The Mabinogi, The Dagda, and Traditional Witchcraft

December 20, 2018 By John Beckett

Over the last couple weeks, two books and one CD (actually, a digital download) arrived at my house. All three are worthy of your consideration. I don’t have enough to say about any of them for a full review, but all of them together make for a nice blog post.

Let’s start with the album.

Y Mabinogi – The Second Branch

Y Mabinogi – The Second Branch
by Damh the Bard
14 tracks, 1 hr 20 min
Digital download: £10 ($12.56 at current exchange rates). $19.99 on iTunes.
CD: £15 ($18.84 at current exchange rates)

Last year brought us Y Mabinogi – The First Branch from Damh the Bard. This is Damh’s bardic performance of the ancient Welsh tales first written down in the 11^th century. Their origins are in a much older oral tradition – their settings and themes are straight out of Celtic paganism.

The second branch of The Mabinogi is titled “Branwen, Daughter of Llyr.” It’s the story of Bran, giant and king, his sister Branwen, and how she was married to the King of Ireland to form an alliance but that alliance was poisoned by Efnissien, Bran and Branwen’s half-brother.

This is not a pleasant story. It’s what happens when the rich and powerful are overcome by jealousy and deceit. Damh didn’t bowdlerize the stories – some of it was hard to listen to. I asked Damh what it was like to work this dark material for weeks and months.

It was a hard but incredibly powerful journey. When I created the First Branch, Cerri made me a Rhiannon pendant that I wore throughout the creative process. For the Second Branch she made me a pendant of two Ravens, but the journey was so intense in the end I had to take it off and place it on my altar. I was immersed in the story for a year, but in that year I needed some time out.

My songs are celebrations of our paths and our community. But there was no place for the uplifting Damh the Bard anthem here. The story took my songwriting into areas I wasn’t used to, but I think it has helped me grow as a songwriter, and I have to say I’m very happy and proud of the resulting album.

So I’m half way to the full Four Branches!

Kristoffer Hughes returns as the medieval Welsh monk, writing down the tales as they were told to him. S. J. Tucker provides vocals on “The Birds of Rhiannon” and Blanche Rowen sings on “A Forest on the Ocean” and “Raven’s Tears.”

But mainly this is Damh the Bard, not just telling but performing these tales in as authentic a manner as has been done in centuries. If you want the real Mabinogi, uncensored for Victorian sensibilities, give it a listen.

Harp, Club, and Cauldron

Harp, Club, and Cauldron – A Harvest of Knowledge: A curated anthology of scholarship, lore, and creative writings on the Dagda in Irish tradition

edited by Lora O’Brien and Morpheus Ravenna
published by Eel & Otter Press: November 2018
301 pages
Paperback: $20.90

We are living in the early days of a polytheist restoration. Gods who for centuries have been treated as myths or archetypes or merely as characters in old stories are being worshipped again. We are likely many years away from having large public temples as our ancestors did. But what we do have is an ever-increasing numbers of devotional books dedicated to individual deities. My own bookshelf has volumes for the Morrigan, Hera, Poseidon, Hecate, Athena, Brigid, and “the Horned God in all of his manifestations.” There are more volumes I don’t have.

In a conversation that no one can remember exactly when it took place, Lora O’Brien, Morpheus Ravenna, and Jon O’Sullivan decided it was the Dagda’s turn. More likely – as Lora describes in the Foreword – that’s what they heard the Dagda telling them.

The Dadga is one of the Tuatha De Danann, the Gods of Ireland. He was and is known as “the Good God.” He has many skills, including crafting, right judgement, and warriorship. He is the master of the harp, and he possesses one of the Four Hallows of the Tuatha De Danann – a cauldron from which no company ever left unsatisfied.

Harp, Club, and Cauldron is longer than most books in this theme, because it’s more than a devotional anthology. The first section is “Research” – it consists of scholarly examinations of the literature and archaeology around the Dadga. The second is “Practice” – essays describing how different people worship and work with the Dadga, including how they do His work in this world. The third is “Inspiration” and consists of poems, prayers, and stories for and about this Good God.

Harp, Club, and Cauldron will help you learn more about the Dadga, His lore, and how contemporary polytheists interact with Him today.

Besom, Stang & Sword

Besom, Stang & Sword: A Guide to Traditional Witchcraft, the Six-Fold Path & the Hidden Landscape
by Christopher Orapello and Tara-Love Maguire
published by Weiser Books: December 2018
304 pages
Paperback: $16.11, Kindle: $11.99

Traditional Witchcraft is one of the more popular forms of magic these days. I know a bit about it, but not a ton. I know a lot more now that I’ve read Besom, Stang & Sword. The book presents traditional witchcraft in a clear, easy to learn manner, and it does so within the context of a complete tradition that is non-religious but filled with spirits.

There are lists of spells for various purposes. The use of the besom, the stang, and the sword in witchcraft are explained in detail. There are chapters on herbs for witches and on divination. The chapter on necromancy is basic but useful.

There’s a chapter on the Witches’ Sabbat. The role of the devil in traditional witchcraft is neither whitewashed nor sensationalized. I don’t work with the devil because of my need for a clean break with Christianity, but you can’t deny the fact that witches from the Middle Ages through contemporary times did and do.

