For open minds
Do you know why you belief in some superstitions and not others? Do you even know where some of these superstitions came from? A lot, of course, are due to old religions.
We’ve got four-leaf clovers, Friday the 3th (fear of Friday the 13th is called Friggatriskaidekaphobia), lucky 7, 666 the number of the beast, throwing salt over your left shoulder, walking under a ladder and a host more.
In Pure Spirit
Are you superstitious? Which superstitions do you pay the most attention to?
It’s a song. Yes, it might be from the newsmongers at Fox via FoxADHD.com but credit where credit is due. This is catchy and full of fun science facts. Given who’s made the video it’s a bit surprisingly to see pagans accurately been credited as the creators of the original holiday we now call Christmas, too.
In Pure Spirit
What has Santa done for you this Christmas?
For hundreds of years, Pagans have been persecuted by the law and people who didn’t understand their way of life and thus hated them for it. In 2013, British courts ruled in favor of a practicing Pagan against her employers with unfair dismissal, sexual and religious discrimination claims, receiving a total of £15,337.12. It is seen as the first ruling of this nature and a welcomed recognition for Pagans and their beliefs.
Karen Holland, aged 45, claimed that she was fired from the shop she was employed at in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, around Halloween after sharing her beliefs in Paganism. She went to the Feast of the Dead which is a traditional Pagan festival around Halloween. Once Gurnam Singh and Tarloch (brothers that owned the store) found out that she was a ‘witch’, they proceeded to ridicule her. They showed a clear disliking to the idea that she was a Pagan. Karen felt alienated by her bosses and shortly after Halloween, she was fired. Her bosses allegedly asked Karen if she rode around on a broom among other things, which they later denied saying. She said that she was made to feel that she had done something wrong just for following what she believed in.
Tarloch and Gurnam Singh claimed that she had been caught stealing a lottery ticket and magazine on camera, but later when asked to provide evidence, they said that they had deleted the footage. They denied ever ridiculing her about her beliefs, which they also couldn’t prove. Without the proper evidence for their case, the brothers could only deny what was being revealed in the tribunal.
The court ruled that Karen was to receive £6,145.44 for unfair dismissal and an additional £9,095.84 for charges of religious and sex discrimination. This ruling shows that all people, including Pagans, enjoy the same rights as everybody else.
The owners of the small shop say that the payout will put their business in jeopardy. They are challenging the court’s decision but without any evidence for their case, an overruling on the previous decision is unlikely.
It appears that Pagans across UK do not need to fear expressing their feelings about their religion as the law is firmly behind them and their rights as human beings.
In Pure Spirit
What do you make of the news? A step forward for religious equality or not?
Story: Daily Telegraph | Picture: Fixie Foo
Do you know where the mistletoe Christmas kiss tradition comes from? Is it Christian? What about Santa? Does he wear that red suit because he was coloured that way by a Coke-a-Cola advertising campaign? What secret Hanukkah practises are still going on today?
This video from the every entertaining Mental Floss is a fun and informative few minutes.
In Pure Spirit
Are you surprised at all the pagan origins to the Christmas holiday that we know today? Or do you disagree with this video and suggest they’ve got their facts wrong?
Spring reminds us of new beginnings and plans for the year ahead. With it comes the imagery of chicks and bunnies, eggs and flowers, which heralds the start of Easter. These images, which embody ideas of rebirth, are not just attached to the Christian festivities of Easter; they are formed from ancient beliefs and mythology, including the celebration of the pagan goddess Eostre.
The name Eostre derives from Northumberland Old English and was first identified in Bede’s work, De temporum ratione, written in the 8th century AD. The mythology goes back much further to pre-Christian times and, aside from the similarities in name, the themes of Easter can also be traced to these pagan beliefs.
Eostre was regarded as a goddess of fertility and has been associated with the Northern European Saxons, though there are variations of her name as she was adopted by different pagan civilisations. Today, Wiccans and Neo-pagans recognise Eostre in the form of Ostara, from Old German, and they celebrate Ostara, the start of the zodiacal year, as one of their eight annual Sabbats. Ostara occurs at the spring equinox, which falls around the same time as Christian Easter festivities, and celebrates the planting of seeds and the return of fertility to the land after the darkness of winter.
