Buzz Coil: December '10
A look at some posts of interest from our blogroll and sometimes beyond:
Veleda, the prophetic female voice: In this new blog’s first post on Dec. 17, titled with the name of the blog, Max Dashu gives a thorough and fascinating historical and linguistic account of Veleda. Involved are European prophecies, priestesses, and witches and more. Welcome Veleda! We look forward to reading future posts.
Glaux’s Nest: Blogger Glaux writes of the indirect associations between Winter Solstice and Athena in her Dec. 21 post, "Athena and Winter Solstice." She also presents us with 2 carols whose words she adapted to be consistent with Pagan views: "O Solstice Night," posted Dec. 2, and "A Joyful Winter" (God Rest Ye Merry...), posted Dec. 23.
American Witch: On Dec. 24 Annie Finch offers "A Poets's Carols: Songs for Yule," some of which are "neopagan adaptations." In her Dec. 21 post, "Eclipse, Solstice, Yule, Blogaversary, Carols..." she tells how she and her daughter—in rooms at opposite ends of their house—both awoke around 2:40 a.m. Solstice night with a happy feeling. She describes watching the total lunar eclipse and quotes an astrologer friend’s instructions to stand up in order to feel—and be part of—the alignment. She then compares this year’s solstice experience with last year’s, when she started her blog. Happy Blogaversary, Annie!
Hecate: In her Dec. 20 post. "Now That’s Not Something You See Every Day," blogger Hecate compares the rare coinciding of the lunar eclipse with Winter Solstice to her concurrence with a certain blogger’s comments on Christianity. Her Dec. 22 post, "Welcome Returning Light" begins with a very slightly changed quote from Gerard Manly Hopkins' poem, "God’s Grandeur," and then attempts to express the inexpressible.
The Village Witch: In the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times, Byron Ballard describes a full moon gathering and Winter Soltice fire vigil with lunar eclipse in the hills of North Carolina—complete with odd sounds from the woods—in her Dec. 21 post, "The Night was long and cold."
Read This and Weep: In her Dec. 21 post, "Winter Solstice~From a Goddess-Centric Perspective" Carol Lovekin writes that she is "underwhelmed at the prospect of an eclipse. It has no bearing on my life..."
Broomstick Chronicles: In her Dec. 19 post, "Midwinter Reflections: Light in the Dark," M. Macha NightMare (aka Aline O’Brien) tells what transpired when the director of her local interfaith group asked her to share a Pagan "teaching" about this time of year. She also posted this to COG Interfaith Reports on Dec. 21.
Pagan Godspell: In richly poetic prose, Ruby Sara’s Dec. 21 post, "The Light Returning-Midwinter Blessings" reports on winter solstice in the midwestern United States.
Witch, please! In her Dec. 22 post, "So It Ends. So It Begins," blogger Kate writes that she sometimes gets grumpy about nature because
...nature is not all happiness and yay and light and love and blessings and abundance and flowers farting hearts. Nature has some really wicked, evil, nasty, downright sadistic traits. Those traits are as essential to the balance of life as the bright sun and the green grass. But in (some) modern Pagan traditions, there's this little blip of "Oh shit, son- it's gettin' dark" and then we're chanting for more light and more yay and more good and more happy. We barely blink at winter before we're bitching about the cold and getting ready to summon longer days and warmer temperatures....She goes on to tell how experiencing childbirth labor has helped her to understand "what ‘giving birth’ really means."
Queen of Heaven: In her Dec. 16 post, "Star of the Sea," blogger Carisa writes about many goddesses, beginning with Aphrodite who
was born out of the penis of the sky when it fell into the sea. The penis in question belonged to Ouranos...She relates Aphrodite to ANE goddesses including Astarte, Asherah, and Tiamat and continues with "the Christian Mother of God," the Hindu Lakshmi, and Eqyptian Nut and Hathor, most of whom, she points out, are both sea goddesses and star goddesses.
The Wild Hunt: In a Dec. 15 post, "Hindu Temple Desecrated in a Time of Growth," Jason Pitzl-Waters also reports on the planned opening this spring of a (not specifically Hindu) Goddess Temple in Ashland, Oregon.
Paleothea has moved. Its new url is paleothea.blogspot.com, blogger Ailia announced in a Dec. 5 post.
Did we miss an item you think is important? We’d like to know about it, so please leave it as a comment.
Labels: Buzz Coils
posted by Medusa @ 1:45 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Actually, Nature and I are cool. It's the "100% positive nature religion" mask some might try to put on Her that bugs me. :-)
Yes, that's clear from your post, Kate. Everyone should go read it.
"The Wild Hunt: In a Dec. 15 post, "Hindu Temple Desecrated in a Time of Growth," Jason Pitzl-Waters also reports on the planned opening this spring of a (not specifically Hindu) Goddess Temple in Ashland, Oregon."
Hindu Temples are desecrated on a daily basis in India also, by prohibiting and preventing menstruating women, widows, etc. entering and praying in Hindu Temples. Just two examples:
*"CALCUTTA: A lower-caste person in West Bengal is to appeal to the human rights commission after being fined for touching a statue of the goddess Kali.
According to villagers, one family member, Malati Sith entered a Kali temple and touched the forehead of the statue, angering the upper caste Brahmin community in Pursurah village, near Calcutta.
The Brahmins called a special meeting and imposed a fine of 8,000 rupees (173 dollars) on the family to meet the cost of "purifying" the idol."
**"A middle-aged woman was paraded naked on the streets of a village in Bihar on Thursday.
She had dared enter the local temple and thus polluted the holy abode of the gods, violating the prohibition against the entry of widows and hence the ‘exemplary punishment.’
Kalawati of Ranwatand in Dhanbad district has since lodged a complaint with the police saying a mob had stripped her naked, garlanded her with shoes and paraded her.
The screaming crowd of upper caste villagers also accused her of practising witchcraft and held her responsible for the outbreak of chicken pox in the village in which one woman died.
Besides some had tried to make her swallow human excreta, but she managed to resist them, the Times of India reports.
Kalawati regularly offered worship at the local temple dedicated to Kali, but the villagers were outraged, especially so the women. Ironically the temple is dedicated to a woman deity believed to have vanquished a male daemon.
The village women fully supported the humiliation of the widow and staged a demonstration in front of the police station where Kalawati filed her complaint."
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