The five lectures that Ronald Hutton gave this past spring in the Gresham College series Finding Britain’s Lost Gods are available for viewing online. Each lasts about an hour.
Tag: Wales
UK Pagans “More Established”
The Guardian newspaper (UK) cherry-picks a few things from the 2021 England and Wales census, including a rise in the number of self-identified Pagans.
2) Pagans and wiccans are becoming more established
More established [than self-identified shamans] are pagans [sic]
, who number 74,000 people (up from 57,000 in 2011) and who gather most in Ceredigion, Cornwall and Somerset, and wiccans [sic], who number 13,000. Wicca is sometimes described as a witchcraft tradition whose roots lie in pre-Christian religious traditions, folklore, folk witchcraft and ritual magic.
Don’t get a swollen head, unless you speak Romanian (see number 3).
A Little-Known Welsh Magical Practice
Burying large reptiles under the floor. It must be a “Pagan survival,” right? Doubtlessly an apotropaic custom, like scorch marks on wooden beams as charm against fire, or leaving old shoes and such inside the walls during construction.
A Short Video on Seasonal Guising
MARI LWYD from HEX HOUSE on Vimeo.
There is a little background info here.
Spica, Online Cultural Astrology Journal, Launched
The Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture at the University of Wales Trinity St. David (formerly at Bath Spa University College) now has an online journal, Spica, with work by students in the MA program in cultural astronomy and astrology.
Spica is available as a free PDF here.
Articles in the premier issue include “An investigation into how counsellors/psychotherapists respond to clients who introduce astrological beliefs into therapy sessions” and “Do consumers of astrological services use astrology as a method of actively seeking divine guidance? If so, what astrological services are sought for the purpose? A Pilot Study.”
CFP: Culture and Cosmos
Call for papers . . .
Vol. 17, no. 1: Literature and the Stars
We are inviting submissions for Vol. 17 no 1 (Spring/Summer 2013) on Literature and the Stars. Papers may focus on any time period or culture, and should deal either with representations of astronomy or astrology in fiction, or studies of astronomical or astrological texts as literature. Contributions may focus on western or non-western culture, and on the ancient, medieval or modern worlds.
Papers should be submitted by NOVEMBER 15, 2012. They should typically not exceed 8000 words length and should be submitted to editors@cultureandcosmos.org. Shorter submissions and research notes are welcome.
Contributors should follow the style guide.
Please include an abstract of c. 100-200 words.
All submissions will peer-reviewed for originality, timeliness, relevance, and readability. Authors will be notified as soon as possible of the acceptability of their submissions.
Culture and Cosmos is published in association with the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales, SA48 7ED, UK.
As from Vol. 17 no 1 Culture and Cosmos will be published open-access, on-line, in the interests of open scholarship. Hard copy will be available via print-on-demand.
The ‘Fifth Branch’ of the Mabinogion & Some Plagiarizing Pagans
In 2008, an English academic who works with ancient and modern Celtic languages created “a piece of Iolosim,” in other words, a pseudo-ancient tale in the spirit of the Welsh literary forger and Druid revivalist Iolo Morganwg.
Written in Middle Welsh and “translated” into English, it purports to be a hitherto-unknown section of the Mabinogion, a famous collection of medieval Welsh tales with possibly older roots.
Imagine his surprise when he finds the whole thing—uncredited, of course—on a website devoted to “Keltic mysteries” and the revival of ancient Welsh Paganism, or some approximation thereof.
The ancient ‘Legend of Amaethon Uab Don’ quoted here as evidence for this mystic cosmological bollocks was penned over a month or so by yours truly, c. 2008, while glugging back the diet coke in Jesus College Oxford computer room. The website of this bunch of chumps not only has copied my entire text (in English and Middle Welsh), but also begins with a long and pompous screed about how wicked it is to steal other people’s material.
Anyone who read the “Fifth Branch’s” introduction carefully would have seen some signals that it was bogus—there is no “Judas College” at Oxford University, for one thing—but who reads carefully on the Internet when they are busy cutting and pasting?
Astrology Conference Book Available for Preorder
From the announcement:
The ‘Astrologies’ conference, organised by the Sophia Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on 24-25 July 2010 was the first gathering of academics working in the history and culture of modern astrology. The range of topics explored in the publication of the conference proceedings is broad, and reflects the strik ing diversity of techniques and underlying philosophies which underlie the enduring human perception of meaningful relationships between the heavenly bodies and life on earth. Although astrology has been treated in many scholarly works as a monolithic entity, all of the papers in this book demonstrate one of the paradoxes of astrological thought and practice: the existence of a relative ly stable tradition of cosmological and astral representations and ideas combined with a adaptability that has enabled astrologies to meld with different spheres of human endeavour in a variety of cultures. The papers are grouped into three basic themes: the symbolism of astrologies, the history of astrologies within different cultural con texts, and the practice of various astrologies from both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ perspectives.