Eostre’s association with renewed life means that she has been characterised as bringing light, with her name suggestive of the sun rising in the east. Commenting on an entry he had read for Eostre in a dictionary of etymology, John Andrew Boyle described how she was supposedly imagined as surrounded by lights which were held up by hares. Hares and rabbits are appropriate symbols for new life because they sleep longer throughout winter and tend to mate in spring.
Some commentators have also been tempted to link Eostre with the Norse goddess of love and fertility, Freyja, who was said to have ridden in a chariot pulled by cats. As John Andrew Boyle states, the idea of cats and hares are seen as synonymous with witch familiars in Wiccan and Neo-pagan beliefs, and it is sometimes thought that the hare was Eostre’s incarnation.
Today we see these representations of the hare and light in the modern festivities of Easter: the Easter bunny brings eggs, which are symbols of fertility, and the longer hours of daylight brings life to crops, flowers and animals.
The Eostre figure is common across many belief systems, with several goddesses of fertility and rebirth found in the ancient pantheon of gods and goddesses. Among those most familiar to us today are Aphrodite, Demeter, Cybele and Ostara.
As well as the similarities with ancient myths, the pagan belief in Eostre also ties in with the Christian belief in Jesus. At Easter Christians celebrate the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ as a powerful cyclical motif of the promise of life after death.
One origin of this concept can be seen in Greek mythology with Cybele, the Great Mother goddess, who desired Attis. Attis, like Jesus, was said to be born to a virgin mother during winter and died and was resurrected around the spring equinox. It has been suggested that, as pagan spiritual beliefs pre-existed the Christian faith, many pagan rituals were transposed onto Christian belief during the pagan conversion to Christianity.
While it is difficult for us to be sure of the origins of particular beliefs, it seems clear that there are dominant themes which remain throughout certain festivals. Nowhere is this more obvious than the ways in which Easter and Eostre celebrate the positive regeneration of life.
In Pure Spirit
Do you still have any faith or time for Eostre? What about Easter? What does Easter mean to you?
Does Santa Claus have a meaning? Where does the origin of the Santa Claus story come from? As it happens the modern Santa is largely a blend of Saint Nick and Father Christmas from the United Kingdom. The name “Santa Claus” is from the German “Sinterklaas” and has changed over the years.
This short video gives you all the background you need.
In Pure Spirit
Did you think Coca-Cola helped create the Santa Claus myth? This video seems to suggest they only helped establish the current appearance.
What about making a return of some of the elder Santa myths? Fancy some Christmas gnomes popping down your chimney on the solstice?
The original celebration was not a Christian one. In Anglo-Saxon history, the festival was originally for the goddess Ēostre, also sometimes written as Ēastre.
Ēostre also gives her name to Eosturmonath, one of the months in the Anglo-Saxon calendar, and is believed to have been either a goddess of light or fertility. Experts who have debated the role of Ēostre in Anglo-Saxon culture include Jacob Grimm, one half of the Brothers Grimm, and co-author of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
As pilgrims converted Anglo-Saxon cultures to Christianity they were aware that the Ēostre worship festival occurred around the same time as the resurrection of Jesus. In order to help blend Christianity into the pagan cultures, the two festivals were actively merged. The event became known as Easter and became Christian in focus.
However, some modern churches, looking to distance themselves from the pagan origins of Easter, have started to use the phrase “Resurrection Day” instead.
The origins of Easter eggs begin in the region of Alsace. References to the Easter bunny itself are included in the writings of Georg Franck von Franckenau, a German botanist, who lived from 1643 to 1704. It was German settlers who introduced the concept to the States in the 18th century.
Pagan symbology includes the rabbit as an emblem of fertility. This ties in strongly with Ēostre as a goddess of fertility. Some suggest that the Easter bunny may be the avatar of Ēostre on earth.
The Easter bunny is the product of two religions; Christianity and some forms of Anglo-Saxon paganism. It has been adopted into modern culture easily as it is also readily available for the commercialisation of Easter.
In Pure Spirit
What have you been told about the origins of the Easter bunny? What does the Easter bunny mean to you?
