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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in frith

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Ænes in mónað, and betra hwonne full sé móna...

 

The Gidden’s Banns

 

Whenever ye have need of anything,

once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full,

then shall ye gather in some dernly stead

to give good worship to me, who am Queen of all Witcheries.

There foregather, ye who are fain to dwimmery,

yet have not won its deepest derns:

to these shall I teach such things as are yet unknown.

Ye shall be free from thralldom;

and in token that ye be truly free,

ye shall be naked in your yieldings.

And ye shall dance, sing, feast, make glee, and love,

all in my worthing. For mine is the drunkenness of the soul;

mine also is earthly mirth, for my law

is love unto all beings.

Mine is the dernly door that opens upon Elfhame;

and mine is the vat of the ale of life,

the well of Wyrd, which is the kettle of all fruitfulness.

On earth I give knowledge of life everlasting,

and beyond death: frith, freedom, and friendship

with those who have gone before. Nor do I ask

aught in offering, for behold:

I am the Mother of All Living,

and my love is poured out upon the earth.

Last modified on

 

 

I never had a son or a daughter; gay men of my generation mostly didn't. (Talk about a failure of imagination.) But if I had, I have a pretty good idea what I would have wanted to name them, assuming it had been up to me to do so.

What do you want from a good name? Well, you want 1) something unique, but not weird enough to encourage teasing. You want 2) something with some history, some myth, to it: an old name in modern form. And you want 3) something that gives the kid a context, a sense of the culture that he or she is born into.

So, unsurprisingly, I would have wanted to give them names from the old dialect spoken by the Hwicce, the original Tribe of Witches. (Ah, the down-side of having a linguist parent.) This would have been by way of saying to them: Your life is your own, to do with as you wish, but you have a culture that's yours by right of inheritance, and always will be, whatever you may or may not choose to do with it.

 

Frytha. My daughter I would have wanted to name Frytha ("soft" -th, as in “breathe”): “peace.” Unlike speakers of modern English, who make do (or, just as often, don't make do) with only one kind of peace, the ancestors had different names for different kinds of peace; frith (“hard” -th, as in “breath”), the base-word from which the name derives, means “peace within a given community.”

Girls were still named Frith in East Anglia well into the early “20th” century. Frytha is a variant used—perhaps created—by one of my favorite (and formative) writers, novelist Rosemary Sutcliff; it's the name given to the bow-maid viewpoint character of her 1956 teen novel The Shield Ring. It's not a form that would have made sense to the Anglian-speaking ancestors, for whom -a was a masculine ending, but that's surely acceptable. As Mordechai Kaplan says, the ancestors get a vote, but not a veto.

So, welcome Frytha.

 

Siffrith. My son, I would name for a hero: a dragon-slaying hero, in fact.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

“We come in peace!”

These days, if you need a visual symbol to indicate peaceable intent from a distance, you hold up a white flag.

How a white cloth came to mean “peace,” I don't know. I suspect that, in part at least, it's a matter of pragmatism: holding up a cloth shows that you have no weapon in hand. White tends to be visible from a distance, which is good—you want to be sure that they don't fill you full of arrows before you get close enough to be heard—and I'm guessing that, in any given group of people, we could probably come up with at least one piece of white clothing to keep us from getting our butts shot off before we're close enough to parley.

Of course, this wouldn't get you very far if you happened to be traveling with witch-folk, we being, in the main, wearers of black. Fortunately, there's another option for a sign of peace: an old sign, a pagan sign.

“We come in frith!” we say (“frith” is Witch—and Heathen—for peace), holding up our green branches.

The green branch makes a good symbol of peace. Like the white cloth, it shows that you have no weapon in hand.

Unlike a white cloth, you can find a green branch almost anywhere. Even during the winter, there are generally evergreen branches to hand. A green branch is like unto that old pagan distance weapon, a spear, but it's a spear of peace.

A green branch is alive, growing. (Well, it was up until just a little while ago, anyway.) Think of it as a branch from the Tree of Life.

