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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in festival

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Teaching Folk Dance at the Moot part 3

In the last great Ice Age, when cave bears roamed the snowy earth, peoples across Europe, Asia, and North America all honored the Bear. Because bears hibernate, they return in the spring, along with the sun, the warmth, and the fertility of the land. It would make sense to do a dance with loud drumming in the spring to wake them up, thus bringing the blessings of springtime, but Tot Ursi is still performed to this day in Romania, and it is part of the winter solstice celebrations. Like winter solstice traditions of burning a Yule Log to keep the light alive while the sun is god, Tot Ursi is danced to keep the Bear spirit alive while the bears are gone. (For further reading on Bear spirituality, see Alan Leddon’s book Religion Laid Bear.)

In Tot Ursi, meaning "All Bears," the dancers can growl and make bear-like sounds, but they also make “brrrrr” sounds, which don’t sound like a bear at all. I think the “brrr” sound may be a form of lalling. Lalling is making nonsense sounds such as “lalala” in a song, or for ritual purposes. Lalling is named after the Germanic god Lollus. I found Tot Ursi while doing genealogical research on my last name (for more info on that topic, see my blog post  Lollus, Löhl, and Ursul din Lăloaia )

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    I remember that song!
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I suddenly remembered the childhood song: "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" when I got to the last line of this article.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

I've been on staff for this small retreat for [mumble] years and have attended for many more before that.  Dragonfest is a family-friendly pagan and polytheist retreat situated in the foothills outside Denver, Colorado.  This retreat is my home away from home that I only get to visit for a short 5 days, once a year.  It is the place I dream of when stress has taken over my life.  It is the place where I feel the most accepted.  Since it has been awhile since I've posted anything due to an extremely busy summer, I thought I'd tell you about this year's Dragonfest which ran August 3 - 7, 2016.

b2ap3_thumbnail_Dragonfest-Logo.jpg

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

So for the last two weeks, I find myself spinning in place, a bit bewildered by mundania. In comparison to where I've been, the mundane world seems cold and barren.  

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The Last Ravenwood: attending a festival in the woods in a wheelchair

2015 was going to be the last Ravenwood. Prudence has been putting on Ravenwood since the early 90s, with her local group Freya's Folk, and at first under the umbrella of the national organization The Ring of Troth, and then the American Vinland Association, which was one of the two successor organizations to the old RoT, the other one being The Troth. Using a state park for heathen festivals had always been intended as temporary, and Prudence had bought land farther north years ago. She has been slowly improving the land at Folkvangr over the years and is almost ready to pass it on to someone who will start holding festivals on it. This campground in the redwood forest held a glow of nostalgia, but it was time for the last one. 

I was very invested in going to the last Ravenwood, both emotionally and literally. Emotionally invested, because Ravenwood had been my first experience of the heathen community. It was the place where I first met other Asatruars, after having only known Wiccan Pagans in high school and college. Ravenwood was a heathen festival held on Mt. Tamalpais in California, near where I used to live in Sonoma. I had not attended since I had moved to Nevada in 1995. Literally invested, because I intended to sell my books there, I had bought copies of my new book No Horns On These Helmets, and of my nonfiction books, to sign and sell at a vendor table at the festival.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Continuing my story of my personal journey on my heathen path, it was the early 1990s and I was still living in Sonoma, California. I had some great times at heathen festivals Ravenwood and the Ostara gathering in the Marin headlands, and the CAW Convocation.

A quote from my memoir:

      “There were two campout festivals a year, one in the spring on the beach, where we rolled out our sleeping bags on metal cots in an old World War One bunker in the Marin headlands, where we gathered at dawn to ignite a model longship loaded with eggs and nickels and push it into the sea as an offering to the goddess Ran, the other in the summer, where we pitched tents in the redwoods, held toasting rituals called sumbel, and a general rite to all the gods.  At the summer festival, the feeling was very much that the rituals were an excuse to get together, hold discussions with people who actually knew what we were talking about when we spoke of our personal discoveries and academic theories about our religion, and of course to sing pagan songs by the campfire all night, the selections becoming progressively more bawdy as the night wore on.  One year the summer festival happened to be Fourth of July weekend, so we all drove up to the bare top of the hill in a van and sat in the warm breeze, looking across the water to San Francisco.  All we could see of the fireworks display was colored lights in the heavy fog that clung to the City, though the rest of the bay was clear.  Pink, green, blue, yellow, the fog flickered.  We called it “wizard lights” and made jokes about how our primitive ancestors would have interpreted them.  We laughed all the way back down the hill.  I was one of very few who did not pair off for the evening, either with someone they brought with them, or an old acquaintance from other Festivals, or a perfect stranger they would not recognize in the morning.

     Nighttime in the redwood forest, before the music and dancing started up for the evening, held an otherworldly quiet.  Fog came in like muffling cotton.  The torches under the trees cast rings of light through the mist, seeming to splinter into rainbow-edged crystals as from far away came the ancient, dragonish sound of drummers heat-tuning their bodhrans over the fire.  It was a moment of pure magic.  All seemed still and at the same time I saw air moving across the firelight, for the mist off the ocean looked like air grown visible.  The eldritch woods, black against the starry sky, the red flame of torches, the glowing gold mist; it was an elvish night.”

