???
Clue me is this life,
I'm in lack of a soft bed to know the numbing frost and rough wind driven snow.
Cold wind, icy wind, faint shadow of a feeble sun, shelter of a single tree on the top of
a flat hill.
Enduring the rainstorm, stepping along deer paths, slouching through green sward on a
day of gray frost.
The wheel of the sacred pagan year has no beginning and no end.
Neither religion or shall we say the group of beliefs and practices which we call paganism
has no formal church.
There is no single text from which all pagans receive the practices of their faith.
Pagans go by many names, wiccans, witches, druids, astruars are but a few.
For some, pagans include Native American and Hindu traditions.
Pagans do not believe in a single god, they worship instead many deities and recognize
the feminine as well as the masculine face of divinity.
Pagans honor the seasons of the earth and the sky, they honor the cycle of the sun with
its solstices and equinoxes.
Paganism is gaining adherence and momentum in a time when it seems to many that the traditional
fabric of social life is unraveling and the very survival of the natural world seems to
hang in the balance.
We cannot live or sustain life without her, she is the giver of all.
She is part of the great spirit and she is a gift to us but she is also to be honored
in sacredness and you know anyone who walks upon the earth has to recognize that.
So it's very important for me to be here with my friends that are pagans in celebration.
Their religion is my religion too because in a sense I celebrate the mother, the earth,
she is who gives us all life.
This program follows the festivals of the sacred earth year as they are observed by
several groups of pagans living in New England at the end of the 20th century.
These religious observances blend the old with the new, Paleolithic god and goddess
worship, Native American earth awareness and modern counter cultural trends combined here
and in every region of the United States into one of the fastest growing religious and cultural
movements of modern America.
It is December 21st, the shortest day of the year.
A recent snowfall has begun to melt and a druid mist rises from the forest floor.
We are witnesses to a druid inspired winter solstice rite.
Ellen Everett Hopman is a druid priestess.
In the druid way we call upon the ancestors through the element of water, water which
has been with us from the beginning of the earth.
This water has existed in the blood of the dinosaurs, in the sap of the flowers and of
the trees, in the tears of the children, in the brooks and in the oceans, in the rain
and in the clouds.
It's the same water that's with us today that's been with us for always.
We honor our ancestors and we honor the sacredness of water.
As American pagans follow the cycle of the sacred earth year, they are reminded of a
time when humans were more deeply connected to nature and when the simple elements of
fire, water, earth and sky were the greatest universal sacraments.
Each person will take a candle and hold the candle until you have a clear vision of what
you would like to manifest in the coming year both for yourself and for the world.
Take the candle in the fire, speak your vision out loud and then place the candle somewhere
in the snow so we'll have a circle of candles around us.
At this point in the wheel of the sacred earth year we've come to the winter solstice.
This is a time of dark and it's a time of light.
It's the time of the longest night and it's the time of the shortest day.
We remember our pagan traditions because people have Christmas trees, that's what you see
right behind me here.
The evergreen in ancient times and still today is a symbol of immortality because it does
not lose its leaves the way other trees do in the winter time.
And we decorate the Christmas trees with lights because we are both hoping for and celebrating
the return of the light.
The solstice ritual also provides the occasion for these men and women of the grove to dedicate
a new high priestess.
According to the ancient European custom we've made a wheat weaving.
Into this weaving we have woven our hopes, our wishes and our desires for her future
life as a priestess.
We ask for the blessing of the goddess and the god.
We ask especially for Vrij and Indagda whose festival this is to bless this priesting of
this woman.
Would you place the weaving in the fireplace?
I wandered the roads of the realms for a place to rest, a vague thought of something undone.
Wild oats and broom and sweet primrose of yellow hue, cheeses and lavender.
I rested in a bed of thyme and mint with the scent of heaven rubbed into my hair.
Through the western portal, element of water, we summon, stir and call upon you to witness
our ritual, to guard our circle, to protect us from within and from about and to aid us
in our bidding tonight.
Please come, please come, please come, must be.
If the occasion of the longest night suggests a mood of solemnity, the thought of the lengthening
daylight ahead is a cause for celebration.