We may even find a theological statement here. How if the Green God, lord of vegetation, is the proper pagan god of truce, of peace? It's the Red God, lord of beasts, that's the fighter; but under the sign of the Leafy One, we meet in frith. The trees are a peaceful people. Where but beneath the branches of a tree do we hold our peace parley?

In half a Moon's time, on Midsummer's Eve, the coven will be up on the hill, dancing the traditional Dance of the Wheel with fresh, green branches in our hands.

Last modified on
What Do You Say When a Non-Pagan Wishes You 'Good Samhain'?

If you're out of the broom closet, and it hasn't happened to you yet, it will.

A non-pagan wishes you “Good Samhain”* (or Beltane, or Yule).

What do you say in response?

It's an act of hospitality to wish someone joy of their holiday. When that holiday is not one's own, the act becomes even more gracious, an act of grith-weaving. (Grith is an old name for “peace between communities,” as distinguished from frith, which means “peace within a community.”) It says: I know you. It says: I accept you for who you are. It says: I care enough to keep informed.

When someone wishes you Good Samhain (or Beltane, or Yule), the automatic instinct is to return the greeting, but of course when the well-wisher is not pagan, it's bootless to wish her joy of a holiday that she doesn't celebrate. It also denies the difference that she has just so graciously acknowledged.

So what do you say in response to a non-pagan "Good Samhain"?

Best, as always, is to answer graciousness with graciousness, hospitality with hospitality, while at the same time acknowledging difference.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Under the Sign of the Green Branch

Why is the Green God, Lord of Leaf and Tendril, called 'Frith-God,' god of peace?

Not hard.

In days before the White Flag came to denote cessation of hostilities, truce, and peaceful negotiation, the Green Branch bore these meanings, and its bearers.

The wielders of the Green Branch bear no weapon, but the sign of life and growth.

Indeed, they bear the sign of the strong God Who Makes War on None, yet in the end wins nonetheless, through patience and persistence.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Stands-In-the-Sky

In the old language of the Witches, frith means “peace.”

They say that it's also the name of the Goddess of the Rainbow.

Why? Not difficult.

Daughter of Sun and Thunder, contentious couple that they are, she is child of their reconciliation.

Last new moon I set out for our coven meeting just before sunset. Although the day had been gray and rainy throughout, suddenly the clouds parted and everything began to glow with a long, red equinox light.

And there in the east She stood in the sky with Her twin sister, vast and shining.

I live in a gritty urban neighborhood where it's sound practice to be a little chary of people you pass on the street.

Last modified on
Can a Pagan Woman, in Good Conscience, Go to Uluru?

Uluru: the Great Red Rock, Australia's most iconic holy place.

Held sacred by local First Nations peoples, it is considered by them to be a men's shrine, and hence forbidden to women.

So, can a pagan woman, in good conscience, go there?

Well, different peoples, different ways. I can't rightly expect you to act in accordance with my people's ways, nor you me.

Still, it's always best practice to be respectful of other people's stuff, especially their religious stuff. In the old Witch language, there are two words for "peace." Frith is peace within a community. Grith is peace between communities, and maintaining grith is a cultural value of great (although not overriding) importance.

And when it comes to religious rules, peoples vary. So what to do when your people do things one way, and mine another?

Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Jön Upsal's Gardener
    Jön Upsal's Gardener says #
    Frith and grith come from Old Norse, not some "old witch language."
  • Anne Forrester
    Anne Forrester says #
    The response of Bekah Evie Bel did not strike me as extreme at all, but very respectful. This is obviously a topic that needs car
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Thanks for the link, Anne; it's a thoughtful piece, well worth the read. The conversation about the proper relation between "immig
  • Bekah Evie Bel
    Bekah Evie Bel says #
    If that was my conclusion then I have to agree, it would indeed be extreme and absurd. It wasn't my intent to give that conclusio
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Thanks for the clarification, Bekah; as I spent more time thinking about your post, it became clear to me that I had far overgener

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