The first chapter on defining traditional witchcraft is perhaps the most helpful of all. It’s not Wicca, it’s not working with Nature, it’s not Goddess worship, and it’s not magic… or at least, it’s not only magic. It’s certainly not fashion. Rather, “witchcraft is about sovereignty” – witchcraft is about the power of the individual to walk their own path.

Most of us don’t have a traditional witch living next door who can teach us her skills and traditions, but we can learn from Christopher Orapello and Tara-Love Maguire.

Holiday blogging

The holidays are upon us but I’m not quite done for the year. I’ll have the usual Under the Ancient Oaks year-end features next week. “The 4 Best Posts of 2018 You Didn’t Read” will be up on Sunday, and “The Top 10 Posts of 2018” will be up on Thursday.

I’ll return to my regular blogging schedule on January 1.

Review disclaimer

For those who care about such things, I bought my copies of Y Mabinogi – The Second Branch and Harp, Club, and Cauldron. Weiser sent me a copy of Besom, Stang & Sword as a thank you for providing a promotional quote for the book.

All these creators are my friends, but my first obligation in a review is to the reader, not to the author. If I couldn’t honestly give them a good review I’d conveniently forget to review them. Seriously – if you see me in person ask me about the books I didn’t review.

Using Recorded Music In Rituals

December 11, 2018 By John Beckett

Every now and then the topic of recorded music in rituals comes up. Can you use it? Should you use it? How can you use it well? And what kind of music works best?

As with most other questions about what to do or not do in Pagan rituals, the only universal answer is “it depends.” There are some traditions that don’t use music, or that only use songs and chants that all the participants can sing. Others don’t want any technology in a ritual.

There is nothing like live music in a ritual. I’ve been in a OBOD ritual where Damh the Bard played and sang during the Feast. I was in a ritual in White Rock Lake Park in Dallas where 15 members of Vocal Magic were accompanied by two harpists in an ancient Egyptian hymn. I’ve been part of ADF rituals where a near-professional bard led the people in liturgical singing and then provided background music during the sharing of the Waters of Life.

Vocal Magic at White Rock Lake – Summer Solstice 2009

But sometimes you don’t have a guitarist or a harpist in your group. Or you need the volume of a choir but you’ve only got two good singers. Or you really want to use a piece of recorded music to set up or enhance something in your ritual.

I’ve been using recorded music in rituals for years. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Music in public rituals

Let’s start with what I don’t like – I don’t like recorded music for devotion or energy raising. If you’re singing praises to the Deity of the Occasion or if you’re trying to power your group working, even mediocre live singing or chanting is better than recorded music, because it’s participative. It’s the same reason Christian churches with large well-rehearsed choirs or professional worship bands still include congregational hymns in their services. Teach the song or chant before the ritual, if necessary give people handouts with words, and arrange for one or two good singers to set the pace. Then feel the power grow.

But there are other places where recorded music works very well.

Dances. This is the obvious one. If you want people dancing you need music. Doing a Maypole dance? Play Omnia’s “Tine Bealtaine” or Faun’s “Walpurgisnacht.” Lots of Pagan music works for spiral dances. Music for dances is the one place where recorded music usually works better than live music.

Preludes and interludes. Need to get people to stop the pre-ritual socializing and get focused on what’s coming? Play some music. Need a break in between long-but-necessary invocations and the main working? Play some music. I tend to use music for preludes and poetry for interludes (because poetry is usually shorter), but recorded music can make an excellent “palate cleanser.”

Background music for movements. If there are places in the ritual where there are movements but no one is speaking, background music is very helpful. Want people to get up and make a commitment of some sort? Play aggressive music. Want them to make a contemplative offering? Play something soft. Stick to instrumental music here, or music in a non-English (non-local) language – you want people to feel the music, not sing along in their heads.

Simple Feast. If you’ve got more than about a dozen people in your circle, it’s going to take a minute or five to get the cakes and ale (or whatever you use) passed around. And the longer it’s quiet, the greater the chance that people will start talking to each other, and that’s likely to break the mood of the ritual. Play music instead.

Music in private rituals

Private rituals tend to be smaller, less scripted, and more focused on the work at hand. The need for interludes or for music during the Simple Feast is much less. But because the participants usually know each other well, getting people to not just stop their conversations but to forget them can be much harder.

I really like recorded music for preludes before private rituals. Not only will it act to focus the participants on ritual the that’s about to begin, the right song will help set the tone you want to set.

Music in solitary rituals

Solitary rituals tend to be even simpler than private rituals. Unless you’re singing a hymn to a deity, you rarely need any music in a solitary ritual.

But just because you’re the only one doing the ritual doesn’t mean you’re the only one in the house. Maybe your spouse has the TV on, or you’re in the back yard and your neighbors are having a party, or there’s noise coming from nearby streets or highways. In those cases recorded music makes for great background music – something to drown out all the external distractions. I prefer classical music for this – as with the music for movements the lack of words keeps the music from becoming a distraction itself.

I used to play mystical-sounding music when I read Tarot, to get me in the proper frame of mind. I rarely need that anymore, but it was very helpful when I was starting out.

Technical considerations

As with everything else in a ritual, if you’re going to do it then do it well.