A nation of people with wings, there's a river of birds in migration.
A nation of people with wings, faster than a river of birds in migration.
A nation of people with wings, there's a river of birds in migration.
Myself, I'm praying for to come to understand service, how I might be of service to my community,
to everyone.
For the world, I ask that the people who understand that they are not their bodies, they are not
their thoughts, that they are spirit, that they lead. I ask and I hope that they lead.
Merlin MacDonald is a teacher of traditional circle dancing, and like many others, he is
not quite sure how he views himself with respect to the word pagan.
It's true that I'm not myself a pagan. The reason that I'd like to celebrate agricultural
holidays and other pagan holidays with these dances especially is because, I don't know,
maybe I am a pagan. It's just that there's a resonance. Dancing is very holistic. You
listen to the words of the music, you listen to the music itself. As you do the steps,
you're able to touch in with the, whatever sacred chord was true of the people who danced
it at the time.
Western European pagan traditions have much in common with Native American religious tradition.
Mika Ditsa is a woman of Cherokee ancestry, and this winter ritual resonates deeply with
her own family's tradition.
If you look at all religions, they all have the same center, and there should be no fear.
I know the connotation of maybe pagan, people think that it's negative, but it isn't. It's
a celebration of the earth. How can we live without adoring and giving tribute to the
earth that gives us life? Her name is Hogan in one of my languages, and Hogan is the person
that we're introduced to. As we come from the great waters of Wakanda, which is the
beginning or the origin or the oneness, we dance across the sky with Tisho, Father Sky,
and our spirit is called Washoshi, and Washoshi is the drop of water that leaves the ocean
of love.
But we ask now that the energy of this circle be grounded through this tree, down into the
earth, down to the heart of the mother, to the white, pulsing, beating heart of the earth
mother, because the earth mother needs our love now. She needs our energy, and she needs
our help. So let's channel all of our energy from this ceremony down into the earth. Let's
give it to the earth. Okay, we're going to thump a few times here, okay?
Okay.
Bridget of the mantles, Bridget of the pea-teap,
Bridget of the twining hair, Bridget of the augury,
Bridget of the white feet, Bridget of calmness,
Bridget of the white palms, Bridget of the kind,
Bridget woman comrade, Bridget of the pea-teap,
Bridget woman helper, Bridget woman mild.
Long before the biblical era, the Celtic goddess Bridget was celebrated on the feast day called
Imbulk.
It is early February and faint signs of life wait beneath winter's freezing silence, lying
hidden in seeds and beneath snow banks, harbingers of the coming of spring.
In modern times we call it Groundhog Day, but long ago Imbulk was an ancient milk festival
that celebrated the lactation of the ewes pregnant with their spring lambs.
It celebrated the gift of fresh milk after long months without it.
For the druids and the bards, Bridget was the goddess of healing, fertility and motherhood,
to whom women would turn during pregnancy and childbirth.
Bridget was also the goddess of many arts, patroness of Smithcraft, poetry and music.
And above all, Imbulk was a time to honor young girls as the future carriers of life
for the tribe.
After we get your hair done, we're going to go over to Ellen's and we're going to take
the Bridget doll we made over and we're going to have our Imbulk.
Do you know what Imbulk is?
Do you know what Imbulk is all about?
Imbulk is about new birth, isn't it?
Yeah.
New life?
It's when the lambs were first born in the spring and it's a celebration of the goddess
Bridget, goddess of fire and light, who later became a Christian saint.
We will soon arrive at an 18th century farmhouse in southern Vermont, where this pagan family
is preparing to celebrate Imbulk.
Hello.
I bring you blessings of the goddess Bridget.
Oh, come on in.
In the traditional celebration, the young girls of the community go from door to door
receiving small gifts and carrying the blessings of Bridget to every home.
The older women of the community prepare a small party, special cakes are baked and eaten
and merrymaking often continues well into the night, sometimes until dawn.
The girls carry with them a bride doll, a straw image of the goddess Bridget often made
from a sheaf of last summer's harvest.
