Nice Yule Adventure and Articles

Earth-based spirituality fosters respect for environment, others

I did not want to forget about this positive article in The News Leader from Central Shenandoah Valley:

STAUNTON — On Saturday, whether alone or in covens, area residents who call themselves Pagans will celebrate Yule, a celebration of the changing seasons on winter solstice. “As Pagans, we celebrate the turning of the wheel,” said Elaine Sutherland. “This is a celebration of nature.” Nature is a focal point for the wide variety of Neo-Pagan religions in Augusta County that stress a communion with the Earth and all people on it....Sutherland said she was attracted to Wicca and other nature-based religions because of the equality of men and women, celebration of the elderly and belief in treating the Earth and others with respect and dignity...

Amen to that, sister. Or should I say 'Amen-Ra'? Heh! We celebrated with our coven, we were all smiles and had a good time. A couple days later I attended a Xmas party of a distant friend of mine. For a kick, we decided to bring some frankincense and myrrh to the party. I figured most regular Xtain folk did not actually see the real-deal up close too often. We showed the resinous globs around and everyone seemed interested. Not one person had a clue what they were. I off hand said, "Well, this is what the Three Wise Men brought to the baby Jesus in the manger". You could not believe the blank stares that elicited! Not one person among about 20 knew that fact. Ah, Xtains!

Jason at Wild Hunt has an excellent post "A Blessed Solstice" all about Yule. It's a great post to point someone to if you want to expose people to the Pagan roots of Christmas.

Speaking of pagan roots, I highly recommend the book "Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide", by Christian Ratsch and Claudia Muller-Ebeling. The authors are two German ethonbotonists who have packed their book with a ton of herbal lore. The book also includes some interesting recipies for cookies, candies, and even incense (there's a recipe for 'kyphi', the sacred incense of Ancient Egypt.) I bet you did not know the red clothes and white buttons of Santa's suite was inspired by hallucinogenic mushrooms! My suggestion is to act fast on this book: It looks like it's from a small publisher and I have a feeling it will go out of print in the not too distant future.

Mourning Moon, the Lament of Isis

We celebrated a full moon Esbat last weekend, the Mourning Moon. I have to admit I don't attend Esbats as regularly as I should. But our High Priestess is a follower of Hecate, and the Greeks had celebrations for her at this time of year. In addition, Nov. 24th is the Egyptian 'Festival of Burning Lamps' for Isis and Osiris. Not only that, there was just a celebration for Bast. So I figured I should attend. During the ritual, I read "The Lament of Isis", from James Frazer's 'Golden Bough'. After the ritual, one of our coveners said she really liked the reading. So I've posted it here.

When Isis and her sister Nephthys found the body of the murdered Osiris, they collapsed beside him. The two Goddess then commenced with this lamentation, which was heard throughout the world, even reaching Heaven and the Underworld:

Come to thy House, Come to thy House.
Oh god On! Come to thy house, thou who has no foes.
O fair youth, come to thy house, that thou mayest see me.
O fair boy, come to thy house...

I see thee not, yet doth my heart yearn after thee and mine eyes desire thee. Come to her who loves thee, who loves thee, Unnefer, thou blessed one!

Come to thy sister, come to thy wife, to thy wife, thou whose heart stands still. Come to thy housewife. I am thy sister by the same mother, thou shalt not be far from me. Gods and men have turned their faces toward thee and weep for thee together...

I call after thee and weep, so that my cry is heard to heaven, thou hearest not my voice; yet am I thy sister, whom thou didst love on earth; thou didst love none but me, my brother! my brother!

No God or mortal ever mourned more than Isis. Even the Nile could not contain her immeasurable tears, causing the mighy river to flood for the first time. (In the lament, Isis refers to Osiris as 'Unnefer' , which means 'Good Being", a title bestowed on the kindly God.)

The words of Isis come to me whenever I recall the events surrounding the untimely death of a friend. I remember her mother crying, "I only wish I could bring her home". Everyone suffers from loss. But I feel we experience the most searing grief when someone is taken from us tragically, randomly, or prematurely. We have all felt what Isis felt: the loss of someone good and dear, taken far too soon, who is actually a part of us.

We thank and honor you, Isis, for showing us that even a Goddess can suffer tragedy. "Come to thy House" you wailed. Like us, all you wished to do was bring your loved-one home.

Of Atheists and forskins

Man and God (and God’s Sick Punch Lines)

Shalam Auslander's new book "Forskin's Lament" details his flight from orthodox religion:

“...The people who raised me will say I am not religious,” he writes. “They are mistaken.” He adds: “I am painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious, and I have watched lately, dumbfounded and distraught, as around the world, more and more people seem to be finding Gods, each more hateful and bloody than the next, as I’m doing my best to lose Him. I’m failing miserably...”

