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In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Makes Some Really Bad Puns and Denies Being Anti-Kemetic

Who? Me? Anti-Kemetic? Gods, no. I'm not anti-Kemetic. Seriously, one of my best friends is. Kemetic, that is.

Yes, it's true: I do call him my “effete shaveling.” Hey, he calls me his “vile Asiatic.”

But that's not anti-Kemetism: it's just what passes for humor in the pagan community.

(Why “vile Asiatic”? Well, because, when the bristles hit the breeze, my sympathies—such as they are—lie firmly with the Hyksos, not the Egyptians. I suppose it's remotely possible that some of my ancestors actually were Hyksos.)

Yes, it's true that I did once describe Kemetic ritual as being “props-intensive,” but that's not anti-Kemetism, either.

Listen, I'll tell you a story.

The Golden Barque of Isis

Say what you will about Odun and the old Sabaean Temple of Chicago back in the 70s—and I've heard the stories, just like everyone else—their craftsmanship was immaculate. They're the ones that made the Golden Barque of Isis: just like the processional shrines that they used to use in ancient Egypt.

When the Sabaeans moved from Chicago to New Orleans, my Kemetic friend Sirius inherited the Golden Barque and he, in turn, brought it to the Return to Avalon festival. The spectacular Barque of Isis procession that he staged there in the 90s was by far one of the most memorable rituals of that festival's entire 13-year run.

I had the honor to be one of the Barque's bearers that day. I'll never forget the sight of the Processional Way, lined with people, all dressed entirely in white. As someone remarked at the time, only Sirius could have got so many witches to wear white.

Along with the other Barque-bearers, I was kitted out in a white kilt and nemes (= head-cloth: think King Tut). Bare-chested, be-kohled, I looked like something out of C. B. deMille; at least until the moment that we lifted the Barque's carrying poles to our shoulders.

“Um...Sirius...ah...this kilt isn't long enough.”

After a quick reconnoiter, he smiled and patted my shoulder.

This Night of the Witches (heks, meaning “witch” in Dutch and nacht meaning “night”) was created originally out of the need to overlay a Christian rite onto a Pagan festival that was hard to abolish. In Germany it was called Hexennacht, in Scandinavia Walpurgis Night. At the end of winter, people wanted to celebrate and hurry on the coming of spring, and bonfires would be lit to drive out the spirits of winter and also reflect the return of the light and warmth of summer. However, this became the fires that would burn the witches, or at the very least keep them at bay while they travelled on to a night of revelry on The Brocken in Germany.

For on this night, the Christians said that the witches gathered on the Hexentanzplatz (the Witch’s Dance Floor) which is a high plateau in the Harz mountains of Germany. Some believe this place to be an old Saxon gathering place/cultic site, which was later banned by the Franks and given its current name. According to the Christians, after the witches gathered at Hexentanzplatz they then travelled to The Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz to dance away the night with the Devil. This is thought to reflect an old Saxon custom of leaving animal and possibly even human sacrifices on the mountain to the god Odin (or Wotan, as he was probably known then).[1]

Known as Walpurgis Night (Walpurgisnacht) in the Christian calendar, this festival was created to commemorate the English nun, Walpurga and her mission to Christianise the heathens. She is said to have been canonised on 1 May 870AD. Thus Walpurgis Night fell around the same time as the pre-Christian festivals, and thus transformed them, at least for a time.

In the period of Romanticism, after the hysteria of the witch burnings died down, there was a revival across Europe of the old folk customs and lore. This brought Heksennacht, the Witch’s Night back to many countries in various forms, falling on the 30^th April.

Today, across Germany and other European countries,as well as throughout Scandinavia, this festival is still celebrated.

In Henry Treece's 1968 novel The Green Man, his brutal, gripping retelling of Hamlet in its original pagan cultural context, Beowulf is—let me avoid anachronism here—a man for men. He even puts the moves on young Hamlet.

(Young Hamlet, himself a man for women, isn't having any of it.)

Yes, that Beowulf: Beowulf Grendel's-bane, King of the Geats, hero of the sole surviving Old English epic of the same name.

I'd always thought that Treece was taking some pretty broad literary license with his gay Beowulf, but after a recent intensive immersion in the original text of Beowulf, I've come to think that he may actually be onto something.

There's no evidence that Beowulf—his name means “bee-wolf,” a kenning for “bear”—was a historical character. He appears only in the eponymous epic, and is never mentioned by any historian of the period.

So, was he gay?

Well, here's what we know about him from the epic:

• He never married. (At least, no wife is ever mentioned.)
• He left no children behind him.
• All his loves—and Beowulf, as the poet testifies frequently, lives by his loves—are towards other men.

You do the math.