A ceremonial bed is constructed by the elders for the doll to sleep in, decorated with ribbons
and flowers and a small magic wand, symbolic of Bridget's ability to turn winter into spring.
So what kind of wood did you bring?
That's a birch twig.
There are three trees sacred to Bridget, birch, willow and bramble.
Oh, yeah, blackberry is sacred to Bridget, isn't it, but so is oak.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, she's a fire goddess and oak belongs to the sun, it's a tree of fire.
Do you want pear or do you want blackberry?
The first slice of cake is set aside for Bridget and to commemorate the arrival of the first
milk of the year and the anticipated thaw of the coming spring, the girls make an offering
to the earth mother by pouring a bowl of milk on the ground outside.
The straw image of Bridget is placed in the window to tell the goddess that she is welcome
in this house and the ashes of the hearth are raked smooth so that Bridget's arrival
can be revealed by her footprint.
Slip away to the woods tonight, be children of the moon and rejoice that spring has come
at last, that spring has come so soon.
You who complain of winter's cold and shiver in the snow, push back the shroud from the
mother's breast, see promised green below.
All skeptics that the spring returns, all doubters that the fire still burns, stand
in the circle for tonight and feel the heat and see the light.
Then greet the god with reverence, pour libations on the earth.
This is the night the mother proves, life's natural end is birth.
It is March 21st, the vernal equinox, when day and night, light and dark, claim equal
shares of the earth's rotation.
The lion has roared one last time as a heavy spring snow covers the pregnant earth.
The lamb of March awaits its turn for a few more days.
As we go through the arch, we'll move into sacred space.
Okay, then you're going to define the sacred space?
Do you want to set up the altar first and then pull us into space?
Oh yeah, we're going to set up the altar first, but anyway, then you'll go around, you'll
define the sacred space, you'll call in the quarters, I'll call in the three worlds and
invoke the gods.
Okay, then you will talk about our purpose.
Right.
Okay, maybe we should have a little meditation.
Yeah, and then it'll just be an explanation of, I'll just do an explanation of what the
egg coloring means.
Right.
But we should have a meditation first.
We should have a meditation.
An explanation, then a meditation so that you can focus on what it is that you want
to put into this.
Right, and then in complete silence.
We'll do the eggs until they're all gone.
Okay, so we'll have lots of prayers and lots of blessings for ourselves and for the world.
Yes.
As are most pagan festivals, this one is improvised.
Ellen and her friends search in ancient praxis
for symbols and rituals to sustain the continuity with the past,
provide meaning to the present, and hope for the future.
Blessed be, blessed be
May the circle be open but unbroken
May the peace of the Goddess go in our hearts
Merry meet and merry part
And merry meet again
Blessed be, blessed be
With the element of earth, I welcome the nature spirits.
Especially the spirits of the plants that should be springing up all around us soon.
And the nature spirits that will cause the trees to bud.
The little people, all of you.
We welcome you into the circle.
We ask that you come.
The egg is a sign of fertility and of the blossoming of the earth.
What we're going to do now is meditate on an intention for ourselves for the coming year.
And for something for the earth or the world.
We'll put that intention in a picture form on the egg.
And then bury it in the mother.
Today, the ancient pagan practice of egg decoration will play an important role in the ceremony.
Just as it does for Christians at this time of year.
Eggs and rabbits were the attributes of the goddess Westra, also known as Easter.
A Germanic fertility goddess associated with spring and the direction of the east.
The place of the rising sun and of new beginnings.
For pagans, egg painting is a magical act.
After blessing the ritual space, the altar, and those assembled.
And after the ancestors, nature spirits, and deities have been called in to witness the event.
Eggs are marked with symbols, words, and pictures.
That depict the wishes and needs of the group.
Some will pray for peace.
Some for healing of the earth.
And some will magically address their personal concerns.
And those of their friends and relatives.
It is considered a very good omen if the eggs disappear overnight.
Whether they are composted into the ground or eaten.
The life force embedded within them is now released.
To empower the prayers and petitions of those who painted them.
Easter, Persephone, all of you.
You've witnessed our act.
