Run On: Lammas

http://tigerchanter.blogspot.com/2011/08/blessed-lughnasadh.html

originally posted in the on-line religion magazine, Creedible, 2013

August often seems to bring in the most desperate days of summer. The sun beats down heavily, school is right around the corner, and the pace starts to pick up again at work. Everyone tries to squeeze in one last vacation, one last trip to the mountains, one last trip to the beach, one last hotdog, one last camping trip, one last barbeque. 

In the wheel of the year, August marks the end of summer and the start of the harvest season. Fruits, herbs and grains are ready to be harvested and gathered, and summer’s bounty is almost, but not quite, overripe. Observed on the first of August, Lammas celebrates this time of sun, heat, harvest, sweat, games and celebration. 

Also known as Lughnasa (Loo-nuh-sah or Loo-nah-sah), this Gaelic holiday with Irish roots observes the funeral games the hero Lugh (Loo) hosted in honor of his foster mother, Tailtiu. Tailtiu is a grain deity who died from exhaustion after preparing Ireland for agriculture and cultivation. Her sacrifice and death mirror other Corn Mother myths throughout the world, including goddesses from ancient Greece, the American Southwest and Japan. Her gift of preparing Ireland for planting manifests itself through the harvest enjoyed during these summer and autumnal months. 

The exploits of the hero Lugh and his games held in honor of his mother are mimicked in our own summer games of baseball, swimming, soccer, and other outdoors sports. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but some Pagans feel as if nothing could be more appropriate this time of year than holding the Olympic Games, a glorious celebration of accomplishment and human potential. 

Though we’re not Olympic athletes, this is still the perfect time to go outside and do something sweaty, fun and incredible. Though winter seems to be a lifetime away, the cold will be here before we know it. For Lammas, share a hearty feast with your friends and family, partaking of seasonal fruits, vegetables and local dishes. 

Summer is a good time of year for family reunions and gatherings. Like Lugh and Tailtiu, honor your family and the accomplishments of those close you. Family legacy and memories live on when we share the stories that make us laugh and beam with pride. 

Be sure to boast and brag about yourself a little, too.  We all have a lot to be proud of because we’ve all done something heroic in one way or another, so share your accomplishments with those who you care about and who care about you. As the wheel turns and turns again, one day your exploits will be talked about, celebrated and remembered during the sweaty, fun-filled summers to come.

Pagan Blog Project - Week 15 - H#1 – Hestia

http://www.majorolympians.com/hestia01L.jpg

a repost from PBP 2013

Pagan Blog Project - Week 15 - H #2 – Hestia

My house is falling down.

We're renting, thank goodness. But since we moved into this place over five years ago there have been serious foundation problems: backed up plumbing, cracks in the wall and ceiling, damp spots on the floor, dirt in the bathroom...

I've had a strange relationship with this house. At first I was indifferent and uncomfortable. Haven moved from a really great place in Texas, North Carolina was weird and foreign. A friend visited with us a few months later and he said "oh, you have such a cute little witchy house!"

Hmm… maybe.

The indifference continued until a few years ago when I decided I hated this place. I was tired of it and all of its quirks. I wanted to leave, to rent or possibly by a new place. So, we shopped around for houses, looking at prices and financing. It was just not possible. Moving to another rental was also not really a good idea, either.

I'm not sure what happened first. Was it cocktails with my girlfriend, or my at-the-time Coven's ritual devoted to Hestia? But something changed in both my perception and relationship with my house. Slowly, but surely, it became my home.

As a group we devoted a ritual to Hestia/Vesta. I did a lot of studying on her before the ritual, and included a little lesson for the ritual itself. Though the ritual was focused around creating foci (in this case, a tool of devotional focus), looking back now I realize something else happened, at least for me. I finally bonded with my home. Most of all, I realized my physical space was not the source of my dissatisfaction, but I was depressed about more meaningful areas of my life. Changing my house wouldn't make me happy. I would have the same old problems but in a different box.

I needed to change the focus of my life.

In the center of my crappy little home is a huge fireplace, and while the Coven did rituals together in my living room, the fireplace was a natural center staging area, with the mantle and hearth serving as the perfect altar tables. I had always decorated the mantle with flowers and kitschy holiday decorations. But I found that over the years the mantle was less of a mundane seasonal piece of home decorating, but had become a seasonal shrine. And at some point I had begun using it as an altar, charging items or creating little charms. Over the years, my Pagan tools and paraphernalia weren't just hidden and tucked away, but were slowly migrating into the house and into my mundane life.

