MaW’s Blog

So, it’s time to think about Yule. As many of you will probably know, Yule is the name for the modern Pagan celebration of the winter solstice, which in the northern hemisphere is tomorrow. In the southern hemisphere, tomorrow is the summer solstice, and Pagans there will be celebrating Litha instead.

But since I’m in the northern hemisphere, I shall be talking about Yule. Being a midwinter festival with elements gained from various other traditions of varying ages (no, Wicca is not an unbroken secret religion passed down during centuries of Christian persecution, and so Wiccan-style Yule celebrations are not exactly as our ancestors did them), Yule exhibits the standard features of such events — an emphasis on the return of light, and the birth of a divine being of some sort.

The most well-known such divine being traditionally born at this time of year is of course Jesus Christ, who gets the well-known festival ‘Christmas’, which happens slightly later than Yule. A modern English celebration of Christmas has many elements borrowed from other midwinter festivals though — Saturnalia, celebrated by the ancient Romans to honour the God Saturn, is one of them.

The actual story of Yule varies depending on who you talk to, but the general place of Yule in the Wheel of the Year is at the start of the year. It is important to note that the year ends at Samhain, nearly two months earlier, making the start of winter something of an in-between sort of affair. At Samhain, the God (which God varies by which tradition is telling the story) descends into the underworld, and winter takes a grip on the world — so, effectively, God dies. At Yule, God is reborn of the Goddess, and he begins to bring light and warmth back to the world, since in modern Paganism, the God is the God of the sun (among other things).

There are, however, many variants of the story of the year, and many ways to approach the mythology which surrounds it. Another story divides the year into two halves. One is ruled by the Oak King, the other by the Holly King — both of them aspects of the God. At Yule, the Holly King (who rules the waning year, from Litha to Yule) is slain by the Oak King (who rules the waxing year) and light and warmth may return to the world — until their peak at Litha, when the Holly King returns and slays the Oak King.

And at the noon of the Solstice I’ll give up my crown
To the light and the mighty Oak King
Spiral Castle: Noon of the Solstice

Marking Yule as a Sabbat, then, requires the fairly predictable input of warmth and light. These are best provided by fire — bonfires, candles, the fire in the hearth. The Yule log is an old tradition, kindled each year from the remnants of the previous year’s log, and large enough to burn for the entire festival. It’s still often seen today, but mostly shifted along a few days and burned at Christmas.

The decoration of homes with evergreen, and the decoration of evergreen trees, is also symbolic of Yule, as we mark reaching the deepest part of winter (or at least the darkest part — we all know it’s likely to be colder in January) it is only natural to turn to the trees which retain their green leaves even in the depths of darkness, and to honour them. After the story of the Holly King above, the use of holly should be obvious. This is when the Holly King is in his full force, and also when the holly bears its fruit.

Food for Yule is what you might expect of a midwinter feast — potatoes, fats, cured meats, root vegetables, fresh meat killed specially for the festival. Sounds like a standard Christmas dinner, doesn’t it? That’s because it is, more or less — although one wouldn’t, strictly speaking, be daubing one’s turkey with cranberry sauce. Christmas pudding also represents the food of the season — dried fruits, flour, suet, spices… all warm, rich, filling and available at that time of year before the advent of modern food preservation techniques.

On the religious side, the God and Goddess will typically be honoured with a ritual, the altar decorated with holly and ivy and other evergreen foliage. Mulled wine or hot cider is an absolutely essential part of this ritual, particularly if it’s held outside.

Rob blogged about how people break the ten commandments every day. Obviously as a Pagan I don’t hold to the ten commandments, although there’s some good stuff in there — not killing people is a great idea, as is the avoidance of theft. Someone else (I can’t remember who, sorry) complained that I don’t blog about my religion very much. That’s because I don’t usually have much to say, but I think I’d like to make the effort to say something more regularly — if nothing else, to help me sort things out inside my own head.

So I’ll start off with a short post but with a link to a Pagan classic: The Charge of the Goddess by Doreen Valiente. Doreen was one of Gerald Gardner’s students; Gerald Gardner was the man who invented Wicca, one form of modern Paganism. The references to secrecy come from a more guarded time, based on the tradition of secret meetings of witches carried on under the noses of the dastardly church for hundreds of years. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but the need for secrecy is far less great today — although some secrecy is still generally regarded as a good thing for reasons I’m not going to cover right now.

Also, most people tend to disregard the bit about being naked. That of course would be another reason why it might be advantageous to hold rituals in a ’secret place’. You’re not going to work very good magic if your ritual is broken up halfway through when everyone is arrested for indecent exposure. Or alternatively, when you all die of hypothermia. Rituals generally keep the participants warm, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it at Yule (the winter solstice).