We've given our prayers and wishes to the earth mother.
We know that the earth mother hears the cries of her children.
We know that the energies of these eggs will go out to do good in the world.
And we thank you for being here.
We thank you for your strength and your inspiration.
We thank you for being in this circle.
May it is, fair-faced and gentle.
Blackbirds exult at the crack of day.
Cuckoo's work greets lordly summer.
A bam it is for every bitterness.
Hedge green bristle the branching boughs.
Fair each fresh and fertile field.
Ever pleasant the garb of spring.
Winter gales past and gone.
Cheerfulness on every good grove.
Restful, happy, sunlit time.
Flutterings of birds flock down.
Green fields full of answerings.
Where the busy water sparkles.
Shy, unyielding lark.
The burden of your song is clear.
Bonnie Serene May is perfect.
May it is, May first to be exact,
and the celebration we call May Day, pagans call Beltane.
In the modern pagan calendar, Beltane is the official start of summer.
In this New England town, as in many others,
children, parents, grandparents, neighbors and friends
turn out to celebrate the time of the warming sun,
of lengthening days and the rising of the new season's crops.
This is a tradition brought to America by English settlers,
such as Thomas Morton, who set up a May Pole in Puritan times
and welcomed local Native Americans and new English immigrants
to a great May Day party.
Children, the most tangible evidence of the health and prosperity
of the community, are a vital part of the day's festivities.
The May Pole is lovingly and ritually cut down
and carried to its intended location by the village children,
with a little help from their parents.
The digging of the hole designed to receive the May Pole
may be accompanied by prayers and blessings directed to the earth.
Once the pole and the hole are united,
the colorful ribbons are unfurled in preparation
for the ritual winding ceremony that will follow.
In New England, the English origins of these celebrations
is nowhere more evident than in the performances of the Morris dancers.
Ladies and gentlemen, guiding star Claude Morris
will now perform a dance from Knutsford!
Music
Dance!
Music
In the ancient tradition, a large part of the May Day festivity
involves dancing, and clogging is particularly important
because as we dance on the earth, we're actually waking up the vegetation.
Music
So is this in English, the way you're doing this,
is this particularly English?
Yes, these dances are from England.
Each village in the Midlands, in the Cotswolds of England,
had its own Morris team.
This is Cotswold Morris that we dance.
The border Morris' dances come from near the border of Wales,
from the villages along the Severn River.
The clogged dances come from the northwest area of England,
and sword dances also come from the northwest.
For the Cotswold Morris, each village had its own team,
its own kit, its own particular costume that was associated with that village,
and the dances were passed on from generation to generation
through doing them this way.
And in a way, we've made it even more formal.
We practice all year round, and we work really hard to make the dances look good.
And in England, teams that we've danced with, it's just what they do.
It's much less of a big deal there.
They've just grown up doing it, and it's just something that you do.
So it looks like they're doing a spiral dance.
Yes, this is a dance that we dance here every year,
and it's a wonderful dance because once you get into the center and start out again,
you're facing the people still coming in.
So you have a chance to come face to face with everyone who's here.
It's very social.
Yeah, this is also a traditional dance that witches do a lot,
to spiral into the center, like going deep within your own being
and then spiraling back out again.
It's also like death and rebirth, spiraling into the earth
and then spiraling back out again.
To the make-hole for another round of dancing!
To the make-hole!
Okay, the make-hole itself represents the sun,
the solar principle as it penetrates the earth mother.
Weaving or braiding a ribbon or a loaf of bread
or any form of braid is a very ancient and potent form of spell casting.
By weaving the ribbons, the participants, the dancers,
are ensuring that there will be fertility for the coming summer.
Fertility is certainly one of the central themes of Beltane
and is most clearly represented by the traditional figure of the Green Man.
Alan has managed to lure him out of his hiding place in the Hawthorne tree,
whose first blossom signaled, in ancient times,
the official start of the growing season.
Here is the Green Man.
Hi, Mom, what's up?
Well, I was hoping you would enlighten me
as to some of the more sensual aspects of life
because I don't know much about it.
These are reproductive structures here on the ends here.