Myself, I had always assumed that Beowulf's lack of queen and dynastic offspring were to be read as evidence (such as it was) of his non-historical status. This still seems to me the most likely reading of the evidence, such as it is.

That said, it also seems to me that Beowulf (the epic) will unforcedly sustain a gay reading of its central character's character, and personally, I'm good with that. Beowulf the Geat: a man's man, heroic, generous, utterly admirable.

Gods know, we could use a few more larger-than-life gay heroes.

Let's let Professor Tolkien demonstrate.

Take a word from Old English—English as it was spoken 1000 years ago—one that either never existed, or once existed, but didn't survive into modern times: say hol-bytla, “hole-builder.”

Ask yourself: if this word had survived into modern times, and undergone—mutatis mutandis—all the usual sound changes, what would it look like today?

Enter hobbit.

If there is a linguistic term for this process of artificial verbal aging, I for one don't know what it is. Over the years, drawing on the Greek and Latin vocabulary that linguists tend to use to describe matters linguistic, I've coined several names for the process. None were sufficiently utile (or beautiful) to linger even in the memory of the coiner.

(Yes, I could laboriously go back through my notebooks and find them again. I'll spare both you and me the results.)

Recently I asked fellow ledesman (see below) Theodsman Nick Ritter—a better linguist than me, any day of the lunar month—what he would call it.

Anglishing, he promptly fired back.

Anglish is the name given to the conlang (“constructed language”) which asks precisely this question: if the English language had never undergone the type of linguistic imperialism that overtook it after 1066, what would it look like today?

One of the foundational principles of Anglish is the avoidance of Romance/Classical vocabulary whenever possible. Hence, my abortive attempts to coin a Greco-Latin term for this process of linguistic updating, wrong-headed from the beginning.

Thanks, Nick: Anglishing it is.

(“How, then, would one Anglish 'Beowulf'?” I ask him.

Beowulf's people, the Geats, also fell out of memory, as did the hero—whose name means “bee-wolf” (i.e. bear) himself. But Nick, of course, has a ready answer.

Hail and welcome, Bolf the Yeet.)

Old English had two different words that could be translated “tribe” or “people”: théod and léod. Without a detailed study of the words in their original context, it's hard to say what the difference in denotation between the two might have been to the English-speaking ancestors.

With the demise of tribal identity among speakers of English, neither of these words survived into modern times—13th century scholars had to borrow the Latin word for the concept—but, via the wonders of Anglishing, we can say that, had they survived, we would today say thede and lede.

So, what's the difference these days? Easily told: the people writ small, and the people writ large.

Example #1: While regarding themselves primarily as Athenians, Spartans, or Corinthians, ancient Greeks would all have regarded themselves as Hellenes.

Example #2: Speakers of Anishinabe (“Ojibway”) share a larger sense of kinship with other speakers of Algonquin languages, the larger linguistic family that includes Anishinabe and various other related languages.

Example #3: Modern-day Wiccans: Witch by thede, Pagan by lede.

Lest anyone think such linguistic nativism unique to speakers of English, let me hasten to assure you that there's an entire movement out there to revive Gaulish, the extinct language of ancient Gaul.

My ancestors rode across the steppes
rode beneath the rolling thunder.
Between them and the land
their mother
there was no divide
but the trampling of hooves.
The dancing of shamans
rumbled the earth below
and shook the skies above.
Fire carried the departed
back to the stars
and archers on horseback
led an age of gold and valor.
And now I sit and languish,
riding only a rusty beast
in an age of entropy, of the artificial
mourning the past, fearing the future.

What would my ancestors say?

© Meredith Everwhite 2024 - All Rights Reserved

Make room for love in your life and your home! To prepare for new relationships and to deepen the expression of feeling and intensity of your lovemaking, you have to create a center from which to renew your erotic spirit—your altar. Here, you can concentrate your energy, clarify your intentions, and make wishes come true! If you already have an altar, incorporate some special elements to enhance your sex life. As always, the more you use your altar, the more powerful your spells will be.

Your altar can sit on a low table, a big box, or any flat surface you decorate and dedicate to magic. One friend of mine has her sex altar at the head of her bed. Another Goth girl has hers in a cozy closet complete with a nestlike bed for magical trysts.

Make room for love in your life and your home! To prepare for new relationships and to deepen the expression of feeling and intensity of your lovemaking, you have to create a center from which to renew your erotic spirit—your altar. Here, you can concentrate your energy, clarify your intentions, and make wishes come true! If you already have an altar, incorporate some special elements to enhance your sex life. As always, the more you use your altar, the more powerful your spells will be.

Your altar can sit on a low table, a big box, or any flat surface you decorate and dedicate to magic. One friend of mine has her sex altar at the head of her bed. Another Goth girl has hers in a cozy closet complete with a nestlike bed for magical trysts.