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The Moon-horns low as the full Moon clears the cattail thicket at lake's edge.
From among the standing reeds, three women emerge, arms around waists.
Their white skirts are identical, but their breasts are bare: the high breasts of youth, the round breasts of maturity, the long breasts of age.
The Young and the Old raise their outer arms.
Between them, She of the Round Breasts bears a silver bowl.
She speaks.
The hills hereabouts are full of the Hidden Folk, just like back in Norway.
They're fine-looking folk, the elves, with an eye to beauty themselves, and sometimes it so happens that one of them casts an eye on a fair young maid and marries her. And then she's never to be seen again, for she becomes a Woman of the Hills.
Well, there was a fine young girl, and didn't she just disappear one day, and weeks and weeks go by and everyone agrees that she must have been Taken.
Well, and so she was. And on her wedding day she says to the Blue Man that's to be her husband—they call them the Blue Men for their clothing, you know—“Let me just step outside to take one last look at the beautiful red Sun.” And she does that.
“Think what god it may be."
(Ezra Pound, Religio)
In the Baltics, conversion came late and memory of the Old Gods lingered long. Some of Europe's first New Pagan Movements got their start there during the period of national and cultural efflorescence between the First and Second World Wars known as the Baltic Renaissance. Like ourselves, the pagans of Latvia and Lithuania are new pagans, but they have been so for a generation longer than we have, and their experience has much to teach us.
The small (11½ x 8 x 3½ inches) inlaid wooden box shown above, from Latvia, dates to the 1920s. It is a cash box, with interior compartments for coins, banknotes, and bills. The inlaid pattern on the outside lid represents the phases of the Moon.
The stang as icon has been around the Old Craft neck of the woods for decades (if not centuries) now, but the first (to the best of my knowledge, at any rate) to translate it into jewelry is silversmith Aidan Wachter of Tennessee. As even the most cursory glance at his on-line atelier Tveir Hrafnar (that's “Two Ravens,” for those of you who didn't happen to grow up speaking Old Norse) shows, his jewelry and sigils are characterized by bold, minimalist design and precision detailing.
Aidan, how did you come to silver-smithing?
I lucked into meeting and becoming good friends with symbolic jeweler Mark Defrates when I moved to New Orleans in the early 90’s. At one point he needed help in his shop and that is where I first learned the craft.
