and eventually became the international holiday known as Labour Day.

Oh, and the distress call ‘Mayday Mayday’ has nothing to do with the holiday. It’s from the French venez m’aider, meaning ‘come help me.’

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Witches Night

April 30, 2008 at 4:00 am (Europe, Germany, Pagan, cross-quarter days)
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Deutschlands Dunklelegenden

The witches toward the Brocken strain

When the stubble yellow, green the grain.

The rabble rushes - as ’tis meet -

To Lord Urian’s lordly seat…

— Goethe’s Faust, “Walpurgisnacht”

Exactly six months before Halloween, the Germans and Scandinavians celebrate Walpurgis Night, May-Eve, Beltane, or Hexennacht, aka Witches’ Night.

According to legend, on the last night of April, witches would meet at Hexentazplatz (Witches’ Dancing Place, conveniently named in case you got lost and had to ask a tourist) near the town of Thale in northern Germany. From there they would fly upon broomsticks to the highest point in the Harz Mountains, a summit called “The Brocken.”

At the Brocken there they would dance with the devil, a horned he-goat demon named Lord Urian, who would grant them mystical powers…for a price. Scarier than even the orgiastic rituals of Walpurgis Night, is the unholy marriage of Google-translation and the German language in describing this event:

“On the chunk of dance legend after all witches in a large circle around the fire and then the devil kiss the butt. Then you can have with the devil marry and receive from him magic powers.”

Don’t be Frightened!

Ok, be a little frightened. For centuries tales spread of sordid revels atop the Harz Mountains. To this day, the Brocken is haunted by the spirits of angry tourists who felt cheated having yet to encounter a single supernatural event.

There are many reasons this point became synonymous with the dark legends of Deutschland. Its inaccessible height and remote location are two. The region wasn’t settled until after 1000 AD. (In Germany that’s like the 1950 in America.)  Also the mountain produces an eerie optical illusion called the Brockengenspenst, or the “Brocken spector.”

“As the sun sinks, the shadow of a walker cast from a ridge becomes magnified and an enormous silhouette appears on low-lying clouds or mist banks below the mountain. Although it’s only a shadow, the distant “specter” appears to be walking at the same pace, doggedly tracking the observer’s path.”

In other words, in the centuries before the meteorological sciences, many a Brocken hiker were spooked by their own shadows. At least one was frightened to death.

Germany may not have been the birthplace of the witch, but it did propagate the image of the witch as we know it today, through its literature, legends, and its ‘litigation’:

“Between 1623 and 1633, the prince-bishops of two Bavarian towns, Wƒrzburg and Bamburg, ordered the burning of at least fifteen hundred “witches” between them. The victims of Wƒrzburg’s bishop included his own nephew, nineteen priests, and a child aged seven. One reason why medieval Germany developed an obsession with stamping out “witchcraft” may lie in the food that was being eaten. If the weather is warm and damp, rye (then a staple crop) can produce a poisonous fungus called ergot. Hallucinations, fits, pinpricking sensations, muscle spasms: the symptoms of ergotism are similar to the effects of LSD, which itself is derived from ergot.”

Witches of the Harz Mountains

This organic LSD substance is also believed to be responsible for the Belgian “Smurfs.”

Walpurgis got its name from an 8th century saint. Walpurgis had nothing to do with witches, but April 30 was her feast day. In the Church’s effort to Christianize Germany’s tenacious pagan roots, they made Walpurgis Night about Walpurgis’ fight with the dark forces of paganism.

Yet still the pagan rituals continue to this day…   

Walpurgis Night, the time is right,

The ancient powers awake.

So dance and sing, around the ring,

And Beltane magic make.

–Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow

 

Links:

Brocken “Money” - a tourist gimmick from the 1920s

Brocken postcard collection from the late 19th/early 20th century.

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Beware the Ides of March

March 15, 2008 at 8:19 am (Roman, on this day)
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How Diarrhea Changed the World

 

On this day in 44 BC Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate by a cadre of Senators who called themselves the “Liberators.”

 

During Caesar’s reign the Roman Empire achieved an unprecedented amount of power and land area, stretching from Britain to Africa to the Middle East. Caesar conquered Gaul and led the first Roman invasion of Britain. 

 

The Roman Civil War of 50 BC divided the Romans between Caesar and Pompey. Caesar emerged victorious and became the undisputed ruler of the Roman Empire.

