"The witches giving birth to summer"

Personal piece from earlier this year, Summer is already drawing to a close so decided to quickly post it now before autumn is in full swing :)

Tonight is the beginning of jólablót for most heathens who observe a lunisolar calendar. The timing is determined by "the first full moon following the first new moon following the solstice." The new moon was immediately after the solstice, making this about as early as a lunisolar jólablót can be.

According to Heimskringla:

Hann setti þat í lögum at hefja jólahald þann tíma sem kristnir menn, ok skyldi þá hverr maðr eiga mælis öl, en gjalda fé ella, en halda heilagt meðan jólin ynnist. En áðr var jólahald hafit hökunótt, þat var miðsvetrar nótt, ok haldin þriggja nátta jól.

'He [King Hákon] made it law to hold Yule at the same time as Christians and each man was to have a measure of ale or else pay a fine, and observe for the duration of Yule. But before, Yule was held on hökunótt, that was midwinter night, and yule was held for three nights.'

Most modern recreation of the lunisolar calendar is built primarily on the work of Stockholm University professor Andreas Nordberg's paper Jul, disting och förkyrklig tideräkning ('Yule, Disting and pre-Christian Time-Reckoning'; paper is in Swedish but with a substantial English summary at the end) though usually not identical to Nordberg's reconstructions. The lunisolar calendar associated with the Nordic Animism movement and the Year of Aun (not exactly the same as Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen's The Nordic Animist Year) is more directly informed by Josh Rood in his paper The Festival Year: A Survey of the Annual Festival Cycle and Its Relation to the Heathen Lunisolar Calendar.

Read more about the Year of Aun, named for the legendary Swedish king who extended his own life by sacrificing his sons, on the Nordic Animism website and on Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen's YouTube channel.

Hi!! Could you talk a little about what following Tolkien elven religion is like for you? (Only if you want, of course.)

I'm a very newly awakened elf and I've just started reading the silmarillion. I haven't even gotten that far yet, but already it's the most connected I've felt to any religious system/religious lore before. I'm considering practicing Elvish religion, but idk. I feel a little strange saying I want to practice a religion from a work of fiction, y'know? (Please don't take this as me saying your beliefs are strange— I think they're incredibly cool. This is very much just a me thing.)

Anyway, I guess my question is something along the lines of How did you realize this was the religion for you/What do you believe wrt Tolkiens work being or not being fiction?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and doubly so if you choose to answer! Have a nice timezone :))

Alatulya, welcome kin! this one is a little long so there is a break. i also accidentally hit publish early, so we will see how editing it works lol.

table of contents: 1. my personal history and variety of practitioners 2. dealing with fictional mythology + my fave paper on this 3. specifics of tolk elven religion

Eldarin religion has been my primary religion (buddhism and my eclectic animistic witchcraft also there and co piloting) for seven years. I have been working with other eldar on our own group experience of this religion for two or a bit more years. I have taken a bit of priestly service role of collecting and organizing materials and keeping track of the calendar, which we call Loa and which assigns different holidays and themes in order throughout the year. i suspect this role is agreeable and natural for me as minya, but that anyone could do it. the degree of demand differs depending on the person, and i would say that much of my time is set to thinking of or practicing our religion. others have less involvement, and some of us feel our cosmology and philosophy is more cultural than religious the way humans might think being a member of a religious group should be. as for my own journey of getting here, i have been otherkin for most of my life and many years of that was 'generally a nature spirit type thing.' which became 'an elf but i am not sure what kind.' which then became 'oh god… am i one of those hoity toity tolkien elves?' bc there is a cultural expectation among elfkin that tolk elves are more dour and care what color clothes you wear or something… turns out that is not true! or, at least, i have not met these grim arbiters of what is becoming of the firstborn! reading the silm and other texts in the legendarium to fill in what i had absorbed from the hobbit and lotr (books and movies) was the lightbulb in the dim cellar. i use a mixed spiritual and psychological theory of origin and function for my several theriotypes and elven kintype, and this experience filled in some gaps i had just been sitting with. i personally feel that i am living one continuous eldarin life--awoken at cuivienen among the minyar, lived and died, spent my time in mandos, and was reembodied here. my sense of memory is dim, and i generally assume that is just a sign that memory is not necessarily important for this part of my life the way it was in arda. it is a great honor to live this life and to find other eldar and folks of all kindreds to share my love of life with. it was natural to transition from my magic and religious work with nature spirits to a cosmology centered on the legendarium-some of the spirits i still work and live with admit they are maiar, others are not maiar and are of the many kinds of spirit and sprite that entered into ea after its foundation to explore. our working relationships and the techniques i use for magic have stayed much the same. so how i do it is just one example in a variety.

