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 The Old Covenant

The settlers called this anomalous outcropping of pre-Cambrian limestone the Three Chimneys, but the local Indigenous people—the Ho-Chunk—knew them as Where the Thunderbirds Nest. Here the youth and seers of the People would come in search of a vision.

Sometimes, by its very Selfness, a place proclaims itself sacred. The Three Chimneys are one such place.

Where the Thunderbirds Nest remains inviolate. A farmhouse stands nearby, but the rocks themselves, in their sacred grove, have never been altered by the hand of humanity, nor will they never will be.

A few miles away (as the crone flies) lies the quarry where this very same pre-Cambrian limestone is quarried. Many local structures are built from this stone.

This is why we need the sacred stones, inviolate. They are the price of the quarry. To use some stone, we must be willing to let other stone remain forever untouched. This is the pagan way.

So say the ancestors: Use, but never all. Where the Thunderbirds Nest remind us that all stone is sacred: that of the quarry as much as that of the Three Chimneys.

In pagan times—probably in Spring, at the beginning of quarrying season—we would have sacrificed a bull in the quarry every year, as offering and propitiation for what we take away and use. (Imagine the prayers for safety through the coming year, the voices raised in a hymn of thanks, the brows of the stone-workers painted red with blood.) I am bold to proclaim that some day we will do so again: and let us all say, So Mote It Be.

A couple of weeks ago, I started working on a blog post titled Nine Great Yule Reads. In it, I list nine different books—both fiction and non-fiction—that constitute, in my opinion, some of the best Yule reading around.

It's the kind of post that tends to get a lot of attention. People look to see if their favorites are listed, with the added benefit that you may come across something new and worthwhile.

I haven't finished the post yet—who knows, it may still happen—but, looking over the list that I'd drawn up, I was struck by something both unexpected and profound. With one exception—which I'll get to later—the Land itself figures prominently in each narrative, sometimes to the extent that it could even be considered a major character.

What makes this fact profound is that it's not just a statement about pagan literature; it's a statement about virtually all paganism. All paganism is local. A paganism that lacks relationship to the Land is an incomplete paganism.

In every single one of these books, both fiction and non-fiction—again with that one exception—the story takes place against the backdrop of a particular landscape, and in fact takes place as it does precisely because it is located in that particular landscape. If any of these stories took place other than where they do, they would be different stories.

Any realized paganism is, of necessity, a religion of Place. Anywhere else, it would be a different paganism. You can't practice Hopi religion in Minnesota. Pagan religion is religion that grows out of relationship with a particular place.

As for the exception that I referred to above, Place does not really figure as a character in the same way that it does in the other books because the story is set in an imaginary place.

Here in Sebastopol, where I live, someone loves driving around in his pick-up with a huge American flag attached to its bed.  So far as I know he does it every day. I suppose he is making a statement about his patriotism.  Every week on the main corner here in town for years two groups face off, one loudly “supporting our troops” the other more quietly supporting peace.  The first waves flags and to my mind, sadly the second group generally does not, giving the first a visual advantage they do not deserve.  

Among people with more progressive sympathies patriotism has gotten a bit of a bad rap by being equated with those who talk the most aggressively about it, and shove their views in everyone’s face.  It’s rather like religion getting a bad rap because of the excesses of those who make the most noise about it.   I think this is too bad.  Patriotism is a complicated emotion and a complicated commitment, but it is very real for most of us.

This pentagram is built into a small tower in Presidio Park in San Diego, California. The pentagram is on the tower roof, open to the air, which is reached by climbing a staircase.

The official name of the Witches' Tower is the Pattie Memorial, commemorating the first American to die to California. It is supposed to be built close to where a historical guardhouse and jail used to be. The Pattie Memorial is a storage building. Presidio Park is very convenient to the hotels on Hotel Circle. Multiple layers of candle wax on the pentagram attest to its ritual use.

There is an apple tree on our family homestead that is about as old as my mom (80-90 years). The apples are thin skinned and yellow, but pleasantly tart and flavorful, and are perfect apple for sauce or baking. I’ve made more than one trip up to Maine specifically to catch the apples for sauce. Wasting them seems like sacrilege.

The tree grows out of the center of the stone wall the borders the property and has been becoming more and more top heavy while the trunk rots. Apple trees are very tough. As long as one thin strip of bark remains intact, the tree will continue to bare fruit. It needs only sun. Unlike annual vegetables, one cannot grow an identical apple tree from apple seeds. Apple DNA in the seed is diverse, and every new tree grown from apple seeds will be different.

There is lots of talk in modern Paganism about 'holding space'. It's an idea I rather love - the focused intention and purpose of a (usually ritual) act. But how often do we consciously realize the holding of space in the everyday as well? How far do we become beholden to it as we take it for granted?

Perhaps you have heard the term “food culture.” It is the idea that a particular group of people eats a particular group of foods. Cajun, for example is from Louisiana. It is spicy, and includes a lot of fish, or German cooking, that uses cabbage and sausage. Both use the foods that are locally available to create a particular flavor palate. Food culture is trendy. Which is funny because it is just what people eat because they had to. Germans ate  - and still eat – sauerkraut because cabbage grows well in Germany’s northern climate. People on the gulf coast eat fish because it is available, and spicy foods because it is cooling to do so. Food culture is about place. Barbara Kingsolver says food culture is “an affinity between the people and the land that feeds them.”

For Europeans, this is a straightforward proposition. There are long traditions there that are supported by not only differences in food availability, but in differences in language. For North Americans it’s a different story. We do have some things that support local food cultures to be sure, in our early years here, it was a matter of pride for a woman to source her family’s needs close to home rather than importing from England. This was one of the ways that women contributed to the Revolution.