The Magical World of Kit Williams

I greatly enjoyed the programme on the reclusive Kit Williams, this programme concentrated on the work that he has done since Masquerade.

Three Hundred works of such fine detail and sexually powerful in content.

Favourite phrase 'if there has to be a God, let them be fairies.'

Samhain

Penda-Gold ?

Her wearth wudcuth thaet in Staethfordscire sum Terry Herbert mid irenfindere fand eorcengreatne hord Angul-Seaxniscra maedhma fif kilogramma goldes ond twegra ond healf kilogramma silfres, ond sindon ma thonne .md. stycca, ond he wunath aet Burntwood in Staethfordscire.

Ond ma ymb this is gewriten aet

Faune

One of my favourite mittel alter groups

Time

Anthropologists speculate that pre-Christian shamans wore antlers and animal hides in a ceremony to imitate hunting, thereby attracting deer to their tribal lands. Some believe that these rites were performed as a spirit journey, perhaps to commune with a totem. The original Herne may have represented this concept. Up until the 1920s, Siberian shamans practiced similar rituals, and photographs were taken of them wearing antlered hoods. One of the paintings in the Lascaux cavern in France is of an entity with a bison head and human feet, who appears to be carrying a short hunting bow. He was discovered in 1940. A similar image was etched on a bone found in 1928 in the Pinhole Cave in the Creswell Crags of Derbyshire, England. And let’s not forget the famous “Sorcerer” of Les Trois Freres. These images strongly resemble the masked figure of the stag, bull or horse in many English mummers’ plays and hoodening rituals. These folk customs, documented from the Medieval period onward, could not possibly have used the cave art for inspiration, as the prehistoric carvings and paintings were not re-discovered until much later. Hoodening rites and the cave images existed independently of each other, leading me to conclude that wearing animal skins was an authentic Pagan ritual, etched in primal human memory, which survived into the modern day. The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, the Derby Tup, the Mari Llwyd, the ’Ooser, hoodeners and the stag accompanying some Morris dances may all have derived from the ancient hunting or shamanic practice of a man wearing an animal skin for ritualistic purposes. These customs may also suggest an image seen while in a trance state, or it might represent transformation into an animal. Perhaps hoodening rites were originally intended to mimic a human “becoming” a totem.

The “stag-pole” or “ermula” of Saxon Europe may be a ritual tool which was used for a parallel ceremony. A stag-pole is the skull of a male deer, or a set of antlers, which are affixed to a long wooden staff. It may represent male fertility, a boundary marker, a warning to potential invaders, or an insult to enemies. It could have been used as a grave marker for an important individual such as a shaman. The modern Cornish pellars’ staff or “gwelen” is used as a magical implement. There are still several Stagpole Inns and Stackpole Streets in Britain today. In the late 1800s, a few taverns in the Highgate region of London required customers to swear an oath of fealty on a set of antlers. This custom, called “swearing on the horns”, was perhaps the remnant of an older fraternal rite practiced by huntsmen.

Pagan Police Allowed Time Off

This has brought a smile to my face, that Police who follow the 'Old Ways' are to be allowed time off. The positive step forward.

What Are Dreams

What are dreams, what function do they serve in our technologically based, unatural insane way of living.

Last week in the quiet of a French village night I had the most powerful and vivid dream, that when I awoke left me still smelling the perfume, still feeling the heat and still feeling the intense emotion.

The situation was in a different time and different place, where different decisions had been made and different conclusions reached in my life.

I was with a young woman I once knew, I was a younger self, but with the knowledge of maturity of middle age. We were in a museum or a Church looking at post Roman Gothic sculpture. I recollect a font, and bright intense light pouring into the room as if the light quality was from Africa.

Turning to her the emotion was overwhelming enough to elicit a passionate kiss,in front of a crowd of onlookers, the last part was the turn of her body towards me showing a sheath of black silk and lace.

This event has never happened nor is ever likely to, but the intensity, the senses that were activated so strongly of smell,touch and look made it so vivid.

I believe that we are all creatures of nature and this must have a function. I have looked up various writers in the recent past and the belief systems of our ancestors, Freud wrote

Greeting The Summer

Thousands greet the Summer reports Xinhua the Chinese News Agency

A slightly better turnout than for the Church of England this morning.