2. i will answer first on dealing with the fictional aspect and wrestling with the nature of constructed or pop culture or modern mythology spirituality-the individual beliefs differ there, too!

for my part, i do not think the legendarium is a factual history of this actual world we currently live in. i do think jrrt was channeling something, and may or may not have been kin himself of arda reembodied here.

i think ea, like most faerie realms, is both here and not here and you have to open yourself up and step into it. once most people have experienced the enchantment of an otherworld, they are never fully able to drop the sense of it. i do feel that the legendarium makes a suitable mythopoetic 'history' for powers and themes that apply to both this world and ea and where they overlap, and that the legendarium becomes more historically factual the closer you move into ea and the further you go from current earth.

there is a lovely paper that i surely have annoyed everyone with titled the tolkien spiritual milieu by Markus Altena Davidsen of the university of leiden that really gets into the anatomy of constructed religion and what is present in certain medias that lends itself to that anatomy, which he calls 'religious affordances' in the text. it details a number of groups of many varied beliefs in the tolkien spiritual sphere, some active and some long gone, and i feel that it is a great way to expand one's vocabulary and mental concept of constructed religion and the wide variety that is possible in such constructions. the pdf is available from the university website here

if you check out mr davidsen's other published papers on that website, there are several others also relevant to fiction sourced mythology and spirituality including some by other authors.

3. that being said, there are religious affordances for the eldar in the texts, but not necessarily enough for a fully fleshed out practice as is prepared and given to new members of various world religions. it will take a bit of crafting, but we elves do love to craft! most of us blend legendarium cosmology and philosophy with practices or philosophies we are previously familiar with, like neopaganism or judaism or etc etc.

we have developed some structure in the forms of: a multiply layered observational calendar for the six seasons, eight holidays, twelve months, and seven days of the week; the fourteen valar and several named maiar associated with certain valar; the panentheistic experience of the creator Eru; and the use of witchcraft, meditation, devotional or worship activity, enchantments, glamor, and arts like music poetry painting crochet etc.

most of us practice our own personal flavor by ourselves, and group rituals or ensorcelments are rare at the moment. we are all exploring, and i would be thrilled to hear about your own explorations and what calls to you!

sooo… basically i have a worship and work relationship with our gods and supportive spirits, and give observation on the schedule of the loa. i have daily practices, like offering of beverage an thanks or an oil anointment of my body, and then weekly practices like an eruhini veneration and well wishes for the dead. and monthly practices on the full and dark moon, which is focused on the vala of that month, where i usually do spellwork for the constellation. there are holidays at the start of each season and at the solstices, where i will sometimes do magic for the group but is usually about the personal journey. the one time another elf was physically with me i did do some small rituals including that elda. my herbalism work is inherently religious to me and i also count both learning and practicing herbalism as a devotional activity, same with going on walks or drumming.

i invite you very earnestly to reach out any time and through any means you are comfortable with, and i wish you a very blessed full moon of winds. hantanyel ar namarie!

Gleðilig Jól! From today, January 6th, through the 8th we are in the period of the full moon of Jólmánuðr (Yule Month) on the Old Norse lunisolar calendar, the period during which the main Yule celebrations would take place before they were moved into December.

These dates of course would shift every year relative to the Julian and later Gregorian calendar since a lunar year is not quite 365 days, but in general this occurred during the full moon following the first new moon after the winter solstice as months began on new moons. Because this year it is so close to the solstice, an extra month will be added in the coming summer to keep the calendar from continually moving backward, meaning that next year's lunar Jól dates will be a fair bit later than this one relative to our Gregorian calendar.

For more information on this and similar lunisolar calendars, check out:

"Jul, disting och förkyrklig tidräkning" by Andreas Nordberg

"The Lunisolar Calendar of the Germanic Peoples" by Andreas Zautner

"The Nordic Animist Year" by Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen

@ospreyonthemoon

So there's no really simple ones that have lots of gods?