If you’re playing music for yourself or for a few people, you may be able to get away with playing it on your phone, particularly if everyone already knows the songs you’re using. For a living room sized ritual, a portable CD player or inexpensive bluetooth speaker will do well.

For larger gatherings, you’re going to need better (i.e. – more expensive) equipment. And for outdoor use, you need something with plenty of volume. If you’re a group that does this often, invest in a quality system.

For the Morrigan devotional ritual at this year’s Mystic South, I used a JBL Charge 3 bluetooth speaker and ran it from my phone. We had about 60 people in a hotel conference room – it was great. For big outdoor rituals I used to use my vintage 1988 rack system, until I blew out the speakers. Not sure what I’ll do next time.

Whatever you use, make sure you test it before the ritual. Nothing like thinking everything’s under control only to find at the last minute that your phone won’t pair with the speaker, or your iPhone lightning connector won’t connect to the amp’s 3.5mm jack, or the CD you burned on your computer won’t play on your friend’s player.

Practice playing the music the same way you practice everything else in a ritual. Know your cues – I call them out in the ritual script. Just knowing when to start the song is one thing. Make sure you also know when to end it, and if you need to let it play all the way through or if you should shut it off when the associated ritual action is finished. And if you do shut it off before the song is over, don’t just hit “stop” – fade it out.

Legal considerations

Recorded music is by definition copyrighted. However, US copyright law specifically exempts music used in live religious services (other countries may have different laws). You can play or sing any song you like from any source and be perfectly legal.

But this exemption only applies to live worship services. It doesn’t apply to concerts and dramatic performances. And it doesn’t apply to recordings and broadcasts. If you record your ritual and put it on YouTube, you’ll need permission for all the songs you use. See this article from LegalZoom for more details.

What music to use?

It’s a special and holy thing to play or sing ancient music in a modern Pagan ritual. But it’s also good to use contemporary Pagan music, or any other music that fits the mood you’re trying to set.

Last year I wrote My Top 10 Pagan Albums of All Time. I used 11 years of ritual playlists to help me figure out the list – and I ended up with 16 albums, not 10. These would be my suggestions for what to use.

You are, of course, free to use what seems best to you. My only warning would be to never force a song into a ritual. Just because it’s really good and you really like it doesn’t mean it fits in a ritual.

There’s something magical about a choir singing a sacred song with power and skill. There’s something special about guitars or harps or drums playing in a ritual. There’s something powerful about ritual participants chanting in unison.

But recorded music has a place in Pagan rituals as well. Find the right songs, put them in the right places, and enjoy them.

The 4 Best Posts of 2017 You Didn’t Read

December 24, 2017 By John Beckett

Some of you read and share everything I write. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Social media shares are the lifeblood of blogs.

Not every post is intended to go viral. Reviews don’t do particularly well, but if I like a book or an album I want to tell everyone about it. I write what the Gods tell me to write and what I feel like I need to say, and after that it’s out of my hands.

While I’ve come to accept that sometimes the Pagan community just doesn’t care about something as much as I do, there are times when I find myself screaming “this is important! Why are you not reading this?!”

Here are four posts from 2017 I think have some really important concepts in them, but that weren’t well read. Take a look at these summaries, and if you didn’t read them the first time, check them out now.

Are Hurricanes and Wildfires Persons? Respect the Power of Nature (September 2017, #127 in readership).

This post was inspired by the wildfires in the Columbia Gorge and the hurricanes in Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico. We saw a lot of natural disasters this year – climate change makes it likely we’ll see even more going forward.

I’ve seen numerous comments from Pagans and Christians alike calling all this bad weather “punishment” for everything from electing gay people to public office to driving oversized pickup trucks. It’s a natural human impulse to look for meaning in tragedy, and if that meaning puts the blame on people we don’t like, so much the better. Thankfully, most of us understand there is no correlation between human morality and natural disasters.

That doesn’t mean Nature didn’t do it on purpose.

We often talk about natural phenomena as though they were human. Clearly they are not. But from an animistic perspective it’s just as clear that they are persons. They have agency – they do their own things for their own reasons. More importantly, we can relate to them as persons… and not all persons mean us well.

Further, when we attempt to constrain other persons, they have a tendency to strike back. Perhaps a wildfire has no conscious intent. But when we refuse to let them burn naturally, when they do eventually burn the fires are far larger and more damaging than they would have been otherwise.

Either we will respect the power of Nature, or we will suffer the consequences.

*San Juan, Puerto Rico, on a better day*

What Does Victory Look Like For You? (January 2017, #129 in readership). Unlike last year, some of my 2017 political posts did very well. Two of them made the Top 10 list I’ll post on Wednesday. This one did not. And that’s a shame, because it has some information that’s critically important in our lives, whether we apply it politically or not.

An important part of Magic 101 is selecting appropriate targets. Describe your goal as precisely as you can. Big dreams are good, but until you can specify exactly what you want, both your magic and your mundane efforts will be too vague and too dispersed to accomplish anything big.

We need to define the terms of victory, so we can avoid mission creep, avoid unrealistic expectations, and gauge our progress along the way. We need to look at what victory would mean for ourselves as individuals, for our tribes, and for the world at large.

And once we know what victory looks like, we can start making plans to achieve it.