Hi willað eow to gafole garas syllan, ættrynne ord, ond ealde swurd

They will to you [a] tribute of spears give,
deadly points,& time-tested swords,




Thought shall be the harder, the heart the keener, courage the greater, as our strength lessens.
Here lies our leader all cut down, the valiant man in the dust;
always may he mourn who now thinks to turn away from this warplay.
I am old, I will not go away, but I plan to lie down by the side of my lord, by the man so dearly loved.

Earl Byrhtnoð —(Battle of Maldon)

Today is the 6th June 2009, the sixty fifth anniversary of D-Day, a Nation that loses its history loses its soul and existence.

The rewriting of History for the convenience of the ruling classes has gone on for centuries. The corruption of this Government was amply demonstrated to me on Election day, when I went to Sutton Hoo for the second time since it opened eight years ago. The site is administered by the National Trust, an organisation that I am a member of. I am sad to say that the National Trust is fast becoming a bland bureaucratic corporate machine so amply demonstrated by the recent programme about Sissinghurst.

As with most organisations it has succumbed to the world view of our temporary political masters. The twelve minute film on entry is an epic of discreet 'messages' from the 21st Century perspective. The film is ably translated in sign language by a member of an ethnic minority for the deaf, which gives an adequate summary of the story of the finds on the eve of war in 1939. However the end of this short film,it states baldly,that the Anglo-Saxons have 'disappeared, absorbed into the British Nation'

I sat there open mouthed, have the Welsh disappeared, the Scots disappeared, Ulstermen 'disappeared into the British Nation'. Do their historical sites say the same ?

As far as I am aware the English, have not disappeared, their language is now the Lingua Franca of most of the commercial world. English cultural life, its values and strengths and weaknesses are as relevant today as they were one thousand five hundred years ago.

Sarkozy may give life to the myth that D-Day was a 'Franco-Americain Affaire' as does Hollywood in Saving Private Ryan. The truth as this generation, which is starting to pass, will tell you is different. More Poles landed on D-Day than Frenchmen, More British and Canadian troops landed on D-Day than Americans. The United Kingdom went to war to protect Poland- no other reason, five years later Poland was 'given' to the Soviet Union by the United States and the United Kingdom, only breaking free forty four years later.

I walked round the burial mounds above the Deben, wondering how we have come to the pass we have, that our own Government denies our own culture and is bent on teaching our children a gross perversion of the truth. I have seen children's educational fims with a black father and son sitting down with a white working class father and son toasting the new Queen in 1953 in front of a TV. Culturally this could not have happened , yet it was presented as a cultural truth.

Coming back up the sandy lanes through the woods that Raedwald's people dragged his funeral boat up , I heard a low growl in the sky. The sound of a Merlin engine is instantly recognisable. Above me in the sunlight was a lone spitfire doing barrells and rolls, I assume in preparation for today's memorial.

The spirit of the Old King Raedwald was still soaring over his land, and despite the politically correct elite attempting to rewrite History, the values and Liberty that was ingrained in the thousands of warriors that stormed ashore sixty five years ago is as valid today as it was when Earl Byrhtnoð defied the invader a thousand years ago.

We have not disappeared, the pygmies who unjustly rule this country however will soon disappear and be forgotten.



6 Ærra Liða 2009

Just spoilt at the moment !

Just enjoyed Michael Wood's Beowulf as part the the BBC's Poetry season, and Francis Pryor has been talking arrant nonsense about the 'Dark Ages' ie the ongoing debate as to whether the Anglo-Saxon invasion was a fashion parade change rather than a wholesale shift in populations,language and culture The big give away was the Late Robin Cook offering his opinion on the Dark Agres being a time of Diversity not conquest- more ideological correct nonsense flying in the face of Gildas.