They're reproductive structures.
Reproductive structures?
Yes, they come out this time of year.
These plants, flowers, these things, these are sexual organs.
But they're plants.
And what are you supposed to do with these?
Oh, spread them around everywhere.
You can notice them.
It is unlikely that most of these villagers,
so joyously celebrating this beautiful May weekend,
would call themselves pagans.
But like many of the holidays that are celebrated throughout the year,
the pagan tradition nestles comfortably within and beside
the mainstream religious practice.
Thank you.
The hardy cuckoo calls a welcome to noble summer,
ends the bitter storms that strip the trees of the wood.
Summer cuts the streams, swift horses seek water,
the heather grows tall, fair foliage flourishes.
Music of the wood is heard, a melody of perfect peace.
Dust blows out of the house,
and mist from the lakeside.
Bords settle in flocks on the land,
where a woman walks, singing.
In every field is the sound of bright water rippling.
It is June 21st, a rain-soaked morning at a farm in New Salem, Massachusetts.
Preparations are underway for a pagan celebration of the summer solstice,
the longest day of the year.
And so it is not surprising that the sun is the topic of conversation,
as Sylvia Braille and Ellen Hopman discuss their plans for the day's activities.
The sun has come to the earth,
and moved the flowers all the way, and there's the sunloaf.
And the sun king has returned,
and everyone says he has returned, or he has come, or something like that.
And I hold up the loaf, and he is in the grave,
and I hold up the loaf, and he is in the grave, and everyone goes, he is in the grave.
Do you know that in Gaelic, the word for sun is female,
and the word for earth is male?
Yeah, right, exactly.
That's the cosmology you're going by.
I know, but the sun is both male and female.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, but I think we should say that he has returned,
and then we should also say she has returned,
because you have Granya, who is the sun goddess.
Right, that's true.
So you should go a little more unisex-oriented.
Well, I just don't think it's really fair to always call the sun male,
when it's both.
While many established pagan traditions have books of ritual
upon which to draw for their liturgy,
it often falls to priests and priestesses to craft a ceremony
that will suit the particular needs of the land,
the season of the year, and the celebrants.
Today's ceremony will be guided by Sylvia Braguier.
Hey, look who made it.
Why is Sylvia the officiator today, as opposed to anyone else?
Oh, goodness, there's so many reasons.
Let me count the ways.
Now, Sylvia has been a practicing shaman
and tantric practitioner for many years.
She's also a pagan.
And I don't know whether, are you a witch?
I don't know what to call you.
I am what I am.
She looks like a witch.
Well, I have any laugh.
That's what makes me official.
She has a very good laugh, and she's been doing rituals
and working with drums and fire breath.
Breath of fire is her specialty.
Kundalini work, right?
And she's just a very fiery, powerful personality.
She's also an excellent musician.
Above all things, paganism is an earth religion.
For pagans, the earth is alive.
Whenever possible, devout pagans will give offerings of thanks
for the air that we breathe,
for the water that we drink,
for the warmth of the fire,
and for the land that gives us life.
Before the ritual honoring the summer can begin,
the spirit of the earth is alive.
Before the ritual honoring the summer can begin,
the spirits of the place must be consulted.
Feels good.
And they say it's okay.
Yeah, we're psyched, have some energy here.
We're ready.
Once these spirits express their approval,
there is much work to be done
to prepare the site for the ritual.
First, the fire pit is dug,
and the heavy work of assembling stones to ring it around
is undertaken by Ellen, Sylvia, and other volunteers.
As friends and neighbors arrive for the celebration,
finishing touches are made to the ceremonial mound,
whose centerpiece is a large bread, a solstice loaf,
baked especially for the occasion,
a symbolic image of the sun.
It is then hidden by flowers to emerge later as a surprise
in the ceremony about to take place.
certain elements are almost always present
in these rituals,
beginning with the processional into sacred space.
The four sacred directions, north, south, east, and west,
are often invoked,
as are the three worlds of the ancestors,
the nature spirits, and the gods.
And then the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water,
also sacred, are invited to participate.
