For the Maidens Among Us

Happy Spring to all here. Today, I would like to share what the talented Cari said about her family Ostara celebration. Excerpt:

We invited balance into our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our spirits, our lives, our relationships and our world. This is not as easy as it sounds, to speak to each of these parts of ourselves and say aloud what we wish for. Yet seeds were planted in our souls as we invited balance to accompany us on our journey.

Do read the rest, see her photo and enjoy her art. You'll be glad you did.

Kore

Meanwhile, my soul-sister Hecate reminds us that We Have To Do More Than Pray, We Have to Follow Through. Enjoy that, then read her glorious essay on Kore

The older that I get (and I am getting deliciously old), in some odd manner, the more that I look forward to Ostara. When I was v young, I was quite desperate to be thought older, experienced, sophisticated, wise. And the holidays that moved me were High Summer, and Lughnasadah, and Samhein. But now that I've lived a long time and figured out, well, a few things, I find myself quite predisposed to love maidens and to look forward to Ostara, when we all celebrate the energy of the Maiden, the Kore, the v young woman who is just OUT There.

She goes further, not just celebrating but helping a young woman who needs her wisdom.

Thank you, ladies, for the inspiration.

Fire, ritual and Nowruz.

Lastly, I would like to share how these people celebrate the often-banned holiday of Nowruz, with fire, singing, dancing and hope. May they continue to live in peace with the various religions in their midst and may the women of this place know not just pride, but freedom.

Wishing the blessings and joy of spring to you and yours as we enter this new season.

Sia

This post is dedicated to S., a young woman I've had the pleasure of knowing through a volunteer group who is going on to bigger and better things. Bon chance! If I could buy stock in a person, I would always bet on you.

Art: Song of the Nile by L. Goddard

Spring Festivals in Early American History

Ain't history grand?

Combining various Christian aspects with ancient pagan traditions, the early Americans began celebrating spring festivals about the latter part of the Colonial era; however the type of celebration was dependent upon the area of the country. Puritan New England saw the celebrations as pagan, and even followed very strict celebrations of Easter. The Southern states, where the climate was moderate to semi-tropical for most of the year, held planting festivals and barbecues or outdoor parties. Spring, especially for the Southern aristocracy, was the beginning of the social season start with New Orleans’ Mardi Gras and Charleston’s St. Cecilia Balls. This was also the beginning of the horse racing season in the South and many of the balls and celebrations coincided with the opening of the various race tracks. The Mid-Atlantic states celebrated what we, today, think of as being a more traditional Spring Festival.

Spring Festivals throughout New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania focused primarily on the planting and rebirth aspect of the season as well as the end of winter. Homes would be opened up and thoroughly cleaned while fields were plowed in preparation of the planting season. After the work was finished, quite often, the area farmers and their families would go to the local town where various festivities were held. Here they would find markets where plants and seeds were offered for sale alongside jellies, preserves and baked goods made by the local women. Music and dancing, entertainments for the children and auctions of household and farm items were always a part of these holidays. Many times the local militia units would gather and drill and often political campaigning was found. The early Suffragettes and Temperance leaders could often be found at these events promoting their causes, while the town’s tradesmen such as the blacksmiths and wheel wrights were kept busy repairing the local farmer’s vehicles.

We have festivals like this here in Oregon. Our community includes a lovely mix of families, visiting cyclists, birders nature lovers, foodies, retirees, dog parents (with dog, of course), and horse folks as well as alpaca and organic farmers. We also have barbecue and live music (although the homemade breads are just as likely to be made by the men). It is true that "The more things change, the more they stay the same"; good people can be found anywhere you find jellies, preserves and baked goods. (1)

See you there,

Sia

Art: Lady of the Water by Brian Froud

Endnotes:

(1) From an article on Spring Festivals at the website for the Historic Village of Allaire. The site also offers some 19th century recipes.

Dance, Drum, Sing: Can Ancient Pursuits Help Heal Depression?

It's Spring. Go have some fun. Real fun, not the enforced, fake jollity that passes for fun these days. Not the Oh Gods, I've have/done/taken/drunk way too much and now I'll really pay for this fun. Real fun.

Yes, times are hard. But fun doesn't have to be expensive. Grab some friends and go outside . Dance, drum, sing. Cook some food. Tell stories. Try something new. Oh, go ahead; dare to look a little silly. It's Spring and the hares are dancing, what better time could there be?

The alternative? Depression. Apathy. Inertia. Anxiety. All the ills of our modern, guilt ridden world.

Below you'll find an excerpt from an article on Dancing In the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Enrich (It's a very long article but it is well worth your time. I've quoted several paragraphs here which I think are especially relevant)

Four hundred - even 200 - years ago, most people would have interpreted their feelings of isolation and anxiety through the medium of religion, translating self as "soul"; the ever-watchful judgmental gaze of others as "God"; and melancholy as "the gnawing fear of eternal damnation". Catholicism offered various palliatives to the disturbed and afflicted, in the form of rituals designed to win divine forgiveness or at least diminished disapproval; and even Lutheranism, while rejecting most of the rituals, posited an approachable and ultimately loving God.

