Category: Uncategorized
-
Oh, My Stars! There’s No Ostara?
There are no bunnies, colored eggs, or jelly beans in the Biblical version of Easter—so notes Karen Cyson, writing for the St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times. And while you will find those trappings in the neo-Celtic celebration of Ostara, there is no mythological basis for them, other than as generic symbols of fertility. Nor is there…
-
Etched in Stone
Sprawled along the River Boyne, in County Meath, Ireland, is a complex of the largest passage tombs (burial mounds) in Western Europe. Comprising an eight-square mile UNESCO World Heritage site, and carbon-dated to circa 3200 BC, Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth are hundreds of years older than Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids. Some cultural anthropologists suggest…
-
Skip the Groundhog—Milking the Origins of Imbolc
Part 2 of 2 Last month, we looked at Brigid, the goddess, warrior, and saint who is honored on February 2. This month we’ll explore Imbolc. Although commonly celebrated on February 1–2, Imbolc is a moveable feast that marks the beginning of spring. Since 1886, the United States and Canada have observed February 2 as…
-
Road Map Resumé
Come to think of it,a road map isn’t so much where you’re going, but also where you’ve been. When I first read about roads diverging in New England woods, I intuitively craved ones less traveled by. After all, by the time I read Robert Frost’s poem about them in high school English in Bridgeport, Connecticut,…
-
Oops
Come to think of it,bad decisions often make the best stories. In the bohemian days of the mid-1970s, when establishment folks sought disestablishment refuge from establishment storms, I traveled frequently to the backwoods of Maine. There, in tiny towns north of Farmington, friends lived off the land and off the grid in modest manufactured homes,…
-
Brigid—Goddess, Warrior, Saint
Part 1 of 2 The Celtic feast of Imbolc, February 2, honors Brigid, the complex goddess of spring, fertility, and life. Because Imbolc is the first day of spring in Irish tradition and a time for weather prognostication, it is no coincidence that it shares a celebration with the lowly groundhog. Originating in pre-Christian Ireland,…
-
First Light, Solstice Bright
Come to think of it,life begins with light. Solstice. Did you just think, Stonehenge? Well, you’re not alone. And you’re not wrong. Most people associate the summer solstice with the ring of vertical sarsen stones on Salisbury Plain in the south of England. But the winter solstice belongs to Newgrange, the 5,000-year-old passage tomb in…
-
Boo!
With its ghosts and ghouls, pumpkins and bonfires, and trick-or-treaters shouting BOO, Halloween is the unadulterated descendent of Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival of the dead. Pronounced SOW (rhymes with cow) –in, the word comes from the Proto-Indo-European root word *semo- (summer), and the Proto-Celtic *samoni- (reunion, assembly). It quite literally means “an assembly to…
-
Oh, Well
Come to think of it, Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. Henry David Thoreau Visiting a holy well was high on the must-do list for my mystical, mythical tour of Ireland. Some sources indicate as many as 3,000 holy wells exist in Ireland—more than in any other country in the…