Not that I know of! Now, caveats: the more philosophical traditions on the chart that emerge from polytheistic contexts, like Mohism and Neoplatonism and whatnot, score pretty low on the elaborateness hierarchy generally since, as philosophical traditions, they're non-prescriptive annexes of larger traditions of metaphysical speculation. So based on the criteria I used, if you had a pretty chill philosophical polytheist school I could easily imagine it approaching edges the bottom right quadrant even if the religion-as-actual-practice of all its adherents is pretty elaborate.

And I'm sure there are folk religions which are relatively simple in their practice and which are animist or polytheist also; but because of the nature of my sources (Wikipedia), I just don't have much information on, like, small folk religions practiced by only a few thousand people in relatively simple ways. But there are some commonplace cultural trends in human spirituality like entheogens, purity rules, ritual calendars based on the agricultural calendar, etc., that mean a lot of the "simplest" religions are specifically reacting against the elaborateness of other traditions they're in dialogue with, like Calvinist rejection of Catholic ostentatiousness. So maybe this is just a niche likely to go unfilled? Hard to say though.

4 and 5 for musing's ask game

4) are there holy days from your ancestors or ancestors cultures you keep?

So my whole ritual calendar has its foundations built on trying to honor the holy days of my ancestors but grounded in the land I currently live in so I wouldn't be able to point to one holiday that's kept from my ancestors' cultures. Instead I think including Mardi Gras in my ritual calendar is the thing that stands out. My ancestors, as far as I know, weren't Catholic so I don't really do the dual faith incorporation of Saints and folk Catholic practices that's popular in traditional witchcraft circles right now but Mardi Gras is the exception because I grew up in south Louisiana. It's a part of my prepagan prewitch culture Im holding on to but I celebrate it with a focus on the animistic nature of the return of spring spirits to drive out the winter spirits. Plus who can turn down a good king cake

5) favorite traditions from your holy days

Going to see the migration of the sandhill cranes to mark the start of spring. 80% of the world's cranes migrate to this one area and I live close enough to see it. It's breathtaking and I love performing divination based on their flight. There's nothing like the sound they make, it echoes in your head for hours and breaks the silence of winter

I also love making my grandmother's fudge recipe with my mom on Mother's Night. She doesn't know it's Mother's Night but the tradition means a lot to both of us

How did you go about building your own religion? I know a lot of it is really personal and tied to your specific gods, but anything you can share for someone looking to do such a thing and not sure how to start?

I started with my gods and the stories they told me about themselves. These stories became my myths, tales I tell those closest to me to help them understand my beliefs. Then I extrapolated into how those stories effected my beliefs about the world. My relationship with Brona, and her story, which I call "The Fall of Brona," fundamentally changed my beliefs about the soul, reincarnation, and how both worked. I was already an animist, so that didn't change, but how I understood the spirits of things did based on these anthropomorphic animistic spirits that I was now basing my life around. Finally I built a calendar around my gods and how their stories interact with the world around me. I looked to seasonal indicators that already brought me joy: the first snowfall of winter, the first robin of spring, wheat threshing, lambing season, etc. I would recommend the same pattern for anyone looking to do something similar. Start with the entities, listen to them closely and carefully. Then incorporate what they tell you into your worldview and how you mark the passage of time.

1, 18 & 41 for the fanfic asks!! 💌

Do you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?

I do daydream a lot! Especially before I start a fic or a big chapter. There are usually a few scenes that really stick out to me, and I'll play those over in my head for a while as a way of motivating myself to write. Even some of my abandoned ideas have scenes like that.

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

I love research! I research moon phase calendars, star charts, and general timelines for pretty much all of my longer fics. I think Please Don't See Me used to hold the research title after I spent hours watching online chess games to find one I could use for one of the scenes, but everywhere, everything is already getting up there for sure.

Here's a cool article I read when researching pagan werewolf cults:

41. Who's your favourite character you've written?

You want me to choose between my children??!!!??