Not so with the Calvinist version of Protestantism. Instead of offering relief, Calvinism provided a metaphysical framework for depression: if you felt isolated, persecuted and possibly damned, this was because you actually were.

John Bunyan seems to have been a jolly enough fellow in his youth, much given to dancing and sports in the village green, but with the onset of his religious crisis these pleasures had to be put aside. Dancing was the hardest to relinquish - "I was a full year before I could quite leave it" - but he eventually managed to achieve a fun-free life. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, carnival is the portal to Hell, just as pleasure in any form - sexual, gustatory, convivial - is the devil's snare. Nothing speaks more clearly of the darkening mood, the declining possibilities for joy, than the fact that, while the medieval peasant created festivities as an escape from work, the Puritan embraced work as an escape from terror.

......So if we are looking for a common source of depression on the one hand, and the suppression of festivities on the other, it is not hard to find. Urbanisation and the rise of a competitive, market-based economy favoured a more anxious and isolated sort of person - potentially both prone to depression and distrustful of communal pleasures. Calvinism provided a transcendent rationale for this shift, intensifying the isolation and practically institutionalising depression as a stage in the quest for salvation. At the level of "deep, underlying psychological change", both depression and the destruction of festivities could be described as seemingly inevitable consequences of the broad process known as modernisation. But could there also be a more straightforward link, a way in which the death of carnival contributed directly to the epidemic of depression?

It may be that in abandoning their traditional festivities, people lost a potentially effective cure for it. Burton suggested many cures for melancholy - study and exercise, for example - but he returned again and again to the same prescription: "Let them use hunting, sports, plays, jests, merry company ... a cup of good drink now and then, hear musick, and have such companions with whom they are especially delighted; merry tales or toys, drinking, singing, dancing, and whatsoever else may procure mirth." He acknowledged the ongoing attack on "Dancing, Singing, Masking, Mumming, Stage-plays" by "some severe Gatos," referring to the Calvinists, but heartily endorsed the traditional forms of festivity: "Let them freely feast, sing and dance, have their Puppet-plays, Hobby-horses, Tabers, Crowds, Bagpipes, &c, play at Ball, and Barley-breaks, and what sports and recreations they like best." In his ideal world, "none shall be over-tired, but have their set times of recreations and holidays, to indulge their humour, feasts and merry meetings ..." His views accorded with treatments of melancholy already in use in the 16th century. While the disruptively "mad" were confined and cruelly treated, melancholics were, at least in theory, to be "refreshed & comforted" and "gladded with instruments of musick".

.....We cannot be absolutely sure in any of these cases...that festivities and danced rituals actually cured the disease we know as depression. But there are reasons to think that they might have. First, because such rituals serve to break down the sufferer's sense of isolation and reconnect him or her with the human community. Second, because they encourage the experience of self-loss - that is, a release, however temporary, from the prison of the self, or at least from the anxious business of evaluating how one stands in the group or in the eyes of an ever-critical God. Friedrich Nietzsche, as lonely and tormented an individual as the 19th century produced, understood the therapeutics of ecstasy perhaps better than anyone else. At a time of almost universal celebration of the "self", he alone dared speak of the "horror of individual existence", and glimpsed relief in the ancient Dionysian rituals that he knew of only from reading classics - rituals in which, he imagined, "each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually at one with him".

The immense tragedy for Europeans, and most acutely for the northern Protestants among them, was that the same social forces that disposed them to depression also swept away a traditional cure. They could congratulate themselves for brilliant achievements in the areas of science, exploration and industry, and even convince themselves that they had not, like Faust, had to sell their souls to the devil in exchange for these accomplishments. But with the suppression of festivities that accompanied modern European "progress", they had done something perhaps far more damaging: they had completed the demonisation of Dionysus begun by Christians centuries ago, and thereby rejected one of the most ancient sources of help - the mind-preserving, life-saving techniques of ecstasy.

To read more of the article above, go to: The Guardian and read: How We Learned To Stop Having Fun

In a way it's a shame that we've hidden our gravestones away. They remind us that we're all going to die and that we should enjoy our lives while we have them. Carpe Diem, as the man said, Harvest the day.

Some of us have more fun on our way to the other side. Why not be one of those?This planet is a gift. Protect Her. Life is a gift. Celebrate yours. Joy is our birthright. Share some.

Sia

Related Articles:

If I Can't Dance In Your Revolution

Review of Dancing In The Streets By Rick the Librarian

Happy Holi

My thanks to Kyle at Beautiful People of the Future for the link to this article.

Photos: The first photo is titled Richard, January 22 1717 Aged 47 by frscspd in England. Click here to see her photostream. The second photo is by WitsEnd Photos and is titled Green Fairy.

The Moon & Hare

Waverly Fitzgerald at the School of the Seasons has a wonderful interfaith calender prepared for March, which she calls "the month of new life". Waverly's calendar lists March 31st, is listed as the day to honor "the moon, hares and rabbits". For more on this subject, I would recommend a lovely article by the Rev. Wren Walker titled There's a Rabbit In The Moon, And He Ain't Just Laying Eggs.

