When is Lammas?

Predictably, Lammas/Lughnasadh postings popped up on Pagan e-lists and blogs on the 1st of August. But that is just what the calendar says. Astronomically, according to the online astronomical calculator, it comes at 1541 hours GMT on August 7.

But I think it’s when the hummingbirds start to leave, and the mewing cries of the juvenile black-headed grosbeaks diminish in the oak brush around the house. Or when the Cordilleran flycatcher fledglings from the nest on our front porch are suddenly gone one morning, after standing outside the nest the previous day checking out their new feathers.

That day–let’s call it “bird Lammas”–was July 30th.

Today brought cooler weather and a splatter of rain before noon: “weather Lammas.” I remember a friend who lived in Florence, Colorado, telling how the high temperatures seemed to drop a little on the first of August, and she was right, for eastern Fremont County.

If you are timing a ritual, then I suppose you want to watch the astronomical times. But otherwise the corners of the year are more like mini-seasons than single days or nights.

Tags: Lammas, Paganism

Jason Pitzl-Waters at The Wild Hunt blog has reviewed my new book, Her Hidden Children.

And the rest of his blog is good too, as always.

I never thought that I would be linking to Michelle Malkin’s blog, but she does have any interesting collection of freelance jihadist killers.

But she leaves out one: “Marc Lepine” was not as French-Canadian as his name would suggest. His jihad against decadent, immoral Canadian women engineering students was in 1989.

Tag: Jihad

Macha NightMare, one of the people interviewed about the Asatru-related prison stabbing and subsequent scheduled execution in Virginia, gives her own perspective. There is more to the full story than what went out on the Associated Press feed.

Other bloggers have already commented: Dave Haxton here and here, and Jason Pitzl-Waters here.

Patrick McCollum’s comments were cut from some versions of the story, I think:

But McCollum, the religious adviser for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said only around 4 percent or 5 percent of Asatruars are white supremacists. And only a small portion of the religion’s followers emphasize its warrior aspect, he said.

“They follow the golden rule–treat your neighbor with respect, to respect your elders, to respect your community, that all people have value,” he said. “They have a very high moral standard.”

(Isn’t “Asatruars” a double plural?)

As for the Southern Poverty Law Center, also quoted in one version, they might have done some good for the civil rights movement thirty or more years ago, but now I think that they are just fear-mongering to keep the donations rolling in so that they all have jobs.

Tags: Asatru, Paganism

Doug Ezzy’s “Spirit of Things” Australian radio interview, “Dark Paganism and Deep Blue Religion,” is now available for download.

Via the Nielsen Hayden blog, a fight song for writers, to the tune of “The British Grenadier(s).”

But do you know what other tune fits that rousing 18th-century fife-and-drum number? Catherine Madsen’s Pagan standard, “Heretic Heart.” In fact, I always hear it my head to that tune.

Pagan scholar Graham Harvey is just back from convention-ing in Australia, where among other things he did this interview on animism on Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. Listen online or download the 23-megabyte mp3 file. Capsule description:

The oldest living religion, Animism, has a new advocate in pagan expert, Graham Harvey. But it’s not the old idea of ‘beliefs in spirits’. Harvey says that plants, animals, rocks and fish are just some of the significant others we should be communicating with to heighten our cosmic consciousness and environmental awareness. We also hear from practising pagans in South Australia.

The series is called “The Spirit of Things,” and next week, I am told, it will feature another Pagan academic, Doug Ezzy of the University of Tasmania.

Tags: Animism, Graham Harvey, Doug Ezzy

Dragonfest is the largest Pagan festival in Colorado (there is an SCA reference in the name, I think), set to begin August 6 this year. Usually the state’s two main Pagan e-lists light up afterwards as people discuss what went right, what went wrong, whose behavior offended whom, who was profoundly moved by what ritual, and so on.

(I myself have not attended Dragonfest in many years, but I gather that it now attracts about 1,000 people. I stopped going because changes in my work life made early August a poor time to attend festivals of any sort, even the Telluride Mushroom Festival, not because I was offended by anyone or anything. But I attend smaller festivals where some of the same trends are occurring.)

This year, the discussion started early, when an organizer posted a request on the lists for volunteers for “drawing down,” to use the common Wiccan term for trance possession. The posting brought immediate response to the effect that since drawing down was one of the central mysteries, how could a “cattle call” via email produce qualified and ethical priestesses; that, in fact, the whole quality of the ritual was declining; and, furthermore, who would or could or should “draw down the Moon” in the day time. (The ritual is planned to begin at 3 p.m.)

Natually, those comments brought counter-comments, in which the critic was accused of suffering from the worst sort of 3rd-degree-initate syndrome, of being unwilling to accept change, and so on.

The event organizers, along with a certain amount of cyber-pouting about being unappreciated, argued that having multiple priestesses early the day reduced the waiting (see below), was easier on the elderly and handicapped, and, most of all, was a necessary religious service to provide. They argued, with some truth, that for a large percentage of attendees, this was the only time (or one of few times) when they could come together in community. The high number of solitary Wiccans and Pagans, they said, meant that these solitaries could not experience this divine communication in a small, intimate coven setting. Their only opportunity comes at a large festival.

In my experience, the large, public drawing-down is handled in one of two ways.

1. Attendees are in a big circle, in a meadow, for instance. The entranced priest or priestess(es) comes around from one to the next. Meanwhile, you stand there, shifting from one foot to the next, wondering if you remembered to make your car insurance payment, waiting for your ten-second encounter. Or else the priestess/ess(es) take positions in the circle, and people go to them, if they wish to.

2. Another method is for the entranced priestesses and their assistant(s) to be settled in tents or pavilions. The querents line up on the bank-lobby model (“Wait here for next available teller”). Or if the priestesses are manifesting different aspects of the Wiccan goddess (maiden, mother, crone), then the querents might select the one whose wisdom they seek. “Walkers” lead the querent to the priestess and back again and stand ready to assist in any way needed. Again, there is often some grumbling about the long waits in line.

There are so many ways that I could discuss this issue, so maybe I wil see which way the comments—if any—flow.

1. For a discussion of ecstatic trance based on personal experience and co-related with social-scientific research, I recommend Chapter 5, “‘The Juice of Ritual’: Pathways of Ecstasy,” in Sabina Magliocco’s recent book, Witching Culture.

2. Over the past 25 years, these public drawings-down have come to be central components of at least some festivals. There are parallels with what I understand about divine or spirit possession in Candomblé, Umbanda, or other African-derived traditions, as well as in such healing cults as that of El Niño Fidencio, and probably some Asian traditions well, but I know little about the latter.

What I have seen, though, is a bit of a shift from a focus on big, theatrical participatory rituals–torchlight processions and that sort of thing–to the main event being this mediated officient-client event. It’s a change.

Tags: Paganism, Pagan festivals