I shall repeat my favourite part of the Charge here:

I who am the beauty of the green earth, and the white Moon among the stars, and the mystery of the waters, and the desire of the heart of man, call unto thy soul. Arise, and come unto me. For I am the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. From me all things proceed, and unto me all things must return; and before my face beloved of Gods and of men, let thine innermost divine self be enfolded in the rapture of the infinite. Let my worship be within the heart that rejoiceth; for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honour and humility, mirth and reverence within you. And thou who thinkest to seek for me, know thy seeking and yearning shall avail thee not unless thou knowest the mystery; that if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.

Last night was what is most likely my last ritual with Jan and John’s open circle for quite some time. I have, I think, grown out of my need for those rituals, but that doesn”t mean I don’t enjoy them occasionally. Yesterday celebrated the time of second harvest, with a ritual designed to tell the story of John Barleycorn.

Before last night I only knew this as an English folk song, but it seems that there’s also a rather long poem about it, based on an earlier myth. I have no idea which way round the song and the poem came. Still, ultimately they tell of three men who for some reason decided they were going to kill John Barleycorn, who represents the barley, but ended up producing beer instead.

I’m sure most people reading this would be quite happy with that outcome.

The circle was an unusual one — and also fairly crowded with a final count of twenty-five attendees. John took the wise move of casting and consecrating the circle before we all entered it. Once we entered, the quarters were called in an unusual order to reflect the themes of the ritual to come. While we would usually start with air in the east, then proceed to fire in the south, water in the west and earth in the north, last night the first quarter was west, then east, then south, then north. All were called by the same person, which is also somewhat unusual. Still, it appears to have worked well enough.

Some people had pre-determined parts in the ritual, playing the parts required in the story. The rest of us gathered holding a large brown sheet, which represented the field, as, in succession, the seed was sown (I still have grass seed stuck to my robes), the rain fell (from a water sprayer), the barley grew (everyone was given a few stalks of ready-to-harvest barley), the barley was cut (each stalk in turn touched with the scythe and allowed to fall), gathered with a pitchfork (each in turn is poked with a finger — happily, no real pitchforks), threshed (the infamous scourge makes its appearance, no it doesn’t actually hurt), malted (incense carried around the circle), ground (stone touched to each person’s head), and brewed.

The last involved dipping the ears from our barley stalks into the chalice, which was supposed to contain beer but evidently the preparations went awry somewhere so that all there was to put in it was mead. Nobody objected to this though; we all like mead.

We then did what’s known in some books as the ’spiral dance’ around the circle, raising energy. It doesn’t work particularly well in that group — to do that sort of thing effectively you need a group of people who are confident in what they’re doing and don’t need to be given instructions every minute or so. Still, without this sort of circle, people wouldn’t learn what they’re supposed to be doing in the first place, but I can’t help thinking that this would have been infinitely more effective done by a well-prepared coven.

It’s always fun though.

After we returned to our usual circle — alternating male and female around the edge of the sacred space as far as possible given the people attending — we remembered those who had passed on since the dawn of the year at Imbolc, and invoked their names. I was surprised how powerful that was, and how many people had lost one or more loved ones during the last six months.

Then we proceeded to the usual ritual of cakes and wine, except using the mead into which our barley had earlier been dipped. I believe I mentioned the format of this in an earlier post about a ritual, but I’ll mention it again as it’s quite simple.

On the altar throughout the ritual is a plate of cakes and a chalice of wine, mead, grape juice or something of that sort — usually red wine. When the appropriate time comes, the High Priest and High Priestess take the plate of cakes and bless them, then each offer the other a piece with the invocation ‘May you never hunger’. The plate is passed deosil (clockwise) around the circle from person to person. Each accepts a piece of cake from the previous person, and then offers a piece to the next person with the same invocation.

Once the plate is being passed around, the High Priest and High Priestess bless the wine (or mead, as it was last night, or whatever it actually is), then each offer the other a sip from the chalice with the invocation ‘May you never thirst’. This is then passed around the circle deosil in the same manner as the cakes.

Once everyone has eaten some cake and sipped from the chalice, the remaining food and drink are usually offered to the God and Goddess as a libation.

With the cakes and mead done, it was time to finish the ritual. It sounds short, but it wasn’t! This is the concise version, leaving out the mistakes, invocations, full narrative and numerous incidents of playful banter.

I must commend the skill of Rohan, who played the harp at the edge of the circle throughout the entire ritual and was fantastic. Well done.

Now I want to learn to play the harp.

A number of days back I mentioned that I was intending to write a post about Yule and what it means and what we Pagans like to do to mark it. This is probably that post. It may be long, it may be boring, and it’s absolutely certainly going to contain gory details about my religion, so if you don’t like that sort of thing, now would be a perfect time to go and look at something more interesting.