Dan Snow making a good retelling of how Celtic Christianity had a far more profound impact on Anglo Saxon culture than Roman Catholicism under Augustine. (Though I though the cleric who was a biographer of St Patrick was out of his depth

At last a History series this week that was not dumbed down and made no nods to modern political correctness. The 1066 campaign involving the three battles of Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Senlac Hill was something Channel 4 could be proud of

Beltane- Padstow

BELTANE

Cat guards house against Witches

Cat guards houses against witches for four hundred years

Troubadours in the 21st Century

Walking to Wales- Singing for their Supper

"The pub laws are crazy," says Ed. "Legally, you can't get everyone in the pub to join in on a rousing version of an old tune like John Barleycorn, but you can shout and swear as loudly as you like and have the television on as loudly as you like. We have to go outside the front door of the pub to sing quite often. Legislation has been put through to control what comes out ofpeoples mouths

Mummers Dance

Eivør Pálsdóttir - Trøllabundin

Eostur

"The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase."


- E.B. White, "Hot Weather," One Man's Meat, 1944




Photograph Richard Milne-Beltane Fire Society

Tollund Man

Eostur-mónaþ

Den erste man ! ðonc Guthrum

Faune

Rare Magic Inscription on Human Skull

Though not entirely Pagan I thought this might be of interest to some readers...

Not long ago, the well-known collector Shlomo Moussaieff acquired two earthenware bowls, the open ends of which were adjoined to form a kind of case—inside the case was an ancient human skull. A magic incantation, written in Aramaic, was inscribed on the skull.
BAR readers already know about the more than two thousand magic incantation bowls that have survived from third–seventh-century C.E. Jewish communities in Babylonia.a The incantation bowls were made at the same time and in the very communities that produced the most intricate, complex and revered accomplishment of rabbinic Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud. Although some have deemed the incantation literature to be inconsistent with the spirit of the Talmud, recent research has shown it to be, rather, complementary and representative of aspects of life reflected within the Talmud.

To read the rest and see pictures go to:

http://tinyurl.com/a9j7ot
http://www.bib-arch.org/

Shrove Tuesday- 24th

Part of my family come from Olney where the Pancake Race has been held since 1445

Barn raising- very satisfying

The Winter Cycle

It only takes a few inches of snow to realise that nature does matter, as well as its annual cycle.

Aircraft, cars and much of modern civilisation grinds to a halt fairly quickly, and no food does not grow in Tesco's

Marsden Imbolc 7th February

A Time of Rededication

A time when the manifesting energy begins to change, a new cycle of life is beginning, the birth of new life. Prepare inwardly for the changes that will come. Plant your visions and ideas and leave them to germinate. Reclaim what was forgotten, this time will inspire leaps of faith, express your deepest feelings and understand your inner wisdom.

We stand like the first flowers or new born lambs in the field, with vast and confusing world around us, who knows what the universe will bring to us this year. See the year as an adventure and with our Gods/Spirits/Guides to accompany us whatever challenges we need to face.

The monthly Full Moon (9nth Feb) is the Storm moon - a time for purification, spring cleaning, looking into our home and space and remove the clutter that we have gathered around us to protect and collect us over the winter months, let the fresh spring air in.
Banish the negative energy and bring in the sunlight and and fresh air to the dank dark corners. The sun is bringing life and warmth and fertility to the land.
If you are moving house or just cleaning you can declutter.

H/T Hedgewytch

Solmonath- The Month of Cakes

Awakening the Ground

In Western Europe, this was the time for preparing the fields for the first planting. You can begin turning over and enriching the soil in anticipation of the first sowing in March. Pamela Berger has written a book, The Goodess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectress from Goddess to Saint, about the rituals celebrated at this time of year, when the ground is first awakened and the seed placed in the belly of the earth. This is a significant moment in a community which depends on the earth for sustenance. The fields were purified and offerings were made to the goddess.

This medieval Anglo-Saxon plowing charm, recorded by Berger, was said by the farmer while cutting the first furrow.

Whole be thou Earth
Mother of men.
In the lap of God,
Be thous as-growing.
Be filled with fodder
For fare-need of men.

The farmer then took a loaf of bread, kneaded it with milk and holy water and laid it under the first furrow, saying:

Acre full fed,
Bring forth fodder for men!
Blossoming brightly,
Blessed become;
And the God who wrought the ground,
Grant us the gifts of growing,
That the corn, all the corn,
may come unto our need.

