Sorry for the lack of posts, my MS has been causing me grief the last few days and I haven’t had much energy. Nothing very interesting to report at the moment, other than WMFH has me contemplating how the Anglo-Saxon concept of edwenden ties in with the concept of wyrd. More research is needed, but I have been preoccupied with helping my Paramour find a house closer to where I live, schoolwork, and German verbs. Oh, and I am totally rockin’ Princess Leiea hair today.
Madonna is not a feminist, she is an opportunist. Lady Gaga is not a feminist, although she is closer than Madonna. It isn’t that being pretty or overtly sexual preclude feminism, they just do not automatically make you a feminist icon. In fact, when I was writing this post, I was dismayed to see that many “top 10 feminist musicians” lists included the likes of Britney Spears and Rhianna (RHIANNA??? Since when did sticking with the guy that beat the crap out of you become a feminist act?? We are fucking doomed.) If all you have contributed to culture is grinding your hips and moaning overproduced pop songs you don’t even write yourself, you are a highly paid stripper, not a feminist. You are selling other women down the river for your own profit. I’m not saying that Madonna isn’t a good business woman, I’m not saying her music isn’t fun, I’m not saying she isn’t sexually empowered, I’m just saying that those things are not inherently feminist if the message you are sending is how awesome it is to be a walking vagina with no dignity or hope of aging gracefully.
These are women who speak their minds, aren’t afraid to get ugly, aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, and aren’t afraid to play rough if you fuck with them.
We held our Anthesteria Bacchanalia at the wine shop here on the island. We had a great turn out of about 20 people (considering how small the space is and how small our island community is, it was fairly impressive). People brought lots of food and flowers, including one elderly man who wore flowers in his beard. We had funk music playing and the vibe was great. My co-priest and his husband made me a thyrsus, and co-priest’s mom made everyone in the grove flower wreaths for their hair. Had a lovely weekend with the Paramour in the cabin he rented, very romantic and inspiring. I could write sonnets about that man’s beauty. Here are a few photos of the festivities.
Anthesteria flowers. Co-priest’s mom made this beautiful arrangement.
Anthesteria flowers and wine. Everyone either brought flowers or wore flowers. It was lovely.
Me as a maenad. Unfortunately, this look of maniacal bemusement is just my day-to-day expression. I think I always have this look on my face like I am either going to burst into tears or rip your head off.
My Paramour (glasses, on left) and my husband (plaid shirt, on right). There is nothing in this world like a good old fashioned Southern Gentleman, and I was lucky enough to find 2 of them.
My Paramour (glasses, black shirt) and guests
Husband takes a picture of me posing with my thyrsus
Co-priest’s husband (and my best friend) setting up the wine. He works at the wine shop, so that made setting up this shindig easier.
Co-priest and his mom. She made the flower wreaths. I was trying to get a picture of his Bacchus pendant, but the photo didn’t turn out.
Surrounded by wine and brandishing the thyrsus Co-Priest and his husband made for me.
We had quite the spread, I brought homemade hummus and an assortment of olives. By the end of the night there was so much food we had run out of counter space.
Tomorrow we kick off Anthesteria. My Paramour also arrives with a case of sake and is staying the weekend in a cabin here on the island, so between his presence and the Festival of Flowers at the wine shop this Saturday, this should be quite the debauched bender. I plan on being drunk and in congress for as much of the weekend as I am physically capable of squeezing out of my middle aged body.
But first off, I have much more G related obligations to WMFH today. It’s International Night at the college and we have to sing songs about drinking and cuckoos. Of course, these are cuckoos that are killed and come back to life each Spring… clever boy, WMFH, well played.
Long story short, I won’t be around much the next few days… at least not if I can help it.
So, I took the last few days off from my external obligations. Feeling a bit better. I was getting extremely weary of having all of my time and energy allocated to everything but myself. I need to remind myself that the things I do are a pursuit of the sacred, whether it’s taking care of my home, reading, studying German, listening to music, cooking, or whatever. When I lose sight of this, when I forget that the entire point is to make as much of life an experience of the sacred as possible, I need to step back and reassess what I am doing with my time. When we compartmentalize the sacred away from our daily lives, it becomes another chore on the long to-do list of obligations our lives are filled with. It is far more productive to seek the sacred in the mundane.
Yesterday, I took a quick drive around the island. It was a beautiful, sunny Tuesday afternoon and I had the road to myself. I checked out the cabin down the road my Paramour will be staying at this weekend for Anthesteria (which should make for a merry Anthesteria indeed), waved at neighbors walking their dogs, watched the big cargo ships cruise between the islands, and marveled at what a truly legendary and blessed life I lead.
As an antidote for last week’s musical excursion to hell, I think we need a little bit of what my Paramour calls “Unicorns and Muffins”. I am not a total music snob, if it moves me I dig it, I don’t care who it’s by. Here is some of the fluffiest music in my collection.
Outkast – Hey Ya
(How can you hear this and not want to dance? I am using the Charlie Brown video version because I am STACKING TEH HAPPI!)
La Roux – Bulletproof
(This is the perfect “homo a go-go” dance song formula, driving beat, dripping with synths, and a woman singing about how invincible and free she is. Works every time)
Robyn – Call Your Girlfriend
(Oy, Robyn, that haircut and atrocious outfit make you look like a hot mess, but I can’t get this damn song out of my head!)
Foster the People – Helena Beat
(OMG this is so wrong, but I hear this thing in my sleep. The “Road Warrior-esque” video is completely baffling, but the jump-kick nutshot did elicit a Beavis and Butthead chuckle from me)
Hello, my name is Sigrun, and I am experiencing Pagan Burn-Out.