Calm you winds, calm the air.
It brings us truth with every breath.
Blow through us, breathe us.
Bring us your truth.
Bring us your wisdom.
We welcome you into the circle.
Smudge sticks, made from sage,
are one of the customs imported into modern American paganism
from the Native American tradition.
Smudging with sage is associated with purification,
harmonizing the mind and the emotions,
and preparing the group for new inspiration.
And at this time we welcome the spirits of the fire
in this day when we honor the sun into our circle.
Come and burn within us with your passion for life.
I think it's really important to honor the ceremonies
of the earth and the sun.
Because as we do that, we become more and more
connected to the cycles of life.
And it's a place for people to join together
in really sacred space.
And in so doing, it helps the whole planet.
Because every single circle of people that gets together
and raises energy, that energy goes out
over the whole planet and creates healing.
And our earth is really in need of healing now.
So any way that we can help reconnect to the circles
and the cycles is really important.
Because we've gotten so linear for so long
that as we honor the circles and the cycles,
it starts to bring things back into balance
between the mind and the linear aspect
towards the cyclical and coming closer to the earth
and the changes.
Do you think this is the way of the future?
Do you think people are going to be doing this more and more?
I think it's the way of the past.
I think it's the way of the future.
I think it's the way it's always been
that some of us have forgotten.
Indeed, what has drawn so many friends and neighbors
to today's summer solstice celebration
is the yearning to remember,
to recapture from the ancient past
the sense of depending upon the natural world,
and to awaken feelings of respect,
patience, and gratitude for the multiplicity
of her life-sustaining gifts.
And one of the purposes of the ritual itself
is the locating and the sustaining of memory,
a search for the truly fundamental.
The rain, too.
The rain.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
close bosom friend of the maturing sun,
conspiring with him how to lord and bless with fruit
the vines that round the thatch eaves run,
how it apples the mossed cottage trees,
and fill all fruit with ripeness to the core,
to swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells
with a sweet kernel,
to set budding more and still more
later flowers for the bees,
until they think warm days will never cease,
for summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
In the Celtic tradition, the harvest festival
is known as Lunasa.
In the Wiccan tradition, it is called Lamas.
It celebrates the first fruits and the new grain,
usually near the beginning of August.
In the ancient Christian tradition,
it was the time of the loaf mass,
when the new grain is ground and the first loaves
are placed on the altar to be blessed.
But it is also a time of tension and uncertainty,
will the crop be bountiful?
This year, on a farm in New England,
we attend a harvest ceremony
inspired by ancient Scandinavian customs.
We bless you.
Oh, squash crop,
for this is not squash in old Norway.
We wish to take this fruit,
or whatever it is for now,
for the first time.
This is what we would be living off in the long winter.
In Scandinavia, the summertime,
you're planting in April,
and you're shoving the ice aside almost with one hand
while you're sticking the seeds in the ground with the other.
And then you're harvesting very early in the season.
You're harvesting this time of year, August, September.
You're harvesting because the snows come so soon.
You have a very short growing season.
I've been interested in ancient traditions
ever since I can remember,
and grew up with fairy tales and legends and lore
and imagination,
and have been particularly interested in Scandinavia
since I was in high school, maybe before.
And by the time I was a freshman, a sophomore in high school,
I was translating from the old Icelandic,
some of the sagas and short things, into English.
And then in the 60s, we were sailing.
Our family lived over there every summer.
And after I graduated from college,
I went to the University of Oslo specifically to study
linguistics, Scandinavian philology, mythology,
folk religion, and traditions at a university setting,
as well as having the opportunity to go out into the countryside
and learn it from the people who are actually still practicing this stuff.
The academic record of Scandinavian,
particularly Norwegian rural traditions,
pre-Christian traditions, is extremely well documented
and is generally unavailable to the non-Scandinavian speaker or reader.
So much of the modern pagan, the quote, Norse pagan, unquote,
stuff that you see is based on things written in German,
most of which were penned during the period 1932, 1935 to about 1945,
and directly part of the Völkisch Nazi philosophy
and not reflective of the traditional Scandinavian.