Feeling Small in the Presence of the Gods (April 2017, #138 in readership). One of the first pieces of “how to grow your blog” advice says “post things that make people feel good about themselves.” So I understand why a post that talks about feeling small might not do so well.

I wrote this about a week after living through the worst hail storm I’ve experienced in 16 years of living in Texas. I was safely indoors, but it could have been fatal to someone exposed to it with no shelter.

I am a polytheist first and foremost, but many of the Gods are Gods of Nature. Experiencing Them first-hand – whether in storms, in the immensities of ocean and wilderness, or in ecstatic communion – reminds us of how small we are compared to Them.

This is not the forced smallness and wholly otherness of fundamentalism. This is simply experiencing reality, which is that however strong and wise we may be, the Gods are more.

Accepting your smallness helps you respect the virtues of the Gods. It inspires you to learn those virtues and the values that flow from them, and in doing so to live a better life. That in turn helps you build a better world here and now, and over time, to become more God-like yourself.

Feeling small in the presence of the Gods is a good thing.

Even if we don’t like to be reminded of our smallness.

Spiritual Preparations For Leading Ritual (May 2017, #139 in readership). It’s usually pretty clear why a particular blog post doesn’t do well. It isn’t timely or engaging, it communicates a hard truth, it has a weak or confusing title, or it just isn’t very well written. But I cannot begin to figure out why this post did so poorly.

Leading a good ritual requires more than making all the necessary logistical preparations. Leading a good ritual requires spiritual preparation.

If you’re going to the trouble of leading a ritual – particularly a public ritual – put in the spiritual preparation as much as you do the logistical preparation.

Build a foundation for the ritual: understand the historical and theological context of what you’re doing. Strengthen your connections to all the spiritual beings you’ll be invoking at the ritual. Open yourself to service – prepare yourself to facilitate a religious experience for the participants. Do devotional readings, make invocations and offerings, and then listen for the presence of the Gods and spirits. And when you’re done, give thanks.

Even if you don’t lead public rituals, these steps will help you do a better job of leading private or solitary rituals. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Thank you for reading and sharing, for commenting here and on Facebook, and for generally supporting Under the Ancient Oaks. On Wednesday I’ll talk about the posts you did read: the Top 10 Posts of 2017.

3 Events, 2 Books, and a Crow in a Live Oak Tree

December 21, 2017 By John Beckett

Happy Solstice! The astronomical Winter Solstice is this morning at 10:28 AM Central Time. The worst of Winter is yet to come, but from this point forward the days will be getting longer. The light is returning.

We Pagans may have celebrated last night, or as Denton CUUPS did, last Saturday. But we are a tiny minority – the bulk of the Western world is getting ready to celebrate Christmas on Monday. That means we’re going to be tied up with family and friends, and the Pagan internet is about to become as dead as Marley’s ghost.

But before you go, I have some announcements and two mini book reviews. Oh… and a crow in a live oak tree.

ADF Texas Imbolc: February 9 – 11

This will be my 5^th year speaking at the ADF Texas Imbolc Retreat at the U Bar U retreat center in Mountain Home, Texas. Here are my thoughts on last year’s retreat – you can search for the previous years if you like.

I’ll be presenting “Building Alliances Across Our Many Communities.”

Our need for strong tribes is great, but so is our need for alliances with other tribes who share our concerns even if they do not share our beliefs and practices. This presentation will explore how we can form and maintain intrafaith alliances with other Pagan groups, interfaith alliances with other religions, and secular alliances with non-religious groups. It will also look at our relationships with our spiritual allies in this world and beyond. And it will look at how we can work with others for the common good even when we have disagreements with them.

This is my Pantheacon presentation. I get to do my first public presentation in front of a small friendly audience, and those who are there get to hear it a week before everyone else.

This gathering is suitable for Pagans and polytheists of all varieties and you don’t have to be a member of ADF to attend. And it’s drivable from almost any place in Texas. The cost is reasonable, the accommodations are nice, and the conversation is excellent. If you can make it I highly recommend it.

*the main ritual at the 2017 ADF Texas Imbolc Retreat*

Pantheacon: February 16 – 19

The next week I’ll be at Pantheacon in San Jose, California. Pantheacon is the largest indoor Pagan gathering in the world. I’ll be speaking on “Building Alliances Across Our Many Communities” on Saturday at 11:00 AM in the Carmel/ Monterey Room.

On Sunday at 1:30 PM I’ll be speaking on “The Shredded Veil” in the OBOD hospitality suite. The first part of this presentation will be my observations and thoughts around what many of us have been experiencing over the past few years, as I described in The Veil Is Shredded. The second part will be an open discussion where we can share our recent Otherworldly experiences and compare notes, so we can refine our thinking about what’s going on.

I’ll also be doing at least one and possibly two presentations in the ADF hospitality suite – more details on those once they’re finalized.

CUUPS Convocation: April 20 – 22

There were 12 years between the CUUPS Convocation in 2004 and the last one in 2016. We’re doing better: the next one will be April 20 – 22 in Fort Myers, Florida. I’ll be one of the featured guests, but I’m not sure what I’ll be doing yet. Possibly the Building Alliances presentation, but possibly something new – it depends on what comes up between now and then.