I have to say either my feral forest baby Remus in Hut of the Mistold, my unhinged s&s&y Sirius, or my pirate queen Lily from in the dark. But my fave cameo is Kingsley in pdsm!

fic writing asks

So, for any inclusive Heathens (and other pagans) out there who haven't heard about it, Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen from the Nordic Animism page/channel/etc has figured out that 2023 is a good place in the lunisolar calendar to reinstate the octennial cycle and celebrate the Aun year as a means to start healing our collective relationship with the world

I think it's a good focus point for gathering energies and collectively starting the work to fix some of the problems that have been building since Industrial Capitalism started to hold sway.

So with the first full moon after the first new moon after the winter solstice (lunisolar calendars are... interesting), the Aun year has started. I'm probably going to be posting here off and on about it over the year.

I invite heathens, pagans, and everyone else interested in reconnecting with nature in an animist way and healing some of the damage done in the name of "progress" to read up about it and participate how you can. Pick up garbage in parks. Donate to organizations fighting for clean water access and maintaining wilderness (especially indigenous-led ones!). Go and spend more time in nature, actually paying attention to what's there. Go to therapy and heal some of the damage that living in this capitalist system has inflicted on us all. Drink more water. Get a plant and take care of it, start a window herb garden, really get out in the yard and plant veggies and herbs and flowers that you like so you're slightly less dependent on the capitalist supply chain. There are so many things people can do that will make the world a little nicer, and every bit is valuable.

Announcing: AMA with Rocket and Alder of the Agdistine Order! - Saturday June 17th, from 5-7 pm ET

Hello all! Saturday June 17th, from 5-7 pm ET, we will have an AMA with Rocket and Alder of the Agdistine Order.

Description of the Agdistine Order:

The Agdistine Order is a liberatory spiritual project working to build a transcendent mystery tradition that meets the needs of modern transgender and gender nonconforming practitioners. It honors the Anatolian mythological figure of Agdistis, a nonbinary Earth daemon with a powerful appetite for pleasure, and strives to provide practitioners with tools for transformation of trauma, shame, and dysphoria as well as a shared focus for ancestral veneration. This is accomplished through a mix of ekstasis and enthousiasmos, using both ancient and modern techniques. The Order is a work in progress, with particular attention on crafting effective rituals, while also not forming the bad kind of cult. The dramatis personae of The Order include Dionysos, Cybele, and Attis, all of whom had mystery cults in antiquity, but far as we know, Agdistis has never before had a mystery cult of their own. You don't have to be trans to venerate Agdistis but we make no guarantee that you won't be trans when they finish with you. If you'd like to do the reading before the AMA and come with questions, you can find the essay, "The Passion of Agdistis: Gender Transgression, Sexual Trauma, Time Travel, and Ritualized Madness in Greco-Anatolian Revival Cultus," first published in "Queer Magic: Power Beyond Boundaries" in 2018. The piece includes very frank discussions of transphobia, transmisogyny, violence, and sexual assault, so please take care while reading.

Some info about Rocket and Alder:

Rocket is a cultist and mage of the Agdistine Order and the founder of the Anarcho-Surrealist Wizard Brigade, fully dedicated to 1) Cybele Magna Mater, and 2) being the weirdest pervert in the mystic groupchat and the weirdest mystic in the pervert groupchat. On the clock, Rocket can be found destroying the institution of marriage and teaching at law schools, and the rest of the time, they write poetry compulsively, glue rhinestones to things, organize with other leftist weirdo Jews, and push the flesh to its limit for art, magic, and pleasure. Rocket’s writing can be found in the Queer Magic Anthology, Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic, the Texas Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Advocate, and the Brill journal of Religion and the Arts, and Rocket can be found on Tumblr at @ flamingkorybante and in meatspace on a trans commune on unceded Lenape land. Alder Knight was raised as an animist and got into witchcraft in 1998. They began their work with Dionysos in 2012. As neither a classicist nor a reconstructionist, they rely heavily on divination, personal connection with the divine, and trial and error in their Dionysian practice. They are an herbalist and a rootworker, with a focus on local plants and a light touch, and they prioritize using their skills and resources to seek out healing, community resilience, collective liberation, and the ecstatic. A mystical experience in 2014 propelled them into intensive work with the transgender dead, which culminated in the annual Transgender Rite of Ancestor Elevation, @ trans-rite on Tumblr. Similarly, a mystical experience in 2015 planted the seeds of what would become The Agdistine Order. Their day job is in clean energy and climate education, and they live with Rocket and others at the all-trans intentional community they co-founded in 2018 on unceded Lenape land. You can find them on Tumblr at @ thegodwhocums.