Here are Wren's thoughts on Rabbit As Teacher:

Throughout history stories of the rabbit, the bunny and the hare, have taught us lessons on how to adapt to strange conditions (They are especially adept at obtaining help from others), how to escape from the follies of our own actions (Cunning bunnies are very creative at both rescuing others and being rescued themselves.), how to pace ourselves (Rabbits leap only when they have to escape danger or are especially pleased about something.) and in general how to manifest the cunning, intelligence, ingenuity and outright brazenness that has enabled mankind to survive, adapt and learn from experience.

Rabbit makes mistakes because he is not afraid to try something new. Rabbit learns how to get out of the mess he often creates by using his wits. Then Rabbit often "tricks" us into a similar situation so that we can learn the lesson as well. And while tossing us down the bunny-hole, Rabbit initiates us into new experiences and levels of being.

I would also recommend a wonderful article by Terry Windling titled The Symbolism of Rabbit and Hares:

In Greco-Roman myth, the hare represented romantic love, lust, abundance, and fercundity. Pliny the Elder recommended the meat of the hare as a cure for sterility, and wrote that a meal of hare enhanced sexual attraction for a period of nine days. Hares were associated with the Artemis, goddess of wild places and the hunt, and newborn hares were not to be killed but left to her protection. Rabbits were sacred to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and marriage—for rabbits had “the gift of Aphrodite” (fertility) in great abundance. In Greece, the gift of a rabbit was a common love token from a man to his male or female lover. In Rome, the gift of a rabbit was intended to help a barren wife conceive. Carvings of rabbits eating grapes and figs appear on both Greek and Roman tombs, where they symbolize the transformative cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

You might also enjoy Brer Rabbit in Africa and these notes on Manabozho, the Native American Trickster God.

The BBC website on Hares in Mythology notes that many European gods and goddesses are associated with hares (see the above link for a detailed list of those deities). The site notes that:

The hare is sacred in many ancient European traditions which associate it with moon deities and the deities of the hunt. In earliest times killing and eating the hare was taboo. In Kerry, Ireland, it is said that eating a hare was like eating your grandmother. This restriction was lifted at Beltane (Celts) and the festival of Ostara, (Anglo-Sacon) when a ritual hare-hunt would take place

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The image I've used at the site today is titled Three Hares Running by the wonderful artist and children's book illustrator, Jacki Morris. Check out her website to see the list of books she has worked on, read her notes about making her evocative art and meet her cats, The Ginger Darlings.

St. Patricks Day:

Waverly's newsletter has this to say about St. Patricks Day:

The story of his dispelling the snakes from Ireland illustrates this shift in power, since the snakes probably represented the old oracle cults tended by snake priestesses. It is interesting that the snake handlers of Italy gather snakes on March 19th, when the snakes first wake from their winter lethargy and emerge. [Field] Helen Farias pointed out that Patrick acquired many of the qualities of Lugh, the ancient Celtic god of light, particularly his association with high places.

and I just loved learning about the imaginary St. Urho:

In Minnesota in 1956 a Finnish guest at a St Patrick’s Day party invented his own national saint, Urho (the name means “hero”), who supposedly drove the frogs out of Finland just like Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. The idea caught on and soon St Urho was the patron saint of Finnish immigrants and of Finnish vineyard workers, who drove grasshoppers out of the country. This exploit was honored in Menahga, Minnesota with a statue showing St Urho with a huge grasshopper on a pitchfork. The inscription on the base of the statue recounts a ritual which has been adopted and elaborated upon, in which people dress in green and purple, dance around with hopping movements like grasshoppers, and drink grape juice.

My friend, Patrick McMonagle, a folk dance historian, has not only invented but annotated a dance in honor of St. Urho:
www.folkdancing.com/Pages/StUrho.htm

All hail Urho!

Spring Flowers:

She also has this a lovely note about Project Budbust.

I've heard that in the Midwest, Spring arrives as an explosion of flowers around Spring Equinox. I've always thought it crept up on us, here in the Northwest, with that first scent of sweet box and daphne odora in January, followed by snowdrops slowly unfurling in February, then daffodils in March, tulips in April, and so forth. But this year, this week, it feels like spring is exploding. I keep stopping on my walks to work, struck by the wonder of a shrub flush with green buds, where just yesterday there were only bare twigs.

We all go a little mad this time of year. Go safe - Have fun.

Sia

Related Articles:

Hare Today: The Bunnies Are Back in Scotland

Hares (Wikipedia)
Links:

Rabbits This has a good section on rabbits in folklore and mythology.

Picture of the rabbit in the moon
from a page on the moon myths in different cultures.

Pagan Shopping

Hare Sculpture by Brian Hollingworth. I love the one titled Hare Gazing At The Moon

Moon Gazing Hare wallplaque at Firwel Crafts.

Celtic Broaches - (check out the Three Hares broach)