Oh gosh, here we go again...

Well first of all, happy Easter to those celebrating!

If you're a member of any online pagan communities, especially on Facebook, you may have seen this meme floating around. (Without my creative artwork.)

The information this image presents is pretty much entirely inaccurate. Other people have already written a great deal about this, so I'm just going to link to this article: Easter Is Not Named After Ishtar, And Other Truths I Have To Tell You

On a related subject, can we talk about the art used for this image? If you've read the article above it mentions that scholars debate who this image actually represents. It's a really fascinating piece of art. Here's another great article all about the relief and who this image might be of: The Queen of the Night (Burney Relief)

Personally I am partial to the image being of Ereshkigal. But, since we do not know for certain who it is, I can understand why devotees of many deities see their Goddess in this image, especially in such a powerful image.

Full Sugar Moon

I held my full moon ritual tonight. It was one of those times where I wish I wasn't a solitary, so I could have some help carrying things out to the ritual space! I made the usual offering of incense - mugwort and frankincense tonight - as well as some oats, barley, an egg, and milk sweetened with maple syrup and honey.

Since I can remember, I've always held my full moon rituals during the middle of the night, when the moon is highest in the sky. I think, though, next month I might hold a moonrise ritual instead. I have never once sat and deliberately watched the moon rise as I've done with the sun. It might make for a nice change of pace.

Ostara

This year I continued my tradition of holding a sunrise equinox ritual. I went outside and set up about five minutes before sunrise, under the same maple tree as usual, filled with it's red buds. I'd love to make a stone altar under the tree, but for now the ground is a perfectly good working space!

I lit the charcoal to let it get ready for incense, and settled in with my back against the tree, facing east. It was cold out, 18F, but with a warm jacket it wasn't so bad.

It takes about a half hour or so for the sun to fully become visible. I did a bit of drumming (and thought about getting a deeper sounding drum...), did a bit of praying, and just sat and enjoyed the morning, listening to the birds. As the sun started to poke through the trees I offered some incense to Artemis, in her role as goddess of the dawn, and to Demeter, welcoming her life back to the land.

Eventually the sun was fully visible, and I walked into the woods a bit to offer the bread, and a bit of honey liqueur. Then it was back to bed, at least for a few hours.

St Patrick's Day, Part Two (The less ranty edition...)

We're doing our "Irish" dinner tonight, since we didn't really have time yesterday. Irish brown bread and a boiled dinner of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, onions, and carrots. Not at all a traditional Irish dish in actuality, but something made popular by the Irish communities in New England. Which works for me, you know, considering that I'm one of them New England Irish and all.

Which is actually something that doesn't get a lot of attention in the family. See, us kids/grandkids, we're also part Japanese, my grandmother came here from Japan fifty-ish years ago, and it's always been the more obvious 'ancestry' in the house. Right now my grandmother's sitting in the other room watching Japanese TV on her satellite, we just finished a little 'appetizer' of sashimi. Traditional Japanese items decorate the house.

So when this time of year rolls around, it's a nice time to remember the other part of my (known) ancestry. To me it's not a day about the Saint himself, or what he did or did not do, or anything like that, it's just a day to remember those ancestors. The ones who lived and died in Ireland, pagan and Christian alike, the ones who came to America about a hundred years ago. A day to be a little proud of them, focus on them - and there are some interesting, and some tragic stories on that side of the tree, (one of my Irish ancestors, Julia Barry, went down on the Titanic). The whole debate surrounding the day is just sort of foreign to me, because so many people in my area feel the same way about the day.

On a related note, I decided to do one of those ancestry DNA kit things. I know basically nothing about my mom's side of the family, and I think it'll be nice to fill in some of those missing gaps.

St Patrick's Day

I've seen some pagans spreading some really, really awful history these last few days. One meme in particular has been going around about how St Patrick is Hitler to pagans, etc. he slaughtered thousands of pagans! (Remind me how many people died in the holocaust, again?) Never mind the fact that, you know, no he didn't. Also did you know all the Irish pagans had snake tattoos? (Even though Ireland doesn't have any snakes. Why would they all get tattoos of some foreign animal?) I'm not saying the dude was perfect, and never did no wrong to pagans or anything, but come on, do we have to lie about this crap? The deliberate willful ignorance some people are happy to have, openly admitting that they'll trust their shit sources, because... well, because they say what they want to read.

It reminds me of a few weeks ago, when the Salem witch trials were the hot topic. People lamenting all the witches who were burned in Salem, and how they're our spiritual ancestors, and oppression! Wah! But... there were no witches burned in Salem. No one was burned in Salem, and the people killed were not witches. They were innocent people, Christians, and what happened to them was horrible, and for horrible reasons... can we not twist that into something else? There are still places in the world where innocent people are killed because people accuse them of being witches, places where people do not have the freedom to practice the religion they wish to, let's not shift attention away from those issues to cry about things that don't actually affect us like that.