Looking forward to this AMA! Mark your calendars!

The Year of Aun, 2023

The Year of Aun, 2023

[First written for Oak Leaves, ADF’s quarterly publication. To be published Spring 2023.] Dr. Rune Rasmussen, The Nordic Animist on YouTube and elsewhere online, has spent several years recreating animist calendars that reflect pre-Christian Nordic cultures and thinking. He had surmised that these groups added an additional year into their calendars, much like we have leap years, to set the…

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An early Capac Raymi present cuz imma be so busy this week... yes I drew some Inca gods:

This boi-os are the sun god Inti and the moon goddess Mama Killa(lit. Mother moon). Capac Raymi is usually celebrated as the festival of the children and the birth of the sun so yeh...

Cuz I was bored I also drew a two panel story of the myth of the moon: apperantly there are two myths which tell the story of why the moon is covered in patches. The first one being: At the beginning when Viracocha [their father] created them, the moon shone the brightest which made the sun jealous. On the other story, it tells of the fox [who fell in love with the moon goddess and traveled to the skies] who hugged the moon so hard that it created patches on her head.

There are probably more stories regarding her though those come to my mind cuz they are the most known [gotta remember that andean and Inca myths/legends/folklore can be so few and even mixed in because most don't have names of deities and instead use normal names like "the moon" or "the sun". ]

Got more bored and decided to create eyes for everyone. In case the words aren't understood, ill list from top to bottom, left to right, the names of the gods.

Inti: Yeah sun god, most popular for the andean folk and father of the first Inca[like um, the emperor of the incas]. I decided to make it like a sun rays in the pupils, and also give him some soft characteristics, but not too soft cuz, he is the sun.

Killa/Quilla: The elder sister of Inti, I made her look more sharp because she was deemed as protector of women. She also played a role in marriage, mother of the firmament [sky] and the calendar, by far an important diety considering the Incas really caled about cosmology as a whole. Her priests were also all women. She was sometimes[on costal regions] seen as more important than Inti, while on the other regions she always shared an equal status to that of Inti.

Pachamama: Most important diety even to this day, her name translates Mother Earth/World, and yeah you can guess who she is. Surprisingly what I get to see in the Inca gods is that they all have alot of independence, so even if she was married to Pachacamac[god of earthquakes] she was still held to a high regard instead of being wifes or daughters of said diety. And that's honestly not coincidental since most gods came from other places since the Incas integrated the gods of the people they conquered, so some, well...all gods would have one or two things they where associated by and had the same connection to. Also, unlike the gods in other Pantheons, the Incas didn't have the same idea of making their gods more humanized, instead they where forces of the world, the earth was the earth, not just a woman with Fertile powers, same for the others. Even today there is this huge respect for the earth, everything around the sky to the waters, must be cared for instead of robbing or exploiting it, and in the case of my country at least, Mother nature as a whole has its right to live and be on equal terms with humanity. She too has constitucional rights. Legit. It's better to explain that the religion was animist too.

Anyways, her eyes are the clouds above and the earth below the iris, while the iris itself is white bc of the snow that always covers the andes mountains.

Viracocha: The Creator god and supposedly the one who would come back one day... and then it never came ;-;. Anyways the pupils are the dark sky bc he is in the heavens most of the time. The lines connecting to the Diamond shape iris are like there mostly for decoration, though the four sides of the iris do represent the four sides of Tahuantinsuyo, the Inca empire.

Illapa: Dog owner (most likely) and also a cat person kind of God, Illapa[or Illapu] is the god of war alongside thunder, the rain and the one that uses all the water in the milky way (the constellation) to use it and pour the rain while making Killa stand guard and watch over it. I made the scar bad at first, though I kind wanted to draw the milky way at first but then I thought about it and saw that the scar might as well work with his warlike nature sho....

Anyways these where some of the most important gods, there are more to note of though, like Mama Cocha and Pachacamac or Vichama but I'll do them later and probably draw them full body, but until now... I've just make this sketches.

What I’ve Been Up To & Plans for the Future

Hello lovelies. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything remotely about witchcraft or magic, but hopefully this is coming to an end this summer.