In the above article, he revisits the orthodox Jewish community he grew up in, noting the disapproving stares of people who pass him by:

"I try sometimes to see myself through their eyes — as someone who has made a huge mistake. On the other hand, what if the big joke is that God has nothing to do with any of this, and doesn’t care about it at all?...It all feels very ‘Twilight Zone’ to me,” he said. “It seems more and more odd and more and more familiar at the same time.”

From the first chapter of his book:

...The people of Monsey were terrified of God, and they taught me to be terrified of Him, too—they taught me about a woman named Sarah who would giggle, so He made her barren; about a man named Job who was sad and asked, —Why?, so God came down to the Earth, grabbed Job by the collar, and howled, —Who the fuck do you think you are?; about a man named Moses, who escaped from Egypt, and who roamed through the desert for forty years in search of a Promised Land, and whom God killed just before he reached it—face-plant on the one-yard line—because Moses had sinned, once, forty years earlier. His crime? Hitting a rock. And so, in early autumn, when the leaves choked, turned colors, and fell to their deaths, the people of Monsey gathered together in synagogues across the town and wondered, aloud and in unison, how God was going to kill them: —Who will live and who will die, they prayed, —who at his predestined time and who before his time, who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning...

We don't believe, we dance!

An Academic View on the Right to Party

This would be something great to get a PhD in. Damn, I was a double major in college and never knew it:

From ancient Greek Bacchanalias and Roman Saturnalias to tailgating and Mardi Gras, we humans like to party. Throughout history, public revelry has had its critics. The Victorian world saw it as vulgar pageantry, the stuff of "savages" and the underclass. The academic world, for the most part, ignored it. Author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich...gives a history lesson on collective joy and explains why humanity engages in large, ceremonial celebrations and why the upper classes have tried — and often still try — to suppress it.

The link above is an interview with the author of the book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. You will also finda a lengthy excerpt:

So when the phenomenon of collective ecstasy entered the colonialist European mind, it was stained with feelings of hostility, contempt, and fear. Group ecstasy was something "others" experienced — savages or lower-class Europeans. In fact, the capacity for abandonment, for self-loss in the rhythms and emotions of the group, was a defining feature of "savagery" or otherness generally, signaling some fatal weakness of mind. As horrified witnesses of ecstatic ritual. Europeans may have learned very little about the peoples they visited (and often destroyed in the process) — their deities and traditions, their cultures and worldview. But they did learn, or imaginatively construct, something centrally important about themselves: that the essence of the Western mind, and particularly the Western male, upper-class mind, was its ability to resist the contagious rhythm of the drums, to wall itself up in a fortress of ego and rationality against the seductive wildness of the world...

There's always someone trying to spoil the party! But, YIPPIE!, science comes to the rescue:

With the rise of the social sciences, and especially the anthropology of the 1930s and thereafter, Westerners began to view the ecstatic practices of non-Westerners in an ostensibly more open-minded way...Westerners had to concede that the ecstatic behavior found in traditional cultures was not the hallmark of savage "otherness" but the expression of a capacity that may exist...in all of us. By the 1930s, anthropologists had begun to think of the rituals of small-scale societies as functional, meaning in some sense rational.

So, dancing with wild abandon was a sensible and rational act. Just as I always suspected.

Humans are social animals, and rituals, ecstatic or otherwise, could be an expression of this sociality, a way of renewing the bonds that held a community together. In the functionalist anthropology that reached full bloom in the 1940s and '50s, many of the formerly bizarre-seeming activities of native peoples were explained in this way: as mechanisms for achieving cohesiveness and generating feelings of unity. Americans tried to achieve the same thing through patriotic and religious rituals; the "natives" simply had a different approach. But right up to our own time, even the most scientific and sympathetic observers have tended to view the ecstatic rituals of non-Western cultures with deep misgivings...

I think today there's a bit of that going on, in the current Science VS Religion wars. Some well intentioned people are forgetting we are social animals. A good number of people can find a higher meaning in science. You even can teach that! But for others, the wonders of the Cosmos are nice, yet not a source of deeper meaning. But most sure love a good party! Then again, there's always someone who wants to throw Holy water on us and pray for our souls.

(from the good folks @ Witchvox)

Let's sing XTC's 'Dear God' this Yule!

The 17 Books I Read Along The Way

Actress Julia Sweeney's blog features a excellent list of her 17 favorite religious books. Most are scathing critiques of the Judeo-Christian interpretation of "God". I feel books like these should be embraced by Wicca, as a healthy dose of skepticism is a always a good thing. Not only that, but such clear thinking helps our evolving spirituality avoid some of the devastating pitfalls of Monotheism. Several also serve as good rebuttals to the disingenuous idiocy of Intelligent Design and Creationism.

I can't think of better stocking stuffers this Yule, especially if you have any faith obsessed friends or family members. My favorite on the list is Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's "The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle In The Dark". Sweeney mentions the chapter 'Real Patriots Ask Questions'. Isn't it amazing how prescient the scientist authors were!