Or also long as tasty Easter eggs are forthcoming – does it matter at all?
Picture credit: Iain Watson, released under Creative Commons.
Three months after the Holy Thorn tree at Glastonbury was written off as dead and destroyed, a result of a vicious vandal attack, new buds have started to appear.
Local legend says that Joseph of Arimathea travelled to Wearyall Hill after the Crucifixion, tired after this journey, he stuck his staff in the ground and went to sleep. It is said that the staff once belonged to Jesus and that when Joseph woke from his rest the staff had grown into a thorn tree.
The site became a popular destination for Christian travellers.
Despite the Christian mythology around the tree it was a pagan wizard who saved it. The local council turned to Peter Frearson, who runs a horticultural business, and who has the nickname “Garden Wizard”.
Talking to press, Frearson outlined the recovery technique he applied to the tree.
“We applied a dressing of pine resin and beeswax to stop further moisture and rain getting in, keep out bacteria and fungus, and applied nutrients.
“We covered it in horticultural fleece, then bubble wrap, then more fleece.
“Soon after we replaced the bubble wrap with hessian.
“We mulched around the base of the tree with well-rotted wood chips to keep the moisture off the ground, and we’ve also driven spikes into the ground and filled the holes with compost and bonemeal, and we’ll do it again soon.”
In Pure Spirit
Is the tree actually 2,000 years old? No. In fact, the “Glastonbury Thorn” is a form of Common Hawthorn. It’s recorded that the first famous Glastonbury Thorn was cut down during the English Civil War circa ~1640/1650. However, cuttings from the trees have allowed the species to live on.
If the “current” Glastonbury Thorn had not recovered then the backup plan was to use another cutting to replace the vandalised tree. This is easier said that done as most attempts to grow a Glastonbury Holy Thorn from a direct cutting tends to revert to the normal hawthorn tree.
Here’s a good news story. Dot Griffiths is better known as Madam Morgana and her home in Stantonbury, England, is also known as the Dragon’s Lair. The great grandmother was at one time so sick with stage 3 endometrial cancer that doctors said she only had hours to live.
What was Madam Morgana’s response? She told local press;
I haven’t got time to die yet myself. As they say, ‘this lady’s not for burning’
Madam Morgana has been practising paganism as a white witch for decades. Even while she was in hospital she ran a clairvoyance session for other patients. While she recovered she wrote a book of spells called “Grimoirs of Madam Morgana” and the white witch is now looking to publish them.
Dot Griffith is a Stantonbury parish councillor but that does not stop her finding the time to organise psychic fayres in the UK. Currently she is planning her first ever craft and psychic fayre for Risley Village Hall in Bedfordshire for April 9th.
In Pure Spirit
Do you think the doctors simply got it wrong and under estimated the 74 year old’s ability to recover from serious cancer? Or do you think Dot’s outlook played a significant part in her recovery?
Picture credit: Milton Keynes Citizen.
Witches coven, the Crystal Cauldron, had booked the Our Lady’S Social Club in the Dioceses of Shrewsbury to host their annual ball but where blocked by the Catholic church at the last minute.
Reverend John Joyce, told press: “Parish centres under our auspices let their premises on the understanding users and their organisations are compatible with the ethos and teachings of the Catholic church. In this instance, we aren’t satisfied such requirements are met.”
High Priestess Sandra Davis, of the Crystal Cauldron, only discovered the Church’s decision when she phoned to complete the £175 payment for the booking. She had already printed tickets for the event.
Davis, 61, was also able to communicate to the press; “I’m appalled. My congregation is shocked that in this day and age there can be such religious discrimination. We’re normal people who follow an earth-based religion and want to enjoy ourselves.
“We thought we were bridging the gap with other religions but misconceptions still exist, like we sacrifice animals. Does the church check everyone’s beliefs before allowing them in the club?”
Sandra aspires to turn the Crystal Cauldron from a pagan meeting place into a temple.
In Pure Spirit
What do you think? Should the Catholic Church not be able to regulate who uses their resources as they see fit?
Did they just handle this booking in a very bad way or is this simply religious discrimination?
