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Those seeking a native vocabulary for modern witchery could do worse than to look North.

In Early Modern times, the sabbat was known in Scandinavia as (to translate into English cognates) the witch-thing—a suitably Nordic name for the witches' assembly.

(Modern Witchery's mixed origins are readily revealed by its mixed vocabulary. Sabbat, originally a Hebrew word, is an etic—outsider's—name opprobriously applied to a gathering also known as the “synagogue of Satan.”)

The Norse term thing—as in althing—best preserves the word's original sense: “a meeting, an assembly.” Back in old tribal days, that's what it meant in English, too. A witch-thing is thus a “witch-meeting,” a “witch-assembly”: a suitably objective term for a gathering of witches.

(Contemporary use of the word sabbat to mean a witch's holiday—as in "the Eight Sabbats"—is a derived sense, extending the name of the gathering itself to the occasion for the gathering. Clearly, such an extended usage is not suitable to witch-thing.)

Exactly how English's old word for “assembly” came to take on its current sense of “item, entity,” is not entirely clear. (Perhaps because things gather to deal with things.) Plainly, the word has had something of a roundabout journey over the course of the last 1000 years.

Witch-thing reads rather humorously to the contemporary English ear, but—be it admitted—not inaptly so. Little is more characteristic of Witching than the Sabbat.

On the off chance that you didn't happen to grow up speaking the Irish, or any of its near kin, let me mention just a few intriguing facts about the Celtic languages.

In Celtic languages, words shape-shift.

In Welsh, tad means “father,” but—depending on phonic environment—can also take the form dad, nhad, or thad.

In Celtic languages, things have agency.

In English, we say: I have a book.

In Scots Gaelic, though, the agency is the book's: Tha leabhar agam, literally The book is at me.

In Celtic languages, the verb comes first.

Unlike Subject-Verb-Object English (the cat caught the mouse) or SOV German (the cat the mouse caught), in VSO Celtic sentences, the verb comes first: Rug an cat air an luchag, literally Caught the cat the mouse.

When Celts speak, you're already in the middle of the story even before you've reached the second word of the sentence.

Shifting of shapes, things with agency, the primacy of story.

We're American pagans. We live in a democracy, and think democratically.

(For the time being, at least. If we want to keep it that way, we'd bloody well better get our pagan butts out there in November and vote.)

So what's with all the aristocratic/monarchic language—lords, ladies, kings, queens—when we talk about the gods? Having dumped the institutions, why do we retain the language, and wouldn't it be better to replace it with something more in keeping with our own politics instead?

In my more than 50 years in the pagan community, I've heard these questions raised any number of times, and acknowledge their validity.

Experientially speaking, though, I find that this nobility-speak terminology doesn't really bother me. Why not?

Well, for one, I live in a democracy. (Note above-cited caveat.) That monarchy and aristocracy can be profoundly oppressive of yeomanry like yours truly, I have no doubt whatsoever—to quote my friend Volkhvy, if there's any noble blood in my family, it's only because a horse outruns someone on foot—but I also have no personal experience of it. I've never been in a situation where the laird and his hunt ruin my crop by riding through it, or his son rapes my daughter, and I have no recourse to the law because the laird is the law. Thank the gods.) Precisely because I'm American, kings and queens, lords and ladies have, in a sense, lost their political reality and become metaphors of status and power.

(That the gods are bigger and more powerful than I am, I readily acknowledge.)

Add to this the fact that nobility language has become so ingrained in religion, both Western and Eastern, that it seems perfectly natural to speak this way in religious situations. The elevated and the archaic have characterized religious language for as long as we have record of religious language. So I find no fault with these metaphors, social fossils that they are, on this account, either.

To this, I'll add a third argument, a pragmatic one. When I hear objections raised to “lord” and “queen,” my very practical response must be: okay, so what do we have to put in its place? Better the imperfect metaphor that we have, than the perfect one that we don't.

Obviously, our political institutions have nothing to offer here, precisely because of their essentially egalitarian nature. Speaking of the gods as presidents or senators evokes nothing but laughter.

Faith-based is what you say when you don't have the courage (or honesty) to say “religious.”

Plant-based is what you say when you don't have the courage (or honesty) to say “vegan.”

Earth-based is what you say when you don't have the courage (or honesty) to say “pagan.”

Are you seeing the trend here?

Of course, one understands the reasoning. The Bush 2 administration didn't want to admit that they were directly giving taxpayer dollars to religious (in virtually every case, conservative Christian) organizations. Like conservative Christians, vegans have a—let's be honest here—all-too-often well-deserved reputation for entitlement and self-righteousness. And sometimes, as we all know, everything sounds fine until you use the P-word.

(Besides, calling the modern paganisms “Earth-based” is aspirational at best; in most cases it's just plain untrue. I'm sorry, there's nothing “Earth-based” about Something Out of Books from Long Ago and Far Away.)

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Euphemism.

Me, I'm a word-guy. The trajectory of my entire linguistic career has been towards a language of clarity, precision, and honesty. Euphemism strikes me, instead, as the preserve of the dishonest, the craven, and the demagogic.