In the traditional Scandinavian practice,
one honors the vetir, who are nature and guardian spirits of the place.
And the vetir are highly specialized.
One may be of the house,
another for a particular crop or a particular section of the land,
and to recognize them is to bring luck to the land and luck to you.
And so the first fruits of each crop are offered to the vetir.
The promise for the coming year,
it intercedes from which we may get more apple trees.
And as we have taken, so may we give back of good bread
and wicked good ale.
Skål.
Leaving the vetir in their various habitats
with ample supplies of homebrew and bread,
Ellen and her friends go off with Jane on this llamas afternoon
to learn about another ancient Scandinavian custom,
divination with the help of rune sticks.
One must balance maðr, mastery, with ir, compromise,
in order to really determine one's own fate.
Runic script is an ancient alphabet
once used widely all over Northern Europe in Iceland,
Greenland, England, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Among other uses, runic script was employed by merchants
in packing slips to mark their goods for shipment
and dates back at least 2,000 years
to the earliest days of the Christian era.
Divination using runes as a tool
is for somebody who honestly wants to know
what is going to happen in the coming year.
It's not parlor game stuff.
People were seriously interested.
What is going to happen?
Is it going to be a good year? Is it going to be a bad year?
If a bad year, what times of the year am I going to be vulnerable?
So we're going to go straight into the divination.
So you are going to concentrate on what is making you, you.
Who is that? What is that life force?
What are the stresses, the hopes, whatever, that are shaping you?
When you are finished concentrating,
you will give the sticks back to me for the cast and interpretation.
The first set in the runes is sort of initializing the disquette,
as you would say in modern computer speak.
You are getting this so that it is specifically the divination
for that individual person.
Then the second cast says,
okay, here is the year's prediction.
Here are the seasons when you're going to be vulnerable.
This should be fine.
Or you may be having a real exciting year.
Find a bomb shelter.
The third set is what can you do to make your fate better?
Now it is here, and generally it's going to be sort of a skinny year.
You are saying during the whole year, comma.
Be careful of your resources.
Things can get a little skinny.
Like if you have outstanding bills, pay them off.
Then you cast them all together.
The person may ask a question,
and if the sticks don't answer that,
it is because there is something more important
that that person has to know.
It's interesting, many people will open up to a soothsayer.
Soothsaying divination could have a very, very viable role
in various types of therapy because it's non-threatening.
It's non-official.
It's fun.
There is theater there.
It works. It plays. It feels right.
Not every tradition will do this.
Most of the rural traditions now have essentially lost the use of runes.
Or if they have runes, it's there but very much in the background.
Most of the magical use, quote unquote, of runes today is neo-pagan.
The day becomes more solemn and serene when noon has passed.
There is a harmony in autumn and a luster in its sky,
which through the summer is not heard or seen,
as if it could not be, as if it had not been.
The autumnal equinox marks the beginning of the season
when the nighttime lengthens beyond the day.
Just as in other religious traditions,
some holidays may be spent quietly and privately within the family.
It may be a time to dress up,
inspired by the trees whose colorful autumn extravaganza is getting underway.
A time perhaps for the family to savor the dwindling sunlight and warmth,
take advantage of the beautiful late September day of sparkling waters
and a lingering twilight.
Lamas, celebrated earlier, is the first of three pagan harvest festivals.
This is the second one.
And a great family feast later in the day will celebrate the bounty of the land.
In less than six weeks, we will arrive at the last harvest festival,
called Samhain, and also known as Halloween.
Music
But there are moments which he calls his own,
then, never less alone than when alone.
Those whom he loves so long and sees no more,
loved and still loves, not dead but gone before,
he gathers round him.
It is October 31st, and Halloween sweeps with the sun
from the east to the west across the land,
and familiar symbols of the season and the day appear on every corner,
in every shop, in every home.
In the Celtic tradition, it is the time called Samhain,
the last of the trio of harvest festivals in the pagan wheel of the year.
For most people, it is a time for children.
Trick or treating began as a system of social welfare among the ancient Celts
when widows and orphans would go from door to door,
asking for food and blankets to help them through the winter season ahead.