Indeed, these past couple years have been more of the mundane kind than the witchy kind. The main priorities were mostly proving myself in university, with a whole bachelor’s degree and an admission in a master’s degree being at stake here, while trying to maintain something as similar to a normal life as possible and having a job, all this while trying not to get overwhelmed by despair and horror. It’s been quite a couple of years, really.

I didn’t have much space for any kind of spiritual practice, let alone for posting about this on tumblr.com

This summer, however, feels very much like a shift is taking place when it comes to my witching life. I feel it in my bones and in my guts : that visceral feeling that draws me to this life, to this world, and to this community is back, and it is being nourished. This Dumb French Witch is back, and he’s studying and practicing as ever. Which is such a wind of fresh air. It is almost soothing to reconnect with that fire.

So what am I currently doing ?

· First, I’m still developping a healthy and sustained relationship with my ancestors. In this context, I have tried to reconnect with the Christian traditions I was raised in (French Catholic on one side, Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox on another) as they are common grounds between them and me. I am struggling a bit with that as I am very much an animist with pagan tendencies at heart, although the Holy Theotokos is a whole vibe and I’m absolutely in awe before her and she is the moment for me.

· I’m also back to basics when it comes to spellcraft and spellcasting. My track record when it comes to spell efficiency is still not as good as I wish it was so I’m just trying to step my spellcasting game up so that I can better hex the patriarchy, curse N*zis and find myself a boyfriend. I’m also in the process of studying verbal charms which involves studying the magical uses of Psalms (which is part of my struggle with this whole “reconnecting with Christianity” era I’m in), but also reading poetry and finding pieces of academic research on verbal incantations

· In addition to general theory and practice in spellcraft I’m also studying domestic magic, which is very cottagecore of me I must admit. I’m currently reading Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson for mundane advice in order to be #perfecthousewifematerial and I also have a little reading list on house magic and witchcraft (including Magical House Protection: The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft by Brian Hoggard). I guess this summer is just me acquiring that good ol’ cottage witch knowledge, vibe and, dare I say, aesthetic ?

· Finally, I am trying to elaborate (”trying” being the keyword here) my own personal “Wheel of the Year”. I really want to get in touch with the rhythm of the seasons as well as traditional feasts and celebrations. I guess this personal calendar of mine can be described as kind of Christopagan since I wish it to have feasts from both sides (which for some is a no brainer since there is obvious overlapping between Christian and Pagan feasts) and it will have feasts associated with the Holy Virgin Mary because, as I’ve said earlier, she is the moment. To document this I will surely take inspiration from other blogs but I also have borrowed copies of five volumes from Arnold van Gennep’s Manuel de folklore français contemporain, which I’m VERY excited about. To give you an idea, Arnold van Gennep is considered the father of French folkloristics, and this particular book functions as a foundation for the study of French folklore, and it happens to focus precisely on the traditional cycles in the year. You can expect some tidbits of French folklore about seasonal tidings as the year goes by.

These are all my current interests and my priorities for the next couple months. I hope to be efficient in my studies so that I can start delving again in other interests I have nourished in the past like traditional witchcraft, potion-making, history of magic and East Slavic folklore.

I hope you are doing well, dear reader. Take care.

That Dumb French Witch

Hi everyone! For those of you not in the know, Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen (Nordic Animism) released a new book recently, titled 'Aun: Cannibal Kings, Cosmic Healing and the Recovery of a Nordic Tradition'.

The Year of Aun 2023 was a big year for many Heathens as it marked the pre-Christian octennial celebration cycle, based around the ancient Nordic lunisolar calendar. Traditionally, these celebrations would take place at sacred sites such as Uppsala. However, the Year of Aun was celebrated by many people around the world in their own ways.

Anyway, just wanted to give you a heads up about this book as I believe it's essential reading for all Heathens, animists, Pagans, and anyone interested in historical and contemporary Heathenry. Plus, my face is inside!

Happy winter solstice!

In modern times, many people who celebrate Yule begin doing so today, and though it appears that this was not the case during the Early Medieval period it still served an important function and may well have had some lesser celebrations and observances around it.