Some of you may be aware of the term Yule used in relation to the celebrations around the time of Christmas (a festival I hope I don’t have to explain, if you want to know about it ask x3ja). When I use the term, I’m talking about the midwinter solstice, which is celebrated by many Pagans as one of eight festivals in the year. These festivals are known as Sabbats, and there are two kinds. The four lesser Sabbats fall on the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The four greater Sabbats are spaced between them.

The Pagan year therefore does not end on December the thirty-first. Because modern Pagan practice is drawn from many historical and current cultures, different traditions may well mark the year at different times, but it is not uncommon to mark Samhain (October 31st) as the end of the year, and Yule (the winter solstice) as the start of the next one. This leaves the time between them as a time when there is no year. So what is happening then?

The explanation lies in the story of the wheel of the year, which is the cycle of growth and death and rebirth running through the Sabbats. A legend has built up around this cycle, and explains it very nicely. It is impossible to know where to start, but most explanations start with Yule, so I shall as well — especially given that this is the subject of this entry.

At Yule, the Goddess gives birth to the God Her son, marking the return of light and warmth to the world. She is the Crone at this time of year — old and wise in the ways of the world, bringer of both death and life. As the God begins to grow, His power asserts itself over the world and warmth begins to return. By Imbolc, in late February, the Maiden Goddess has caught his eye, and together they dance across the fields and woodlands and forests, scattering life where they go. Ostara, the spring equinox, marks the start of their courtship, and at Beltane (the start of May) their sexual union brings forth the ultimate flowering of life in the world. The Goddess, now pregnant, becomes the Mother, and the Sun God waxes in power as Litha (the summer solstice) approaches and passes. Mabon is the final fulfillment of the harvest and the Sun God fades to die at Samhain, leaving himself growing in the Goddess’ womb to be born once more at Yule. Biologically it’s mindbending of course, but legends about deities rarely make straightforward sense.

So what do we celebrate at Yule? The return of light and warmth to the world, the knowledge that winter will end — embodied in the rebirth of the God. Our God is the Sun, so it’s easy to see how the story fits in. Naturally enough, at the same time in the Southern Hemisphere, our fellow Witches are celebrating Litha, the midsummer solstice. Paganism is a religion linked to the land and the seasons, and must therefore be adjusted according to circumstance. A certain other religion also celebrates the birth of a deity at this point in the year, just a few days later. I’ll leave to others the endless argument about who did it first, as I really don’t care. I don’t feel that the question is necessary; it keeps people amused trying to answer it, but it’s missing the point. If the celebration is meaningful, does it matter if we copied it from the Christians or if they copied it from us or if we both came up with it by ourselves or if we both copied it from a third party? Some would say yes, but to them I say to go and argue with someone else about it.

As with all Sabbats, the typical celebration will take the form of a ritual, usually conducted by a coven or a working group, or perhaps a more informal gathering of Witches. As with almost all such rituals, it is conducted within the protection of the magic circle. The name is misleading — it’s actually a sphere, lying half above the ground and half below it, which serves two purposes described in most of the casting invocations for it which I have heard.

The first purpose is to form a barrier between the worlds. We live most of the time in our own world, the physical world, but as Witches we work in other worlds, such as the astral plane. The circle raises a portion of the physical world into a place which is between many worlds, allowing us to access them more easily. Magic operates at least partially in other worlds, and these are also the natural homes of the spirits and elements and deities which we work with. In making the circle a barrier, we also protect ourselves from the less pleasant energies which may find us while we are there.

The second purpose of the circle is to contain any energy raised within it. This is an important one for working effective magic, as we frequently need to spend some time raising power for an objective to be accomplished, and it would be no use if the power dissipated immediately. The circle contains it while we raise it, then allows us to shape it to a purpose before sending it to its intended target with the greatest possible effect.

This is now turning into an essay on basic ritual structure, but I’m going to carry on anyway because I’m interested to see how it turns out, and I’m also interested to see what people are going to say to me after they’ve read it. Probably that I’m a complete crackpot, but I suppose I can’t have everything.

The circle is usually laid out on the ground if possible. My usual groups use the quarter candles (more on them later) as primary markers, and sometimes a ring of tealight candles is also used. Others may use a length of rope, chalk dust, or some other natural substance. I have heard of people who cut the circle into the grass in their garden, but although I do work in a circle which is in the garden of two people lucky enough to be able to establish a permenant working area, they have not done this. Although they have marked the quarters, which saves looking for a compass to find out which way is north every time.

I digress. The casting of the circle is a task for a single Witch. Starting in the East, they move deosil (clockwise, the direction of building energy, sometimes the direction of positive energy) around the circle, making an invocation and visualising the circle forming as they pass. The circle is made of blue light, and extends into a sphere above and below the ground. The other members of the group may reinforce with their own visualisation and thus by extension their own power. The invocation I am most familiar with starts ‘I conjure thee, O circle of power, that thou might be a boundary between worlds, to protect those within and contain all energies raised.’ Unfortunately I cannot remember the rest, and I don’t have that particular one written down anywhere. When I have to do it myself, I usually end up writing a new one each time, but in group rituals it has so far always been the responsibility of another.