It wasn't just this refocus on my hearth that shifted my perception of my home, but the ritual itself and learning about Hestia. One of the ladies in the group was going through transitions in her own life and had suggested we do a ritual and lesson regarding reconnecting to our habitats, and Hestia was a natural choice for this.

Hestia’s domain is within the home. But she’s not just about cooking and cleaning, but about protection and nurturing energy. She’s about keeping our focus, and she’s about making sure our domestic energy translates easily into our public lives, and vice versa. The Vestal Virgins in Rome were priestesses who guarded the hearth and flame (may it burn forever!). Their energy in both a literal and a magical sense were devoted to the protection of Rome as both a micro and macrocosm, and this devotion and attention is a useful reminder to anyone who might be feeling a little scattered, a little discontented, a little out of sorts. In my experience, Hestia’s energy is useful for anyone who is looking for something with which to devote themselves.

After spending some time to Hestia, a shift happened in my life. I began to reconnect with and love my home. There was magic there now, in ways I hadn't realized. (Though to be fair, it's not like magic came out of nowhere. The magic had always been there. I just hadn’t really noticed it yet.) And an added and serendipitous bonus of working with Hestia was starting communication with Hermes, who is Hestia's total bff forever.

Most of all, this moment was a catalyst for meaningful change in my life. I got a promotion at work. I was given a car. I applied for graduate schools and was eventually accepted. I have a room now devoted to my Pagan tools and altar. Now I might even love my little house, even though the molding is coming down and my bathroom wall is rotting out.

Working with Hestia totally and literally change my focus, and that's powerful magic

Pagan Blog Project - Week 13 - G#1 – Gnostics

a repost from PBP 2013

Pagan Blog Project - Week 13 - G#1 – Gnostics
 

What we know about the ancient Gnostics is that we don’t know much. We know that the people who modern people might call Gnostic never called themselves Gnostic. The word Gnostic might have even been used as a slang. (Kind of like how the people who modern people call Pagan never ever called themselves Pagan.)

Plotinus, who is considered by many modern people to be a premier writer of Gnostic source materials, often wrote about the Gnostics as those goofy radicals down the street. "It is NOT as the Gnostics say..." (Kind of like how modern Pagans often write about “those fluff bunnies”, even though two thousand years ago we might all be seen as fluff bunnies.)

In regards to the Gnostics, we don’t know more than we know. But what I’ve learned about the Gnostics is that they’ve always been misunderstood. We don’t know who they are now and no one knew who they were then. Which translates to me that anything can be Gnostic, nothing is Gnostic, nothing is not-Gnostic. (Which works out really great for me.)

We know that the Sethians in Egypt were considered to be the first Gnostics, about 200 years or so before Christianity. These people were a sect of radical Jews who were probably inspired by Mediterranean (Greek) mystery traditions. And these Mediterranean mystery traditions were probably inspired by the Ancient Egyptian mystery traditions, which were inspired by God Only Knows. But whoever the Gnostics were, they went on to inspire Christianity, the Kabbalah, Masons, The Golden Dawn, Wiccans, modern Pagans, comic book artists, rock songs, books, movies, and a continuing cycle of inspired texts and prophets (Dick, Hesse, Moore, Smashing Pumpkins, ELO, etc.)

What I love about the early Gnostics was that they just wrote stuff all the time, and some of it is crazy. I get the impression that if there is was aspect about their current Gnostic myth that they didn’t like, they just wrote their own. So this means as a modern person reading this stuff it seems confusing and contradictory, but contradiction only need to exist in religion if one is looking at religion from a literal point of view. But when looking at religion as something that is organic, changeable, and evolving, the Gnostic myths make perfect sense, especially from a Universalist point of view.  We’re all on a path towards God, we know that each path is different. We’re all just wandering around on a crooked path and at the center is God. 

So who were the Gnostics and what did they do? We don’t really know. But what I like to think is that two thousand years ago, Gnostics, Jews, Pagans, Christians, atheists, agnostics and whoever else got together in comfy backrooms every once in a while. I’d like to think that they were all friends. That they sat and breathed together, wrote stupid stories about talking snakes and laughing gods, chanted, raised energy, talked about God, shared wine and bread, laughed, told jokes, had ecstatic moments, and afterword, in the words of my Bishop, they sat around in joy and said “how cool was that?!”