 I also attended pagan festivals as well as heathen ones.
 
A quote from my memoir, Greater Than the Sum of My Parts:

      “Because the heathen group Ring of Troth was based in San Francisco...I also looked for any pagans closer to home, and came across The Church of All Worlds, which was based on... a science fiction novel.  The devotees of Stranger in a Strange Land did not, of course, practice cannibalism, as did the Martians in the book.  Water drinking was their main activity, and nudity as weather permitted.  I did not actually join their group formally, but I did attend their meetings for a time, mainly because they were held in Sonoma.  I was originally attracted to them after attending one of their beach rituals, where the priest invoked the god into himself and I sensed power there.  It seems odd that there could be such eloquence in the mere flaring of nostrils, but that is what I chiefly remember:  when the god awoke within him, tasting the wind as if newly after a long time discorporeate, and then opened his eyes and spoke, I really felt I watched an entity larger than time squashed down to three dimensions.

     "The CAW Convocation was held on some private land north of Sonoma.  I went as a vendor. ... I spread my mummy bag right on the dry summer grass, and left my glasses on so I could look up at the stars before I fell asleep.  It was a wonderfully dry night, and I did not wake up covered with dew as I’d worried.  I joined a small group cooking by the edge of the flat area, looking down into the oak and madrone woods below.  Some fog was starting to roll up the hillside, which if it reached us would turn the whole Convocation dark and cold and wet.  A dark-haired man named Duncain positioned his folding chair facing the fog and announced he was going to stare down the fog bank and save the festival.  Several hours went by, while everyone else cooked, hauled water, put tents in order, and so forth.  Someone asked him to help with something, but he said not to break his concentration, he was pushing away the fog.  At midmorning the bank of ground clouds started receding, and by noon the whole woods below were visible.  Everyone cheered and proclaimed him a successful weather witch, and gave him the eke-name Duncain the Fog Bane, by which he was called from then on.”

Around '94 or '95, after I started studying the Bersarkr martial art and magical tradition, I performed the Bersarkr dance to festival drums one night at the Ostara gathering.

A quote from my memoir, Greater Than the Sum of My Parts:

      “In the evening, when Diana and her group set up for seidh in the bunker and most of the people at the festival went inside to watch, a small number of people were left around the campfire.  Some people started drumming, and I found myself tuned into Angela’s drum.  She was a heartbeat drummer, regular and unchanging as time.  I felt myself caught by the power of her drumming, and I began to dance.  The berserker trance came over me, and I leapt into the air, doing martial arts kicks and then coming back down to land growling and moving to the rhythm.  I got overheated and dumped my cloak and sweater on the table, and I was vaguely aware that I no longer had my glasses on, but I could still see, and that was a peculiar sensation.  Occasionally the drums stopped and I headed for the bench like a spent racehorse, but then they started again, doing a different style, but each time Angela’s drum caught me and held me and the trance returned.  Each time I jumped back up, feeling exhausted somewhere inside but unable to stop, unable even to moderate my movements as I would have if I had been dancing some other way than entranced.  I continued to dance at full force, leaping and gyrating and kicking.

     Berserker folklore says one does not recognize one’s friends while berserk, but I recognized Vlad when he approached within the thirty foot circle all the others had the good sense to give me.  Then he stopped cold and stared at me a moment, and retreated.  I continued to dance.  Then it was over.  I felt boneless as I staggered toward the water faucet to relieve the burning of dehydration.  Then I came back to the picnic tables by the campfire and sat down, and put my glasses back on.  I felt wobbly all over.  “How long was I dancing?” I asked.

     Angela replied, “About three hours.”

     “Hours?!  I usually can’t sustain the berserkrgangr for more than one song.  And why didn’t I have an asthma attack?”

     Angela asked, “Fox?”

     “Lynx.”

     “I thought it was something small and furry.”  She nodded to herself.

     “You saw?”

     “Yes.”

     “Most people can’t, you know,” I said.  “In old stories they say berserkers are shapeshifters, but only the psychically gifted can see the change.  Though I should have expected you could, since you’re such a powerful drummer.”

     “Thank you.”

     It was only then that I noticed the naked man.  He was busily cutting himself on the arms, legs, and chest with a straight razor.

     “What’s with him?” I asked Angela.

     She replied, “He says he’s letting the goddess Diana have her way with him.”

     “Hmm.  I’ve never met a male Dianic before.”

     Through all this, despite getting language back right away, I had had to work at slowly unbending my fingers from their clawed state.  Now the fire threw a loud popping spark and I jumped up and my hands clawed up again.  Vlad offered a sheathed knife as a pry bar to unbend my fingers, and it actually worked.

     “I forgot,” I said, “it’s Loki’s Day.  April first.  He had to show us he was around.”   

At the time, that was not a controversial thing to say. Like in Icelandic and European Asatru, there was nothing remotely controversial about Loki in the American Asatru that I first encountered in California in the 90s.

As I grew closer to Odin while studying the Bersarkr tradition, I started receiving more inspiration for my writing. That's another story, and will be the subject of my next post, Poetic Inspiration.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Beltane and the Singleton

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