If you’re going, I encourage you to register early. Local CUUPS members had to deal with Hurricane Irma and its aftermath instead of planning and promoting Convo – they’re getting a late start. But all is well and back on schedule and they could use the early commitments.

If you’re a UU Pagan and you have the ability to travel, I strongly encourage you to support the only national gathering for CUUPS.

Brigid

Brigid: History, Mystery, and Magick of the Celtic Goddess
by Courtney Weber
published by Weiser Books: May 2015
256 pages
Paperback: $18.95

I picked this book up from the author at the Beyond the Gates retreat last August. After I heard Courtney Weber talk about her experiences of Brigid and her relationship with Her, I knew I wanted to read the book.

This is neither a devotional book (though it is certainly a work of devotion) nor an academic book. Rather, it’s a collection of stories and legends about Brigid from Ireland and other places where the Goddess and the saint have been known. And it’s the experiences the author has had with Her. She mixes in meditations, rituals, and spells.

I’m not sure who the intended audience was, but it strikes me as perfect for beginning witches and Pagans who are starting out on a Celtic-inspired path. Weber’s cautionary tales against making casual promises to Goddesses make it clear that Brigid is an individual with Her own agency – and one who expects promises to be kept. But the book doesn’t get into the details of polytheist theology and practice.

It’s an easy read, and while it’s not a work of academic history, the history in it is good. If you’re looking for an introduction to Brigid, or to Celtic-inspired Paganism, give it a try.

The Darkening Age

The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
by Catherine Nixey
published by Macmillan: September 2017
352 pages
Hardback: $23.64

“That all superstition of pagans and heathens should be annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims!” – St. Augustine

The particular form of Christianity I grew up in didn’t pay much attention to church history. They jumped from Revelation to D.L. Moody (1837-1899) with barely a stop for Luther, Calvin, and Wesley. I was left with the idea that the early Christians were persecuted, then Constantine made Christianity legal, then missionaries gradually converted all of Europe and some of the Near East.

That certainly happened, but it’s far from the whole story. In many places, when Christianity became the official state religion other religions became illegal. While many people saw their conversion as something personal, and some (in good polytheist fashion) simply added Jesus to the list of Gods they worshipped, zealous Christians tried to wipe the old Gods and their followers from the face of the Earth.

They were largely successful. Only 1% of all Latin literature remains to this day. Much was willfully destroyed and some was simply left to decay. Temples were torn down or seized to become churches. The Parthenon – a temple to Athena – was used as a church for over 800 years. The Greek academies were closed and the teaching of philosophy was banned. Hypatia’s violent murder by a crowd in 405 CE is far from the only pagan martyrdom.

The author says:

This is not to say that the Church didn’t also preserve things: it did. But the story of Christianity’s good works in this period has been told again and again … the history and the sufferings of those whom Christianity defeated have not. This book concentrates on them.

The violence of these early zealous Christians is not very different from what Daesh is doing today in the name of Islam. And make no mistake – there are zealots in every religion who are more than willing to destroy and kill for the purity of their faith. Only by defending the religious freedom of all can we insure their evil is turned back.

Nixey is a journalist, not a historian. The book is heavily footnoted, but she is telling a story, not compiling a list of facts. The Darkening Age is an easy read, but it is not a pleasant read.

It is also a necessary read.

And a crow in a live oak tree

I’m not quite done for the year. I’ll have the usual Under the Ancient Oaks year-end features next week. “The 4 Best Posts of 2017 You Didn’t Read” will be up on Sunday, and “The Top 10 Posts of 2017” will be up on Wednesday.

I’ll return to my regular blogging schedule on January 2.

The Birth of Lugh

June 27, 2017 By John Beckett

It’s still June and the Summer Solstice is less than a week in the past, but it’s time to move on to the season of Lughnasadh. And this year, I’m feeling a sense of urgency from the Master of All Arts.

The Solitary Ritual Series has been a very good thing for this blog, and for the many Pagans and other folks who read – and presumably, perform – them. As each high day approaches, I see blog traffic increase, sometimes dramatically. I exclude the solitary rituals from my Top 10 Posts of the Year feature each December, but if I didn’t three of them would have been on last year’s list (Samhain, Summer Solstice, and Imbolc). Two more (Ostara and Beltane) were in the Top 20.

Lughnasadh was #53.

Lughnasadh - A Solitary Ritual — *Lughnasadh – A Solitary Ritual*

The difference is even more dramatic when you look at total views for the life of the post. The most widely read of the eight rituals is Samhain with 23,744 views as I write this. Lughnasadh is in last place with 4,237. I can’t blame it on Google – when I search for “Lughnasadh ritual” it comes up #2 and when I search for “Lughnasadh solitary ritual” it comes up #1.

I know some Pagans spell it Lughnassa and some call it Lammas – that would impact the traffic from Google. But this isn’t just a blog traffic thing – the high day itself isn’t particularly well observed.

It’s at the first of August when lots of people are on vacation, and school kids and teachers are trying to cram as much as they can into what’s left of their breaks. It may be the first harvest, but few of us have any real connection with agricultural cycles. And it’s hot. On average, August 1 is the hottest day of the year in Dallas – Fort Worth, with an average high of 97 and an average low of 76.