The promises of the return of the light and the renewal of life which were made at the winter solstice are now becoming manifest. It's the dawn of the year. It's the time when a woman who is pregnant begins showing. It's time to creep out of the hibernation of winter, cautiously, like the Ground Hog who supposedly emerges on this day to check his shadow. It's the time of germination. This is a traditional time for new beginnings.

Venetian Carnival- February

Omnia-Celt

Omnia Celt

Poor interpretation by Beckford

Theologian Dr Robert Beckford has just given a most slanted explanation of the 'triumph' of Christianity in Britain in the Dark Ages in Channel 4's Christianity a History.

Britain did not exist as a 'country' in the period 450- 800, therefore Dr Beckford is falling into the classic failing of the Academic with a bias, in this case Christianity and multicultural society, mediating the 'Dark Ages' through the prism of a 21st Century political viewpoint.

Three points that he did put over though I am not sure he understood what he was saying.

One- The introduction of Christianity was top down, through the conversion of Kings eager to align themselves with continental pawers. Christianity had very little effect on the culture of the Anglo Saxons. Indeed Raedwald whose burial mound was excavated at Sutton Hoo in 1939, had both Pagan and Christian artifacts in it.

Two- The Augustine conversion was largely a failure and ended after only twenty years, it was only when the rites and beliefs of the people were incorporated into Christianity did Christianity gain a foothold, but again it was closely aligned with the monarchs, providing 'services' such as written records and corrspondence. Christianity had little effect on the warrior society.

Three- After Whitby the Catholic Church sought to suppress the Celtic Church with its mysticism inherited from the Coptic Church.


I grew tired of the message and gave up after half an hour irritated by bland 21st century political statements on the beliefs of our society 1700 years ago.

Also very irritated when Anglo-Saxon society was described as barbaric.

Mud Maid -Heligan

Chonastock

Chonastock

The swift flight of a sparrow

Why would anyone want to spend thousands of years in limbo waiting for Judgment Day, when they could get an instant ticket to a real afterlife? Had there been Heathen missionaries fourteen hundred years ago, that is the question they may have asked those about to convert to Christianity, or the Christian missionaries themselves.

Needless to say, this may have been the very question Penda asked the missionaries that caused him not to convert ala Radbod the Frisian. Radbod of Frisia had one foot in the baptismal font, and was ready to be baptized when he asked, "Where are my dead ancestors at present?" Wolfram the Christian missionary answered, ""In Hell, with all other unbelievers." Upon hearing this, Radbod removed his foot from the font and responded, "Then I would rather live there with my honourable ancestors than go to heaven with a parcel of beggars ." Wolfram and his missionaries were expelled, Wolfram narrowly escaping sacrifice to the Heathen Gods.


Such tales are rare, but it demonstrates that the Christians must have hidden the truth about their afterlife from those they were converting. According to Bede, one of King Edwin's men remarked about Heathen belief and the afterlife:

" The present life man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the Hall wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed."


(J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History, (Boston: Ginn, 1905), pp. 97-105 )

Sofðu unga ástin mín

Wassailing

Details on tonights wassail at Carhampton and at Barrington Court


The West Country Wassail traditionally takes place tonight, January 17, the old Twelfth Night before Britain changed from the Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1752. Nowadays, the tradition of the wassail is not only kept at Carhampton (a separate wassail takes place earlier on the same night at the village's community orchard), but elsewhere in Somerset and beyond. The format of the ceremony is also fluid: if no one is available to fire a shotgun, pots and pans are banged together, the idea being to make as much noise as possible. The majority of the wassails are revivals and even used by some cider-makers as a kind of countryside corporate event. Yet, whatever the motive or format, interest in the West Country wassail is growing as more people become aware of the traditions that governed our pre-Industrial Age life.

Baebes- Adam Lay I Bounden

Bellowhead

Schelmish - Kalifenzorn

Tales From The Green Valley

Currently Channel 4 are currently following up with a new series on the Victorian Farm, an intriguing series that showed that less than 400 years ago, our lives revolved around the seasons far more than it does today

Eivør Pálsdóttir - Trøllabundin

A Northern Journey

Blagdon Wassail 2008- Somerset

The Blagdon Wassail is upon us again