We’ve all been there. You wake up one morning and you just don’t feel like leaving an offering at your altar. Or maybe you just can’t finish that umpteenth book about the confluence of Celtic and Germanic Paganism in the ancient world. Or maybe you just can’t get that worked up about the next ritual. My enthusiasm peaked around Yule, but since then I am been so busy and overwhelmed that I have been neglecting aspects of my practice and studies I really shouldn’t. I know it will come back, this isn’t a crisis of faith or questioning my path. I just feel extremely “meh” about my level of engagement right now.
My Paramour: You know, I really appreciate that your husband is ok with me seeing you like this. I should send him a cake or something. What do you write on a cake like that??
WARNING: THIS STUFF IS NSFW, NC-17, AND WILL PROBABLY OFFEND EVERYONE. IF YOU HAVE ANY PERSONAL ISSUES WITH LYRICS THAT PORTRAY ARTISTIC AND CONTROVERSIAL IMAGES OF VIOLENCE OR RAPE, TURN BACK NOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. DON’T COME WHINING TO ME LATER.
Ah, the little goth chick in me still likes to be shocked and titillated. In case you hadn’t noticed, I am a rather staunch Transgressionist. For most of my life, this has been more than just an aesthetic, it has been a lifestyle. The transformation of the flesh into a living manifesto and commentary on the repressive moral stranglehold of our society has been my raison d’être since I was old enough to wield a razor blade. That, I am just generally a big, ol’ degenerate. Granted, others have been far more extreme, but then again I managed to live long enough to see the far side of 40. As I have aged, I have certainly mellowed. I still enjoy my deviance and shock culture, but gone are the days of listening to extreme avantgarde noise music while reading “Les 120 journées de Sodome” before running off to work as a professional bondage slave or to see someone mutilate themselves onstage at some random performance art piece. I will never forget the moment I realized I might have become too jaded. It was the New Years Eve we spent with Aesthetic Meat Foundation. As I watched a woman bound on a piano being sexually violated with a raw calf’s liver to the blare of industrial music and some vaguely Eastern European guy yelling about how “meat is life” into a bullhorn, I turned to my friend and said, “You wanna go to Canter’s after this?”. He shrugged and said, “Sure”. When shit like that makes you crave pastrami, it’s time to reassess your life.
Here are some of my favorite songs from my youth. If you are the sort of person who likes Marilyn Manson… go back to fucking kindergarten, this shit is for grownups.
Unlike many Pagan women, there isn’t a lot of “Goddess” in my worship. I have my altar to the Matrons that I have combined with Hestia, Hera, and Hecate, and I have my statue of our gal Freya, but in general I have always been drawn to the male forces in nature. They are so much more wild, primal, and have this element of lust in all its forms that I feel in my bones. When I have had any kind of spiritual discourse, it has always been with a masculine deity. When I am out in the forest, I don’t feel that gentle, embracing earth energy of growth others speak of, I feel the manic pulsing throb of nature. The wind is a purring predatory whisper, calling me with its bloodsong. My world has always been more about a volatile, passionate engagement. I love the sea, and storms, and thunder and lightning.
Although my practice is not Celtic, Cernunnos is a concept I can relate to. I say concept because there really isn’t an firmly established historical god called Cernunnos, the name is used as a catch all for the pan-Celtic reoccurring figure of the Horned God (if I remember correctly, there is only a single attestation to the name “cernunnos”, but many artistic renderings of various horned god figures across Celtic Europe and parts of Anatolia. I should probably double check this, but I am tired and spent all day trying to wrap my head around German negations, modal music, and how French wine influenced art and music, so for the sake of argument let’s pretend I am 100% certain). While the ADF emphasizes viewing the gods as entities rather than archetypes, in some cases I think the power is in the archetype when a specific entity isn’t described. The very nature of Cernunnos is something mutable and experienced differently by different people, possibly owing to his being a medley of different deities. Some portray him as a gentle steward of the animals, others as the untamed king if the wild, others view him as a Pan like figure, some see him as Oberon. I don’t see how the any of these are mutually exclusive. Nature is both mothering and merciless by turns, any god of the natural world would have to include many aspects. Similar gods demonstrate similar dichotomies. Dionysus is a god of growth, wine, and of ecstasy, but has been show in myth and literature to be able wield his powers in very dark and destructive ways.
I have seen Pagans jump down each others throats about how a god is represented or described. One of the few things that Christianity gets right (on a philosophical level, not so much in practice) is the idea that one can not know the mind of god. That Pagans feel they can saddens me. Cernunnos is a deity as complex as nature itself. If to me he feels like sleeping in a pile of wolves and to others he feels like a gentle spring breeze, what is the difference? We are dealing with knowledge that is both revealed (knowledge learned by divine experience or revelation) and rational (knowledge gained by scholarship and history). When we reconstruct the practices of the past from the fragments we have, we have to retain an open mind and face the fact that we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do.
Sigrun Pallene is a pseudonym for an ADF dedicant and priestess to a small eclectic grove on a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest. I am fascinated by religion, language, history, music, anthropology, nature, and art. I speak a little Russian, and I am currently studying German while trying to teach myself Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic at the same time, because I am a masochist and like scaring my neighbors by making loud, guttural noises at night. These are the tales from a lifetime spent as warrior, witch, harlot, maenad, mystic, and valkyrie.
Ravens and Ivy 