Jason Mankey calls Lughnasadh “the ugly-duckling of sabbats.”

Denton CUUPS abandoned Lughnasadh for three years. In 2013 we used the August 1 high day for our first Cernunnos Ritual. In 2014 a Hellenic member led a Rite of Herakles, and in 2015 we performed a Ritual of Hermes. Last year I got the strong message “I want my festival back.” And so we did.

Alas, I won’t be there for this year’s Lughnasadh. I’ll be in Houston for a workshop and book signing at Pixie’s Intent on July 29, then speaking at the Unitarian Fellowship of Houston the following Sunday morning. But I will pour offerings to Lugh on my own on August 1.

Lugh was the first God I got to know as an individual being. Before that, most of my practice revolved around the Wiccan idea of the Goddess and the God, or other concepts that some would describe as panentheist and others would describe as vague. This was before my encounter with the Ennead of Egypt that put me firmly on the road to polytheism, and I honestly don’t remember what I thought about Lugh. But I clearly remember how I related to Lugh – as an individual deity with his own sovereignty and agency.

Did Lugh call me or did I pursue Lugh? My notes from the time are sparse and I can’t begin to remember. I just remember I felt a strong affinity with him. I am no Master of All Arts, but I’ve always had a wide range of interests, and Lugh seemed like he would be the perfect patron for me. My early work with and for him was helpful to me, and presumably to him as well (if he had any complaints, I never felt or heard them).

Then Cernunnos re-emerged in my life and my direction changed dramatically. I continued to honor Lugh at Lughnasadh, but other than that he faded into the background.

I had a wonderful experience of Lugh at the 2010 House of Danu Gorsedd. Thorn Coyle led a workshop on ecstatic ritual that turned into the preparation for the main Lughnasadh rite. That was the most intimate and powerful ritual I had experienced at the time.

I’ve had more recent experiences of Lugh that were quite powerful. Those are not yet ready to be shared. But what needs to be shared are Lugh’s stories, and there are several, including the story of his birth. This version is adapted from Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Augusta Gregory.

A long time ago the Fomorians controlled Ireland, and their king was Balor of the Evil Eye, so called because anyone who looked at his eye would immediately die. A Druid had prophesied that Balor would be killed by his own grandson, so he took his only child, a daughter named Ethniu, and locked her up in a tower guarded by twelve women, so she would never see or hear a man. But Ethniu often dreamed of a man.

At this same time there were three brothers living across the sea, and they were men of the Tuatha De Danann. They names were Samthainn, Cian, and Goibniu the famous smith. Now Cian had a great cow who never failed to give milk. Many people wanted this cow, so that she had to be watched night and day or someone would steal her.

Now Cian and Samthainn wanted swords made, so they went to Goibniu’s forge, and Cian brought the cow with him for safekeeping. When they arrived, Cian asked his brother Samthainn to hold the cow while he went into the forge to speak with Goibniu.

Now Balor wanted this cow badly, and he was watching. When he saw Samthainn holding the cow, he made himself look like a little boy, and went up to Samthainn and said “your brothers are going to use all the good steel for their swords, and make yours out of plain iron.”

Samthainn was outraged. “They will not deceive me so easily. Hold the cow, boy.” He rushed into the forge, and no sooner did Balor get the halter in his hand than he set out, dragging the cow along with him to his boat, and them across the sea to his palace.

When Cian saw his brother coming in he rushed out, and he saw Balor and the cow in the boat, on the water. There was nothing he could do to get his cow back.

So Cian went to a female Druid named Birog. She dressed him in women’s clothes, and sent him across the sea in a great gust of wind, to the tower where Ethniu was. Then she called to the women in the tower “Grant me shelter, good ladies, for I am traveling with a queen of the Tuatha De Danann, and this storm is great.” The Fomorian women did not like to refuse a woman of the Tuatha De Danann, so they let them in.

Then Birog cast an enchantment, and all the Fomorian women fell asleep. Cian went to speak with Ethniu, and when she saw him she said “you are the man of whom I have dreamt” and she gave him her love. After a while Birog and Cian went away on another great gust of wind.

And when her time came, Ethniu gave birth to a son. When Balor found out, he had his people put the child in a cloth and fasten it with a pin and throw him into the sea. As they were carrying the child across an arm of the sea, the pin dropped out, and the child slipped from the cloth into the water, and they thought he was drowned.

But the Druid Birog pulled him to her, and she brought him to his father Cian, who gave him to Tailtiu, daughter of the King of the Great Plain. And Tailtiu was his foster mother until he grew into manhood.

Hail Lugh!

The 2017 Celebration of Lugh

June 27: The Birth of Lugh

July 6: The Coming of Lugh

July 13: The Leadership of Lugh

July 20: The Victory of Lugh

From 2015: Lughnasadh – A Solitary Ritual

The 4 Best Posts of 2016 You Didn’t Read

December 26, 2016 By John Beckett

Some of you read and share everything I write. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Social media shares are the lifeblood of blogs.

In general, the posts that do well (i.e. – the ones the friends of the regular readers also like and share) are posts that talk about current events and that build up Paganism. Politics has dominated social media this year, but my political posts haven’t done very well. Perhaps I’m not a particularly astute political commentator, but I imagine it’s more that there are so many political posts and articles that mine get lost in the crowd.