 

It was theorized by Cassius Dio that the main reason behind the conspiracy to murder Caesar was that he refused to rise, as was the custom, when he met with a delegation of Senators who informed Caesar of the honors they had bestowed upon him. And that the reason he did not rise, was not out of a lack of appreciation for the Senate, but of a severe case of diarrhea.

 

 

The doom associated with the Ides of March acquired new potency in 1939 when Adolf Hitler strode into Czechoslovakia without firing a shot, thanks to Western leaders, and proclaimed “Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist.”

 

 

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Are You Bissextile?

February 27, 2008 at 4:48 am (Europe, Roman)
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Answer: only during Leap Year…

 

The great-grand-daddy of our February 29th Leap Day goes back to the ancient Romans. I know what you’re thinking: Don’t we have anything that doesn’t go back to them? Uh, yes: numbers, and thank god for that, or taxes would be an even bigger drag. Also the dates of the month aren’t Roman—for which you’ll be grateful in a minute.

 

See, back in the day, when the Romans used a lunar calendar, the full moon fell directly in the middle of each month and was called the Ides. And the new moon at the beginning of the month was called the Kalends (from which we get the word calendar). And somewhere in between those two were the Nones. (From which we get the word nine. The nones were nine days before the Ides.)

 

Instead of saying it’s March 13th, the Romans would say It’s two days before the Ides of March. (Actually they’d say it’s three days before the Ides because they counted funny and that’s another reason you should be glad for Arabic numbers, but that’s neither here nor there.) Instead of saying it’s March 25th, they’d say it’s six days before the Kalends of April, or ante diem IV Kalends Aprilis.

 

March marked the beginning of the new year. To make up for the fact that the lunar calendar was only 355 days long, every few years a mensis intercalaris, or intercalary month, was tacked onto the end of February. February 23 was the annual Terminalia holiday, in which Romans celebrated Terminus—no, not the god of airports—the god of boundary stones and property disputes. Kind of like the ancient Judge Judy.

 

Whether a year would have a mensis intercalaris tacked on was determined by the Pontifex Maximus. The problem with this system is if Ponty’s friends were in office, he would have reason to extend the calendar year, whereas if an opposing party had power, he would have reason to shorten it. As a result of this friction and the chaos of the Punic Wars, the intercalary months were added or forgotten for decades at a time. Soon the calendar drifted into entirely different seasons.

 

Julius Caesar formalized the calendar. Each month was lengthened a certain number of days so the whole calendar would mirror the solar year, not the cycles of the moon—365 days. Instead of a whole month, a leap day was inserted after February 23 (or February 24) every four years.

 

Only they didn’t call it the 23rd or 24th. Remember we were talking about the Kalends and the Ides? 

 

Since they were counting backwards from the beginning of March—excuse me—from the Kalends of March, they called it “doubling” the day six days prior to the Kalends of March. Or if you really want to get technical, ”ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martii.”

 

Bis sextum literally translated to doubling or splitting of the sixth day. Hence, leap years were known throughout the Middle Ages as “bissextile years.”

 

When Roman dating was replaced by the trusty 1-31 system, Leap Day was moved from February 25th to February 29th. Today, even though February is the 2nd month, we continue the 2000 year-old Roman tradition of placing the intercalaris at February’s end.

 


In simple English:

 

“When there is the double sixth day before the first day [of March], it matters not whether a person was born on the first or on the second day, and afterwards the sixth day before the first [of March] is his birthday; for those two days are regarded as one, but the second day is intercalated, not the first. And so he that was born on the sixth day before the first [of March] in a year in which there is no intercalation has the first day as his birthday in a leap year. Cato is of opinion that the intercalated month is an additional one, and he takes all its days for a moment of time, and Quintus Mucius assigns it to the last day of the month of February. But the intercalated month consists of twenty-eight days.”

–translation from Institutes and History of Roman Private Law with Catena of Texts, Salkowski & Whitfield

 

“Cum bissextum kalendas est, nihil refert utrum priore an posteriore die quis natus sit, et deinceps sextum kalendas eius natalis dies est, nam id biduum pro uno die habetur; sed posterior dies intercalatur non prior: ideo quo anno intercalatum non est sexto kalendas natus, cum bissextum kalendas est, priorem diem natalem habet. 1. Cato putat, mensem intercalarem additicium esse, omnesque eius dies pro momento temporis observat, extremoque diei mensis Februarii attribuit Quintus Mucius. 2. Mensis autem intercalaris constat ex diebus viginti octo.” –D. 50, 16, 98

 

Happy Death Day Julius Caesar

 

Osculating the Bissextile Way 

 

Ladies First on Leap Day

 

Wikipedia: Leap Year 

Wikipedia: Roman Calendar

 

Time and Date: Leap Day

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Lupercalia

February 15, 2008 at 7:48 am (Pagan, Roman)
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It’s Lupercalia time, baby

 

On this day the ancient Romans remembered the She-wolf who suckled the baby Romulus—the future founder of Rome–and his brother Remus. 