The Old Norse calendar system was lunisolar, meaning that it reckoned time using both lunar and solar cycles. While the months went from new moon to new moon, and later full moon to full moon on the Old Icelandic calendar, the solstices were used to keep everything in check. Since there are not quite 365 days in the 12 lunar month period that was used, it creates a cycle where the months could continuously move backwards relative to the seasons. The Islamic calendar, for instance, does this, which is why Ramadan can occur in the summer as well as the winter.

With the Old Norse calendar there was an incentive to keep the seasons and months more tightly bound, largely due to the single and in many places short harvest period. In this case, how close the new moon which began Jólmánuðr (Yule Month) was to the winter solstice would determine if an extra month would be added during the following summer. If this new moon occurred within 11 days of the solstice, the extra month would be added after the summer solstice. In this way, the winter solstice was the anchor of the entire year.

This year, Jólmánuðr begins a mere two days after the winter solstice, and as a result this coming summer will see an extra month added by the lunisolar reckoning!

For more information on this, check out Andreas Nordberg's "Jul, disting och förkyrklig tideräkning" and Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen's "The Nordic Animist Year".

Paganism vs. Wicca vs. Witchcraft: What Is the Difference?

What is Paganism?

Paganism is an umbrella term used to describe a diverse group of religious and spiritual belief systems.

These belief systems fall outside the scope of the “main” world religious such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Pagan religions tend to:

Be either polytheist (belief in multiple deities), animist (belief that all things have a spirit), or pantheist (belief that the divine is in everything)

Place a great significance on nature, though this is not true for every pagan religion.

Some pagan belief systems are reconstructed from ancient belief systems, such Hellenism, Celtic Reconstructionism, and Heathenry. Others are modern religions that incorporate elements of pre-Christian practices, such as Wicca and (modern) Druidry.

Paganism is also referred to as modern paganism, contemporary paganism, and Neo-paganism in order to separate it from historical paganism, though many practitioners simply use the term “paganism.”

The word “pagan” is derived from the Latin paganus, meaning “rustic” and later “civilian.” This term was used by Christians during the end of the Roman Empire to identify non-Christians who practiced polytheism, meaning they worshipped multiple gods and goddesses.

“Pagan” was originally used as a derogatory term in this context, implying that polytheist non-Christians were simple country folk who practiced an inferior religion. Pagans did not use this word to describe themselves or their religious practices until the modern era.

What is Wicca?

Wicca is a modern religion that falls under the umbrella term “paganism.” 

Wicca was developed in England during the 1940s and 1950s and was introduced to the world by Gerald Gardner. It places a heavy emphasis on nature and the pre-Christian religious and witchcraft traditions of northern and western Europe.

It’s worth noting that Gardner and his early followers never used the term “Wicca” to describe their religion; rather they referred to it as the “witch cult” or the “old religion.” Later during the 1960s, the name of this religious movement was normalized to “Wicca.”

Wiccans primarily believe in two deities: the Goddess and the God. These divine figures are responsible for the cycles of life and death on earth, and play an important role in the Wiccan Wheel of the Year—the calendar of Sabbats (festivals/holidays) followed by Wiccans.

Rituals and deity worship often take place on the Sabbats and Esbats (celebrations held on specific moon phases), and may incorporate magical practices. Tools used in a Wiccan ritual might include a chalice, candles, a pentacle, and an athame (ceremonial blade), among others.

Today there are many branches of the Wiccan religion, each with their own core beliefs and practices.

What is Witchcraft?

Witchcraft is the practice of magic and energy manipulation. 

Witchcraft is an extremely broad term that refers to a huge, diverse assortment of practices and traditions. From Africa to South America, and from Europe to Australia, and from North America to Asia, there are literally hundreds of cultures with their own histories of witchcraft.

There are also nearly limitless ways to practice witchcraft: spellcasting, herbalism, and divination (seeking knowledge through supernatural means), just to name a few.

In its simplest sense, witchcraft is any act that attempts to harness and control certain energies in order to manifest a desired result. If you are familiar with the practice of intention setting, then are you already acquainted with the basic principle of witchcraft. The difference is that many witches use tools and rituals to help “power up” their manifestation abilities.

Common types of witchcraft include green witchcraft (focused on herbalism and botany), kitchen witchcraft (focused on home routines and cooking), hedge witchcraft (focused on communicating with the spiritual plane), and traditional witchcraft (focused on historical practices and beliefs).