How They Celebrate the Summer Solstice

From 2012, a BBC piece on how Latvians celebrate the summer solstice:

It is not a complicated festival. All you have to do is head out to the countryside, get a fire going, stay up all night waiting for the sun to come up and drink lots and lots of beer – which, I can only assume, is why it is called Ligo, the Latvian word for “sway.”

I have been feeling the energy boost from more sunlight, but I live at just past 38° north, whereas Riga, Latvia’s capital, is at almost 57° north. So even the “shortest night” is longer here.

What do you do?

TV Pagans Looking Good – or at Least Better

From the abstract to Robert A. Saunder’s paper “Primetime Paganism: Popular-Culture Representations of Europhilic Polytheism in Game of Thrones and Vikings,” reprinted at Medievalists.net, in which he argues two points:

First, that traditional filmic treatments of pagans [sic] qua villains is shifting, with contemporary popular culture allowing for more nuanced framing of Western forms of polytheism. Secondly, that such popular-culture representations of paganism have direct impact on certain contemporary Pagans’ personal spiritual paths by promoting and influencing the “invention of tradition” among a population which manifests non-traditional religious identities.

Read the rest.

“Songs for the Old Religion” — the Rest of the Story

Pagan bard Gwydion Pendderwen’s album Songs for the Old Religion (1973) was the first openly Pagan LP ever, that I know of. (There was Guitar Grimoire too, but it was all instrumental.)

On the Agora Patheos blog, Dana Corby tells the story of how it was made (part 1), including why they left in Gwydion’s mumbled remark, “Play louder, I can’t see.”

I learned just how little Gwydion understood about recording: they expected to complete an entire album, without prior rehearsal, over a 4-day weekend. He’d never even sung into a microphone before and had to be taught how to modulate his voice instead of bellow and to strum his guitar rather than whack it for all it’s worth like you do to be heard across a campfire.

With recordings of some of the songs.

Some Polish Healers and Witches

Part of a photo portrait exhibit on “women of power” in Poland by photographer Katarzyna Majak.

(Via Slate)

A Wicca Center in Thailand

The Ace of Cups coffee bar and occult-supply shop (Daily Mail).

There is a long tradition of metaphysical bookstores and occult-supply shops serving as the public face of Pagan groups. “Owner Wine Kongsorn said he opened the café in a bid to unite the community of Wiccans in Bangkok.”

And exactly how is “Wiccan” defined in Bangkok? The source is the (UK) Daily Mail, which is not known for careful reporting on new religious movements. Sounds like a great research opportunity for someone in Pagan studies.

But the Ace of Cups also serves cappucino, so I’m in.

Just more evidence that Ronald Hutton was right in labeling Wicca the first world religion to spring from England.

‘Gentle Whispering’ Meets the Triple Goddess or the Three Fates or Something

This post goes here because (a) a Pagan blogger, Moma Fauna, introduced me to the whole concept of “autonomous sensory meridian response” and (b) three women in hooded robes? That seems sort of familiar.

Videos of whispery women carefully opening packages and greeting cards do not put me into a trance state, but I will admit that when I was in school, certain teachers’ voices (usually female) had almost the same effect.

For a full explanation, read this from Boing Boing.

 

Scandinavian Style, 1400 BCE

egtved-textile-belt

(National Museum of Denmark)

The acidic peat surrounding this grave of a Bronze Age girl, labeled a “priestess” for her elaborate jewelry,  preserved her clothing and hair but not her skeleton. The burial was found in 1921, but only this month did analysis reveal that, for instance, the wool in her skirt came from the Black Forest region of German, but also that she herself may have traveled back and forth.

The Bronze Age teenager was wearing a wool skirt belted with a large bronze disk with spirals on it.

“She looks, in a way, very modern, in this kind of miniskirt and a kind of T-shirt,” [Danish researcher Karin] Frei told Live Science. (Her unique fashion sense has inspired scores of Pinterest-worthy re-enactments.)

Pagan Academic Online Conference Tomorrow (25 May)

Just a reminder:

The 3rd Online International Conference of Pagan Academic European Associates Network occurs tomorrow, the 25th, from 1800–2100 hours Central European Time.

The theme will be “The Future of Contemporary Paganism: Challenges and Developments.”

The conference is in cooperation with Pagan Federation International

This conference focuses on the different aspects of the future and development of contemporary Pagan culture and Witchcraft practices.

Visit the conference’s Facebook page or download this PDF.

The Persistence of Runic Memory

Seventeeth-century runic inscription from Sweden.

Seventeeth-century runic inscription from Sweden.

Why buy a book on learning runes from Llewellyn or Weiser when you can learn from the people who clung to them the longest?

But you say that they stopped using them a century ago? That is nothing in the spiritual tourism market. “My grandfather taught me the secret tradition that he preserved!”

If they are trying to keep Elfdalian Norse alive, bring the runes along too. Open some B&Bs, some small hotels decorated with runic inscriptions, some charming restaurants. Teach “runic yoga.” Never mind that it was not invented there. This is tradition we are talking about.

Call for Papers: The Occult Imagination in Britain

Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford, both of the University of Glasgow, seek contributors for an edited collection, The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947.

We seek proposals for an essay collection entitled The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947, to be proposed to Ashgate’s new Among the Victorians and the Modernists series. Focusing on the development, popular diffusion, and international networks of British occulture between 1875-1947, the interdisciplinary volume will capitalize on the recent surge of scholarly interest in the late Victorian occult revival by tracing the development of its central and residual manifestations through the fin de siècle and two world wars. We aim to challenge the polarization of Victorian and modernist occult art and practice into discrete expressions of either a nostalgic reaction to the crisis of faith or a radical desire for the new. The collection will also map the affinities between popular and elite varieties of occultism in this period, recognizing the degree to which esoteric activities and texts relied on and borrowed from the exoteric sphere.

Further details at this link.