For pagans, Samhain marks the beginning of the dark half of the year,
when the first killing frosts are on the land.
It is the Celtic New Year, and it is also the season of the witch.
The veils which separate the worlds are at their thinnest,
and the spirits of the beloved dead are near at hand.
Ellen is on her way to attend a rehearsal of a Samhain observance
with a coven of witches from Rhode Island,
whose practices are derived from English traditions.
Today they have gathered at Earthlands,
an educational and ecological center in Petersham, Massachusetts.
Behold the mystery of fire, the consecrating one,
veiled in the flames of all that is eternal.
Grace us with your presence as the third ward is set.
Now from the west, the water.
Behold the mystery of water, the purifying one,
veiled in the coolness of the seas, the lakes, and the seasonal rains.
Grace us with your presence as the fourth ward is set.
All right.
Then I've got the commands.
In our ancient tradition, Samhain marks the end of the harvest season
and the beginning of winter.
The animals have been brought down out of the pastures,
and all the produce of the fields has been gathered
in preparations for winter or underway.
Samhain has many meanings.
Samhain itself is the season between years.
It's part of the ancient Celtic cultures.
They had actually only two divisions of the year.
One was celebrated at Samhain, which is their new year,
and the other was celebrated at Beltane,
which was the beginning of summer.
At Samhain, it opens the dark of the year,
at which those who have passed over into Summerland
come back to check on us when the feast was prepared for Samhain.
A place would be set for each family member who had passed over,
and the plates and the goblets were filled,
just as though they were there in physical form to eat.
After the feast was done, then the plates and the goblets
were placed outside and left overnight.
In the morning, if the dishes were clear,
then it meant that the loved ones enjoyed the feast
and liked what they found and would go back again
to the Summerland until the next year.
However, if the food was still there,
it meant that they weren't happy with what they found
and that they were going to stick around a while
and let you know about it.
And the remnants of that custom is found in the trick-or-treating
that our children do.
By the light of the fire, by the breeze of the wind,
baked fruits of earth, and the water within,
do we bless this meal of our harvest
as we welcome those who have passed before us to come and share.
Welcome home, Mother.
Welcome home, Father.
Welcome, Father, and your parents, and my mother's parents.
Welcome home, Son.
We meet yet again.
This coven, called Rose Child, is part of a larger group,
or tradition as it is called,
which has 11 covens and groves across the country,
containing in all more than 60 people.
Joyce Segrist is a high priestess and queen of the tradition.
The title queen was formally bestowed
when more than seven covens hived from the groups she had started.
Well, it's an unwritten law in our religion that we do not proselytize,
because a person who is recruited, who is convinced against their will,
as Shakespeare said, is of the same opinion.
Still, those who come to us come to us of their own free will.
They seek us out, and we joyfully accept them.
When I first started out, it was extremely difficult
to find a competent teacher or a high priestess to teach witchcraft.
I quite literally ran into mine at the supermarket,
and I noticed she was wearing some rather unique jewelry,
and I began asking her about it.
From then on, we became good friends,
and she did accept me as her student.
Nowadays, some 23 years later,
all you need to do is to find your New Age stores,
or the stores that sell books about witchcraft.
Many of the books have names and addresses in them,
and it's like you go and search.
You try each group out to see if it fits, if it feels right.
The essential element of being a witch is knowing
that I am part of the grandest of all schemes in life,
that rather than being separated from it
and aimlessly searching for something, that I have found it,
that witchcraft said that women matter,
that women are the seed of life, that carry the seed of life,
and therefore we are very important to life,
that I know that I am in control of my life,
and that I have the right as well as the obligation
to live it to its fullest and to do what I can
to help others to do the same.
That's what speaks to me.
We have completed this cycle of the sacred pagan year.
The cosmic spiral that Mother Earth performs in space-time
has made another full turn.
On the Earth plane, the dark half of the year is upon us again,
and the winter solstice approaches.
We end as we began.
How can we live without adoring and giving tribute to the Earth
that gives us life?
That is the giver of all.
We are the giver of all.