This year, my kindred decided to combine Disablot and Alfablot and hold Ancestor Day. Disablot is supposed to be for the female ancestors and Alfablot for the male ancestors. Yes, Alfablot means elf sacrifice, but the line between the elf mound and the grave mound was fuzzy for the heathens of historical times. Even though it's traditional, separating the ancestors by gender just didn't feel right to me, and I asked the rest of my kindred if they would like to combine the two days into one Ancestor Day. Everyone liked the idea so we planned it.
Rounding out the year's posts on the holidays of the reconstructed pagan religion Ridnoveri, here are the winter holidays coming up as 2022 turns to 2023. And if you're using this calendar in a leap year such as 2024, be sure to add in the Leap Year day! I'll be posting about that specifically as it gets closer.
May you let your shoulders soften, the knots loosen and unbind. May you feel the light touch of the ancestors across your brow, their lives leading right up to now. May you savor a moment of silence, of quiet space-keeping and spark-tending. May you take a deep breath of gratitude, a deep breath of satisfaction, and a deep breath of peace. May you weave new stories from the bones of old and forgotten things, mixing them with care into the golden seeds of possibility and the flares of inspiration, that touch this moment of you. May you harvest blessings beyond count from the threads of time.
In September 2022, Amanda planned and led Haustblot for our kindred. Amanda is the first gythia I trained. Haustblot is an autumn seasonal and harvest ritual. When my kindred was creating our ritual calendar for 2022, I asked the kindred members if we wanted to do Rainbow Season for fall again this year, and Amanda volunteered to do Haustblot instead. Just before the ritual started, Amanda, I, and some of the ritual participants posed for a Heathen Visibility Project photo.
I'm so proud of Amanda. I'm delighted she worked a pomegranate into the ritual since it came from my tree. I still got in a Rainbow Season toast to Heimdall on behalf of Tom, and also a toast to Tom, during the sumbel portion of the ritual.
The Modern Minoan Paganism sacred calendar doesn't look like the eightfold Wheel of the Year that many modern Pagans are familiar with. Instead, we based our calendar specifically on Mediterranean seasonal cycles (the Minoans came from the island of Crete in the Mediterranean) as well as archaeological and ethnological evidence about the Minoans' religious practices.
So instead of a neatly balanced eight-spoke wheel, our calendar has some festivals that are spread out across the months and others that cluster together. One of those clusters - the biggest one - is my focus today.
If you're looking to deepen your Ukrainian based practice or your connections to Ukrainian gods and culture, here is a list of upcoming holidays in the reconstructed pagan religion Ridnoveri. Some of these may be similar to holidays in other Slavic cultures. They also may have overlap with Christian holidays.
If you have recently contacted the Slavic gods and are looking to deepen your connection to them, here is a list of holidays observed by some Ridnoveri groups and individuals. Ridnoveri is a modern Ukrainian pagan path. Other Slavic peoples have their own paths, which share many gods and characteristics but don't always have the same holidays.
Some of these holidays have a Christian history and some Ridnoveri pagans are Christopagan. I have done the math to translate these from the Julian calendar, traditionally used by Orthodox Christians in Slavic countries and also by Slavic pagans, to the Gregorian calendar generally used in English speaking countries.
Jamie
Molly,Nicely done as always. It brings back all the memories of the warm fires and the crystal clear, starry sky. No Milky Way that I can ever see, bu...
Anthony Gresham
Back in the 80's there was a set of divination cards called Star+Gate. Inside was a mat with twelve spots marked off and lines showing how they inter...
