I returned home yesterday from my first national festival, Wellspring, an event put on by ADF. This is ADF’s 30th year, and although I’ve been a member since 2001 I’ve never attended an ADF gathering before. This year though I was asked if I’d be interested in doing a few workshops at Wellspring and after discussing the logistics with my Kindred sister, decided that it would be fun to go and bring the kids. I put in proposals for a selection of workshops and was set to do three: honoring the Other Crowd as a modern pagan, living Celtic Reconstructionism, and the Hidden Folk in Norse and Irish culture.
Category Archives: By Land Sea and Sky
Berchta – the White Lady
Berchta, also called Perchta, is a goddess of southern Germany and Austria who later became known in folklore as a kind of boogeyman who would frightens children. Modern Heathens look to a variety of sources to understand her as a goddess and so the understandings of her can vary widely.
Something Witchy for my UK friends
Something for my UK friends to check out – Rachel Patterson has written some interesting books and teaches workshops in southern England
Seidhr – a poem
(To respect the author’s copyright and visual theme, no excerpt of this post will be provided. Please click through to “Seidhr – a poem” to enjoy the author’s work fully.)
Daily Spirituality
One of the first things I often see people new to a spirituality asking about is how to celebrate the big things, like the holy days – and indeed one of the first things I did approaching German Heathenry was too look at the holidays. But a better question for people to ask is about daily spirituality; how do we live our spirituality every day? The answer to this question shouldn’t change no matter what religion a person is practicing.
Creating a German Heathen Cycle of Holidays
One of my first steps in approaching Germanic Heathenry has been to look at what holidays to celebrate. Up until now I’ve divided my holidays between the Norse and Irish, with the solar holidays – the equinoxes and solstices – being Norse, so this represents an entirely new approach. I believe though that its important to have a solid idea of what is being celebrated, when, and why because it not only connects us to the cycle of the year but also creates a pattern of offerings and reciprocity with the gods and spirits.
Sommer Entdeckung – My Family’s First Walburgisnacht
The evening of this past April 30th my family celebrated our first German-oriented May Day. It has been an interesting experience so far shifting focus with the children; their questions are pushing me to clarify and have an understanding of what I am doing that I probably wouldn’t worry about otherwise.
Walburgisnacht by Any Other Name….
Like the Irish the pagan Germans originally seem to have acknowledged only two seasons: summer and winter. In Teutonic Mythology Grimm discusses at length the way that these two halves, personified as “Herr Summer” and “Herr Winter” battle against each other with each one winning dominance over half the year (Grimm, 1888). Grimm emphasizes May Day as the beginning of summer, “Again, as summer begins with May, we have that month acting as its representative, and just as full of life and personality.” (Grimm, 1888). And also discusses its importance as a holiday, “Everything goes to prove, that the approach of summer was to our forefathers a holy tide, welcomed by sacrifices, feast and dance, and largely governing and brightening the people’s life.” (Grimm, 1888).
Shifting Focus
I’ve talked before about the fact that I follow a spiritual path that incorporates both Irish and Norse practices, but I tend to blog mostly about the Irish. Part of the reason for that is a struggle with talking about the personal aspects of my Heathenry; the other part is that my real connection is with Germanic Heathenry not Norse, but I defaulted to Norse early on because of the difficulty finding accessible modern Germanic Heathen material. I never felt quite at home in Asatru but hesitated to try to shift to the Germanic because I knew on some level that I’d end up having to do my own reconstruction of it, similar to what I do with the Irish.
Celtic Idolatry, past and present
Some people in Celtic Reconstruction prefer not to use images of the Gods, following the idea that the Celts themselves did not do so. A main source for this belief is a quote from the Gaulish Chieftain Brennus, who sacked Rome and was said to have been incredulous at the idea of statues of the Gods in human form in temples: “Brennus, the king of the Gauls, on entering a temple found no dedications of gold or silver, and when he came only upon images of stone and wood he laughed at them, to think that men, believing that gods have human form, should set up their images in wood and stone.” – Diodorus Siculus