Bad history is always frustrating, but I've always been more annoyed by it when it comes from pagans, people who you would think would be interested in the actual history they claim their spirituality pays homage to.

The Downfalls of Being Eclectic

I'd a hedgewitch, but by it's nature, hedgecraft is a pretty scattered path in many elements. We share the spirit work link, and a few other such links, but we can also work with different deities, different ritual structures, tools, holidays, ethics, and all else. There are a lot of nice aspects of having this freedom, but it can be hard at times.

I am an eclectic hedgewitch because of the fact that I pull from a few different traditions to flesh out my practice. Greek polytheism has been a focus for me for a while now, but there are other paths that get pulled in, as well. The difficulty there is sometimes I feel like I'm just being pulled in too many directions at once.

The issue with practicing a path that is completely self-directed, completely solitary, is there's no one else to sort of point the way in so many cases. One has to sit down, and really think, okay, why am I pursuing this? Is it for a good reason? Will it truly add something? Do I really have time in the day to add in something more? And the answers aren't always clear.

Sometimes I miss following a pagan tradition where everything was just laid out, here's how we do it, without much wiggle room, because at least all the groundwork was taken care of. I could focus on other things. But, as a whole, that never really worked well for me. I get much more from my path now than I did then, and I suppose that's got to be worth it in the end.

Been a bit under the weather these last few days. Still getting out into the woods for a little while each day (well, not today because of sleet), it's nice to be spending more time outside again. Lit up Artemis' shrine tonight for her monthly feast day. Too exhausted to make honey cakes for offering though, so only olive oil tonight. (Maybe a belated offering tomorrow?)

Spirituality and Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism is something I've seen come up a lot lately. I have seen a lot of misconceptions about it, why it is done. Personally, I am not a vegetarian right now, although I have been in the past.

I think the first issue I saw come up was the idea that the rede says we should be vegetarians, since it says to harm none. Which, no, it doesn't - but that's something I've already addressed in the past. So the idea that Wiccans need to be vegetarians because of the rede doesn't quite hold up. And of course, it doesn't apply to all pagans, so...

Then, from the other side, I've seen people saying it's not natural for humans to be vegetarians. Well, it's not really natural for us to drive around in cars, ride roller coasters, chat online, and whatever else, but... well, we do it. Frankly, I see that sort of thing, being able to make choices, to do such "unnatural" things to be very natural for us, it's part of out nature, part of what makes us human.

I've also seen people saying our ancestors ate meat, as if this means we should. Our ancestors did a lot of crap that we would never do today. Or that our ancestors didn't have the choice. As if being a vegetarian is a new concept. Yeah, it's really not. Hinduism is a very old religion, and vegetarianism has existed within Hinduism for quite some time - as well as with other dharmic religions. Orpheus is an important figure to a lot of Hellenic pagans, many read his hymns in ritual - and he was an advocate of ending animal sacrifice, and of being vegetarian.

Beyond that, depending on where your ancestors lived, they might not have eaten very much meat at all in the first place. For a lot of folks meat would have been a rare treat, not something eaten commonly.

Like I said, I'm not a vegetarian, so I'm not trying to talk anyone else into being one. What you eat, or don't eat, is a personal choice... just don't base/justify it on incorrect assumptions.

Listening in the Woods

Today I went back out into the woods again. The temperature here was unusually warm at 77F. Averages for this time of year would be more to the mid/high 50s. On the way out to the woods I noticed that the daffodils in front of the apartment are beginning to come up. I spent quite a bit of time in the woods, just watching, listening. There's always this one beech tree along the path, still has it's dried leaves on it, always catches the wind just right, makes a beautiful rattling sound. It's good to stop and listen sometimes.

Tonight I should have preformed my monthly noumenia ritual, but I was feeling a little off about things, so I decided that it would be better to do it tomorrow.

Hekate's Deipnon

Tonight is the night of Hekate's supper. Shortly after sunset, while there was still a little light in the sky, I went back out into the woods, under the bridge. I spent a bit of time cleaning some of the litter from the area. Then I made offerings to Hekate and her wandering dead, and made private prayer to Hekate.

On the way home things felt very right, and I think this is a call to make a permanent shrine in that area, but again, I'll have to think more on that to be sure. There is another area that I was considering, a triple crossroads in the woods, sees much less traffic I think. But... there's something about that bridge I just can't get over.

After the ritual, I also got the feeling that I should be sprinkling barley over the offerings when I leave them, something I usually do not do for the deipnon, but will start doing.