Here are four posts from 2016 I think have some really important concepts in them, but that weren’t well read. Take a look at these summaries, and if you didn’t read them the first time, check them out now.

Why I Didn’t Buy a Powerball Ticket (January 2016, #121 in readership).
I thought this one would do well and maybe even go viral. Millions and millions of people bought tickets for the $1.5 billion Powerball drawing and only three won. Surely a bunch of those people would feel some buyer’s remorse and would want to read something that supported their second guessing. Turns out nobody likes to hear cold hard statistical reality, particularly from someone who isn’t sharing in the misery of losing.

Still, there’s an important point here.

Our dreams drive our lives. Powerball dreams reinforce our mainstream culture of consumption, a culture that treats Nature as nothing more than resources to be exploited and that values the great wealth of a few over making sure everyone has enough.

I’m not opposed to gambling – in moderation, it can be good entertainment. But I want my dreams to have more substance than thinking about all the junk I could buy if I beat the odds and won Powerball money.

When You Fail An Ordeal (December 2016, #125 in readership).
This is a fairly recent post, but it didn’t do well when it went up and it shows no signs of having a “long tail.” And I get why it wasn’t popular – nobody wants to think about ordeals, much less about failing one.

But we like to talk about initiation, and most initiations include ordeals. I’ve had several. The most powerful – and most painful – ordeals have been outside of ritual. I’ve failed a couple of them. And I don’t agree with the commenters who said failure is just a matter of attitude. I failed the hardest ordeal of my life and I’m glad I failed it. If I had passed my life would have taken a very different direction and it is unlikely I would have ever made it to the turning point where I got serious about my spiritual work. Failure was a good thing, but it was still failure.

I think a lot of us are going to be undergoing a lot of ordeals in the coming months and years. We won’t pass them all. We better know what to do when we fail.

Lessons From a Broken Flower (September 2016, #134 in readership). This is another not-so-positive post. Although it was based on a tangible event – with pictures to back it up – it’s one of my more cryptic posts. It had some people wondering if I was suffering from depression (possibly) or even suicidal (not in the least).

But it did refer – rather obliquely – to real events that had not gone well because some people insisted that egalitarianism was more important than subject matter expertise and tried to build without the necessary foundations.

There are only two things in Nature: the things you can do, and the things you can’t do. Many times we are capable of far more than we think – striving to break barriers is a good thing. But other times we strike out before we’re prepared, we ignore the support we have available to us, and we disdain the structures around us and the structures others are building.

Something that could have been beautiful tried to rise too far too fast without the support it needed, and now it is no more.

Step Functions and Loads of Bricks (August 2016, #144 in readership).
In 8½ years of blogging this may be the worst title I’ve ever written. But the engineer in me was geekily giddy about the pretty Excel graphs and the opportunity to expound on the way learning and growth come in slugs and not on a straight line.

This means we do the work day in and day out, year in and year out, and nothing happens – not visibly, anyway. Then one day it hits us like the proverbial ton of bricks. Call it initiation, call it enlightenment, call it moving up and moving on – something big changes and nothing is ever the same again.

The rest of the post talks about some of the step functions in my own life – I may have been a little too personal and a little too vague. But the material I covered in this post has helped me order my practice over the past four months, and I think it can do the same for you too.

Thank you for reading and sharing, for commenting here and on Facebook, and for generally supporting Under the Ancient Oaks. On Thursday I’ll talk about the posts you did read: the Top 10 Posts of 2016.

The 4 Best Posts of 2015 You Didn’t Read

December 22, 2015 By John Beckett

Some of you read and share everything I write. Thank you, thank you, thank you. In general, the blog posts that do well (i.e. – the posts the friends of the regular readers like and share) are posts that talk about current events, that build up Paganism, or are controversial. While I frequently weigh in on hot topics, I leave being controversial for the sake of being controversial to other bloggers.

Not every post is intended to go viral. The Nine Things I Think series isn’t well read, but it lets me cover shorter topics without adding filler. Reviews don’t do particularly well, but if I like a book or an album I want to tell everyone about it. I write what the Gods tell me to write and what I feel like I need to say, and after that it’s out of my hands.

Here are four posts from 2015 I think have some really important concepts in them, but that weren’t well read. Take a look at these summaries, and if you didn’t read them the first time, check them out now.

Fish Is Not Just Fish (August 2015, #111 in readership). This post starts with my experience of ordering fish in a restaurant in Sweden and trying to get past the language barrier to figure out what kind of fish it was. The story illustrates the fact that not everybody who says “I’m a polytheist” means the same thing, as the comments sections of a couple recent posts demonstrated. Differences matter, and so does clarity around our differences.

Reading it again after four months, I see this isn’t my most succinct writing – I probably should have cut it back by about a third. But the story is good, the point is critical, and it’s got what I think is the flat-out coolest photo of the year. This was taken in the New Orleans Aquarium in 2010, and the only photoshopping was turning the contrast up a bit.

Deep Magic (December 2015, #113 in readership). It may be unfair to put this post on the list, since it’s only been up for a little over two weeks. But it didn’t get a good start and it shows no signs of having a “long tail,” so I’m including it.