At first hearing, many old witch-songs may not sound witchy at all, at all. Therein lies the magic.

To the cowan eye, the medieval Irish poem You of the Sweet-Tongued Cry may seem a simple nature poem, hymning the beauties of autumn and the rut.

The witch, though, sees both this, and more.

You of the Sweet-Tongued Cry

“What's a Darrin?” Seriously?

(Gods, what do they teach them in Witch School these days?)

It's an old Witch word. (I can't believe you've never heard it before.) It means a non-witch married to a witch.

Yes, it is an interesting word, isn't it? Got that witchy, kind of mysterious sound to it. Nobody knows where it comes from, or what it meant originally. Probably it's Anglo-Saxon, or maybe from some Celtic language, like pretty much the rest of Craft vocabulary.

(A friend of mine who's an Anglo-Saxonist suggested maybe déor-wine, “deer-friend”—that's deer-the-animal; witches, as you know, have always been a People of the Deer—but, really, who knows?)

Well, those are our roots, after all, Saxon and Celt: we've been a mixed people from the very beginning. Always have been, still are, always will be, I guess, though we've expanded the gene-pool some since those days. Hey, we're the witches: we'll take anybody, if they're our kind of folks.

My guess is, the word probably goes back to ancient times. You know witches: we've always been a clannish sort—that's clan-with-a-C, not a K: when witches wear hoods, they're not usually white ones—and in the old days there were some pretty strong strictures against marrying outside of the tribe. So it would make sense that there would be a term for someone who'd married in.

Interesting thing is, a Darrin's children are full Tribe of Witches by birth. There are no half-witches: you're either in or you're not. The old people used to joke about the "Old Blood”: one drop is enough, and all that. Usually, of course, they'd cackle as they said this.

Litha or Lithe?

Back in the 80s, many Wiccans started calling the Summer Sunstead Litha. In a sense, they've got history on their side.

(That's LEE-thuh, with the “soft” th of leather, not the “hard” th of think, though I've also heard LITH-uh, with a "short" i and "hard" th.)*

In the old Anglo-Saxon calendar, June was known as ærra Líða, “before Litha” and July aeftera Líða, “after Litha”. (J. R. R. Tolkien, a proud Hwiccan** lad himself, modernizes these as Forelithe and Aerlithe, but I'll get back to that.) What comes between June and July? Well, given a little wiggle room, and the fact that the Anglo-Saxons reckoned by moons, not by calendar months, it seems fair to assign the word Litha to the summer solstice.

(In the same calendar, December and January were aerra Geol—Foreyule—and aeftera Geol—Aeryule—respectively.)

What the word originally meant, and why it should be assigned to this particular season of the year, is another matter altogether.

Unclear Origins

As an adjective, OE líðe meant “gentle, soft, calm, mild.” I suppose one could read this meteorologically, though personally, I find this (if you'll pardon my earthiness) a pretty limpdick explanation. As a verb—líðan—it means “to go, travel, sail.” Bede of Jarrow mocks up a reading here, claiming that the calm seas of solstice-tide usher in the sailing season. Sorry, sounds contrived to me.

I think that the most solid conclusion to draw here—considering the fact that, folk derivations aside, we don't know where the word “Yule” came from either—would be that Litha's etymology remains unclear.

Still, considering that Midwinter has a folksy by-name of its own—Yule—it's somehow satisfying that Midsummer should have one as well.

(For what it's worth, my own linguist's intuition here is that both Yule and Lithe derive from some solstice-celebrating pre-Germanic cultural substratum, and that neither word has a convincing Germanic derivation precisely because they're non-Germanic in origin. Perhaps time and future research will tell.)

The Lure of the Exotic

It certainly wouldn't be the first Old English word to be adopted lock, stock, and barrel into the Modern Witch vocabulary, Wicca and Eostre being two other prime examples. I strongly suspect that many Wiccans actually like the sense of mystery and exoticism that such archaic forms impart. Still, to my ear, there's something affected, something inauthentic, about using such words in everyday speech.

As a name for the Summer Yule, Líða didn't survive into modern times. If it had, though, and had undergone all the usual sound-changes through the course of the last 1000 years, we can say exactly what it would have sounded like today: Lithe (rhymes with blithe).

Shire-Reckoning

In fact, that's exactly what J. R. R. Tolkien does call it in Lord of the Rings.

The Shire-year of the hobbits features two extended periods of celebration: Yule and Lithe, with the (summer) sunstead itself being known specifically as Midyear's Day. Both holidays are characterized by extended festal periods, known respectively as the Yuledays and the Lithedays.

Though Tolkien himself doesn't use it, I think we can feel justified in coining, by analogy with Yuletide, the term Lithetide: the period of extended celebration between the astronomical solstice and Old Midsummer's Day, what we now celebrate as the Fourth of July. Lithe's thirteen days thus parallel those of Yule.

A Craft of Now

Well, lots of Wiccans apparently like feeling exotic. (Who doesn't like to feel special?) If you want to live in a museum—or, worse, on Renn Fest grounds—year-round, that's up to you.

Me, though, I'm with the hobbits here. I'm all for a Craft that we live and do everyday, not just when we're in circle.