After the casting of the circle comes the calling of the quarters. We place a candle at each of the four directions — north, south, east and west. Each of these represents one of the four elements of classical mythology, and we invoke the spirits of these elements as extra protection and strength for the circle. This invocation also starts in the East, and each is conducted by a different person except when there are not enough people able to do it available. A Witch working alone obviously has to do them all.

The invocation in the East is to the element Air. Many people, myself included, like to call the quarters as an invocation to both the Guardians of the Watchtowers and the element in question. A (short) invocation for East might run ‘Hail, ye Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East, ye Spirits of Air, I do summon, stir and call thee up to witness our ritual here today and guard this magic circle. Hail, and welcome!’

Longer quarter calls usually dwell on the qualities of the element in question, and some are almost excruciatingly (to my mind) polite about the whole affair. After East, we proceed clockwise again to South (Fire), West (Water) and North (Earth). This done, the High Priest and High Priestess bless the water and salt upon the altar, then use some of the salt to consecrate the water. In some rituals, the circle is blessed with the water, salt, incense and candle from the altar to represent the four elements, but I have not yet been present at one where this is done; it has never felt necessary.

The High Priest and the High Priestess then invoke the God and the Goddess (Goddess first in most cases) into each other and themselves, asking that they witness the ritual, protect those involved and perhaps to lend their power to any magic which will be performed. After this, the main purpose of the ritual will proceed, be it celebration or magical working, a handfasting or initiation, or something else entirely.

Sabbats are usually times for stories to be told. At Samhain, we listened to the story of the Sabbat, and undertook a spiritual journey through the elemental realms to the realm of the dead, where we encountered the Goddess as Crone. This Yule, we contemplated the return of light and warmth to the world, and gathered the feeling of new hope in the coming of the spring to tie wishes to a wishing tree, empowered with the spirit of the Sabbat.

Wine and cakes are blessed and sipped or nibbled as appropriate around the circle, each member in turn passing them to the next with the invocation ‘may you never thirst’ and ‘may you never hunger’. After this at Yule we were getting quite cold (although I in my new robes wasn’t too bad, could’ve done with a cloak and I would’ve been fine) so we engaged in some chanting and stomping around the circle, which I’m sure made passersby think we were quite mad, then made a libation (offering of the wine and cakes remaining), then dismissed the quarters and took down the magic circle. Then the ritual was over, so we decamped to the pub to eat and refresh ourselves.

That last bit caught your interest, didn’t it? Pagans and pubs are as inseperable as my bedroom floor and clutter.

That’s all on the subject for now.

Firstly the hysterical laughter. I know I mentioned it last in the topic, but it’s very, very funny and deserves to go first, so first it has been put.

With that out of the way, what else was I going to write about? Ah yes. Towel proceeds. It needs a good deal more polishing, but it’s gradually getting there for another release, this one with significant enhancements. The things I’m aiming for are:

• metadata caching in saved playlists, leading to improved load times
• don’t have GDK markup errors on track titles with double quotes in
• use GStreamer 0.8 (done)
• use GStreamer for metadata reading, instead of id3lib, libvorbis and libflac
• metadata editing using GStreamer
• miscellaneous UI improvements
• anything else that seems like it’ll fit

After that, the next release will likely dual-build with gtkmm 2.5, which is important because there are some handy new widgets I would find useful, lots of nice bug fixes and stock icons for play, pause etc.

Another project I’m starting to help with related to Towel is gstmm, the C++ bindings for GStreamer. They use the same system as gtkmm does, so they should be eminently compatible with a gtkmm application such as Towel. Development has unfortunately been stalled for quite some time, so hopefully Bryan Forbes and I will be able to get something passably wrapping GStreamer 0.8. And hopefully it won’t take us all year to do it.

Last night was the penultimate Tai Chi before Christmas. Not many people came so we didn’t do a new move in the longsword form, but instead spent quite a while doing Chi Kung and pushing hands. Learned some interesting things, improved my technique in one kind of movement particularly. Then we revised the longsword form as far as we have reached, which was useful to pick up on the details that tend to get lost in those first few weeks after doing a move where you’re more worried about which arm to stick out than the finer points of the move. Curiously, everyone at Tai Chi thinks the way Christmas is handled by the shops is very irritating. Where are the people that the shops are doing what they’re doing all this for?

Not sure what I’m doing for Yule yet this year. We shall see. The full moon group are doing a Yule ritual, so it’s likely I’ll go to that. It is highly likely to be a significant improvement on doing one solo.