 

The priests of Rome, known as the Luperci, or ”Brotherhood of the Wolf,’ would commemorate this day by running around in loincloths smacking women on the back with an animal-skins.

 

What is immediately apparent in a comparison between the sacred rites of then and now is that then it was much more fun being a priest.

 

The ritual was intended to promote fertility, and the part about whipping girls legs is still practiced on Easter Monday in parts of Eastern Europe.

 

It is said that over time this festival of the Romans was superseded by the Purification of the Virgin and the Festival of Saint Valentine. 

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Love in the Time of V.D. (Valentine’s Day)

February 14, 2008 at 6:32 pm (Europe, Pagan)
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Valentine’s Day is remarkable in the sense that rarely have so many celebrated in the name of a man whose actual life and personage is virtually unknown.

 

wedding 

 

The month of February has always been associated with the awakening of spring and the blossoming of love. In the Roman calendar February was the last month of the year, a time of purification before the new agrarian planting season. Similar traditions of settling debts and seeking atonement still exist during the Chinese Chuxi and the Jewish Yom Kipper. However, the Romans celebrated in distinctly Roman style.

 

Lupercalia commemorated the She-wolf that suckled the babies Romulus—founder of Rome—and his brother Remus in a cave on the site of the future capital. On February 15 each year a group of priests known as the Brotherhood of the Wolf, or Luperci, would strip to their birthday suits and sacrifice a dog and goat at the cave. Then they’d put on loincloths of the goat’s skin and go about the streets of Rome smacking women on their backsides with an animal skin lash. This was intended to promote fertility and ease the pangs of childbirth. 

 

 

(Remus, Romulus & She-wolf) 

 

On the 14th of February the Romans celebrated another festival, in the name of the goddess of women and marriage Juno Februata. Eligible young men and women would participate in the Roman version of Spin-the-Bottle. Boys would draw the names of eligible girls and ‘couple up’ during the festivities, sometimes for the entire year.

 

Around 490 AD Pope Gelasius banned the old pagan rituals and introduced the Festival of the Purification of the Virgin on February 14, which was later moved to February 2. The Church tried to replace to earlier rituals by having boys and girls draw the names of a saint and emulate the life of that saint. For whatever reason that wild tradition never caught on with the same zeal as the Roman sex games.

 

Some scholars say that Saint Valentine’s Day was a minor feast with no connection to romance or couples up until the 14th century. It was then that writers such as Chaucer and his contemporaries began referring to it as the day that birds supposedly choose their mates.

 

Geoffrey Chaucer

(Geoffrey Chaucer) 

 

Chaucer wrote “The Parliament of Fowls”—referring to birds, not the English governing body—in tribute to Richard II’s engagement to Anne of Bohemia in 1381.

 

“For this was seynt Volantynys day,

When euery byrd comyth there to chese his make.”

 

(For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day,

When every bird comes there to choose his mate…)

 

It was a common writing device for poets to link certain events with the saint whose feast was observed that day. However the Valentine Chaucer referred to was the one whose feast was celebrated on May 3, for May 3 was the date of the King’s engagement. Chaucer describes conditions common to late Spring. (A full account of this is in Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine.) The royal marriage of the two 16 year-olds was one based in love rather than politics. It ended with Anne’s death from plague 12 years later. Richard was never the same after her death. He was deposed and killed in 1400…on February 14.

 

There were nearly a dozen saints named ‘Valentine’ canonized in the first centuries of the Christian Church, and no one really knows which one we celebrate on February 14. 

 

Saint Valentine 

 

Three at the top of the list include a missionary in Africa, a Bishop at Turni, and my own personal favorite, a priest in the city of Rome. When Claudius II temporarily banned marriages to encourage men to join the army, Father Valentine secretly conducted wedding services for young couples in love. Valentine was caught and imprisoned for defying the Emperor, and was executed on…you guessed it: February 14. 

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This Date In U.S. History

February 9, 2008 at 5:10 am (Pagan, on this day)

 

Today is my brother’s birthday. 

 

Happy Birthday Dave!

 

David's wedding party

 (David & Groomsmen)

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