Deep Magic is a spiritual model of the way the world works, in the ways that we actually experience it. Here’s a key excerpt:

The materialistic worldview has led to viewing everyone and everything as things, whose only value is their utility to humans. This approach has brought us technological wonders. It has also brought us climate change, environmental desecration, slavery and oppression.

Deep Magic sees everything as inspirited beings with inherent worth and sovereignty. It sees the world not as a hierarchy of ownership and control, but as a reciprocal network of mutually supportive relationships. And it understands that while we can control nothing, we can – and do – influence everything.

Who Sets the Boundaries? (August 2015, #115 in readership). This post was inspired by two presentations from Many Gods West, one by Sobekneferu on “Worshiping Deities Whose Mythology Was Written by Their Antagonists” and one by Elena Rose on “Loving Our Monsters.” Like Deep Magic, it asks us to reconsider our basic assumptions about the way the world works, and in this case, about the way the world should work.

A casual look around the Pagan and polytheist communities reveals a greatly disproportionate number of people who have been marginalized, excluded, called monsters, and physically attacked as monsters by the boundary-makers of the mainstream society … And yet, these are the people the Many Gods have chosen to restore Their worship.

Will we let other people define us and set boundaries for us, or will we insist on setting our own boundaries?

This Land Is Your Land (October 2015, #126 in readership). More than just about any other group of people, Pagans understand the need to honor the land and to live in relationship with the land. But the vast majority of us who live in North America don’t have the same deep ancestral connections to the land and the spirits of the land as our friends who live in the Eastern Hemisphere. And we are rightly concerned about how we came to hold this land and the way our not-very-distant ancestors treated the people who were here first.

But the history of humanity is the history of migration – it’s what we’ve done ever since our ancient ancestors started wandering out of East Africa. We’re here, we’ve been here, and we’re going to be here a good while longer. It’s time we started acting like we belong here.

Start forming relationships with the land where you are. Not with some elemental concept of Earth (though there is value in that as well) and not with some vague idea of The Planet, but with the land and the spirits of the land where you are.

And listen to the YouTube of Woody Guthrie singing “This Land Is Your Land.” We never sang the fourth verse in elementary school.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
A sign was painted, said “Private Property.”
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing,
This land was made for you and me.

Thank you for reading and sharing, for commenting here and on Facebook, and for generally supporting Under the Ancient Oaks. Next week I’ll talk about the posts you did read: the Top 10 Posts of 2015.

Making a Deal with Morrigan

November 2, 2012 By John Beckett

This blog is here because Blogger is simple, easy and free. It doesn’t have a lot of traffic analysis, but it does have some, including a list of the top 10 search phrases used to find your blog. Some of the most common phrases used to find Under the Ancient Oaks are “Druid symbols,” “Samhain,” and “Athena Parthenos.” If you cut down the time frame, you can see some rather odd phrases used by one or two people, including this one earlier this week:

“how to make a deal with Morrigan wicca”

I know there’s a character called Morrigan in a game. I’m not a gamer, so that’s about all I know about that. But the fact that the searcher added “wicca” to the phrase tells me he or she was looking for the goddess, not the game character (it also tells me the searcher probably doesn’t know much about Morrigan or Wicca, but that’s another topic for another time).

So, on the off chance this person visits this blog again, let me try to answer the question. How do you make a deal with Morrigan?

You don’t.

If you need something from Morrigan (or from most – though not all – of the old goddesses and gods), ask. Ask nicely. You don’t need to debase yourself or offer lavish praise – the Battle Goddess has a strong and healthy sense of self and she doesn’t need you to go on and on about how great she is. You, on the other hand, probably need to remind yourself that this is a powerful goddess you’re addressing, not your next door neighbor.

Be polite. Offer her food and drink. Not because you’re trying to bribe her – as though the Lady of Sovereignty could be bought with a glass of wine – but because you’re trying to be a good host.

Ask for what you need. Remember that in prayer as well as in magic, fuzzy targets yield fuzzy results. Be as specific as you can while focusing on the ends, not the means. Remember who you’re talking to: is this something that requires the attention of a goddess? Or is this something you need to take care of yourself?

She may answer, or she may not. Every time I’ve asked Morrigan for something, she’s responded. Not always in the way I imagined or would have preferred, but always in a way that worked.

And every time, Morrigan has asked something of me in return.

Read the stories of our Celtic ancestors. The model you see over and over again isn’t one of negotiation as we see it today, where two parties write out a book-length contract with every contingency specified in advance. Their deals were far more open-ended: I do something for you and you in turn will do something for me, that I will choose at some point in the future. You are honor-bound to give me what I ask even if it is far in excess of what I gave you.

Deities in general and Morrigan in particular aren’t interested in negotiating contracts. She wants what she wants. If you obligate yourself to her she will have what she wants, one way or another.

Morrigan is neither capricious or cruel – she’s never asked me for anything I couldn’t give her, or that I felt like I shouldn’t do. She has asked for things that were difficult and time-consuming – and she continues to do so.

She is a goddess. I am a Druid and a priest. We fight in the same army, but she is a general and I am a junior officer. We are not equals and we do not bargain as equals.

How do you make a deal with Morrigan? You ask for what you need – and you prepare yourself for service towards her Great Work.