The Birthday Pilgrimage to the Rollrights

Visiting the Rollright Stones has been on my to do list for a while, so what better day to do it than on your birthday was my thinking. I was not disappointed.

I first went to the King Stone, the weather worn appearance was beautiful plus it did look like it was sticking its finger upto the world, whilst in the field there were biggest coltsfoot leaves I'd ever seen, they were about 75cm across, if it ever starts to rain in summer they would make an adequate umbrella. 

From there we moved onto the stone circle itself, half of the stones are difficult to see so counting them is difficult, apparently if you count the same number of stones twice you can make a wish, I didn't attempt it but can see how such a belief occurred. I got chatting to a woman who saw me shuffling a set of tarot cards which I had bought with me to charge them up as I lost my favourite deck at Birmingham Pride. The omens of them working were good & I gave her my first reading of them after the confirmation they would work for me & from what she told me I was accurate which is good to know I haven't lost my knack.

It was then onto the Whispering Knights & to my delight I saw 2 bullfinches which were stunning, along with skylarks, meadow pipits & a rather lovely cinnabar moth. I did stop along the way to look at a dog rose too as the rose is my birth flower. The Knights were awesome too with many people leaving offerings of coins on them. Don't expect to get rich gathering them as no one left anything of higher value than two pence.  

It was well worth a visit &would love to go again in the future. I will update this post in the near future with photos & a bit more of the folklore of the place

Reflections of the Festive Period

With Twelfth Night being yesterday I can now reflect on the festive period as a whole, this years festive period has been. So the festive period 2013-14 was a bit of a strange one, I had been busier in the run up to it between normal work & chaplaincy, though this year Yule did not feel anywhere near as rushed or squeezed in around work as it has done in the past, I had plenty of time to decorate, feast & meditate, I also managed to make time to make a Witch Bottle for the house. What did infuriate me was the amount of people who asked before the Winter Solstice why I hadn't put up my Christmas decorations yet? Well my response was as follows, I'm not Christian & don't decorate the house until Yule which according to the tradition of decorating your house up for the festive period is actually early as you are not supposed to decorate your house until Christmas Eve & you take your decorations down on the 6th oft January, the day after the 12 days of Christmas have finished. Many people I know looked at me weirdly when I said I took my decorations down so late, saying that they took their decorations down the day after Boxing Day or New Years Day saying that they were fed up of them by then, to which I point out if they are fed up of Christmas before Christmas is out why are you in such a rush to put up your decorations in the first place. OK that is my festive peeve out of the way. I may not be Christian but do like to keep up with folk tradition at this time of year.

 This Christmas was more how I prefer Christmas, relaxed, there was a minor family altercation, but there always seem to be some niggle over Christmas but it lead to a more relaxed Christmas on the whole as far as timings & food went. It was also a relatively frugal Christmas with me making more presents this year than I have done before & it has been appreciated, although I do think I will have to make more chocolate fudge next year as it went down a storm as did my green tomato chutney, so it appears Christmas hampers are the way forward for me. New Years eve also cemented a friendship by having having Sean around for lunch & we swapped gifts I got a hand made dream catcher, he got some apple jam. The festive period although rushed seemed quite pleasing in the long run where people have appreciated skills & friendships & general sense of homeliness. So although I got accused of being a Scrooge for being sick of Christmas music before the day it arrived, it appears that I wasn't the Grinch either (that accolade was taken by someone else)

St Kenelm's Well

So today I went on a pilgrimage with a Pagan friend I made through my paid job to St Kenelm's Well, which is just outside of Clent in Worcestershire. The weather held out despite it being the greyest part of the day, which is probably just as well as neither of us were wearing waterproofs. We walked the slightly longer less scenic route of going by the road (not recommended if you are going at a weekend if you are walking) which was less muddy & passes Uffmoor Wood as featured in a previous article. On the way we say a white feral pigeon (what most would call a dove) acting more like a bird of prey in it's circling & swooping flight, it landed near us on the roof of a shed. The reason why I posted such a detail is that in the legend of St Kenelm when he was beheaded a dove flew out of his severed corpse ascending to heaven & a light shone on where his body was hidden, it was a strange coincidence but cool none of the less. When arriving at the church of St Kenelm it took my breath away it is a beautiful little church from the medieval period made of sandstone with bat like gargoyles adorning it. If you take the path to the right of the church you are going through the main entrance there are some steps leading down to the well, the steps are quite wide & muddy so do be careful. The well has a sandstone rill to a collection point. I collect some water from there in a jar & left an offering of some home grown pea seeds which will hopefully provide a snack for some wild creature hopefully. But we are not the only Pagans to visit the site as many have left offerings tied to the tree some of which are most definitely Pagan some may have been Christian too. The well area is in a bit of a sorry state as some of the decking in the area is rotting & it has become a little overgrown although it doesn't seem wrong for the setting, though the next time I'll go there I will take a set of secateurs with me to cut back a bramble that snags the unwary. It is a peaceful place & you can see why people visit it. After finishing at the well site we went back up to the church & walked to the lost settlement of Kenelmstowe which is now no more than earthworks of where buildings, roads & a stew pond were, some buildings are easier to spot than others. Again we walked back into the churchyard & had a look round there are some really old yew trees in there as well as a small cross which must be it's oldest gravemarker, it certainly looks the earliest & is one of the smallest in the church yard. there is also what looks like a stone bowl to leave offerings in as well. I do heartily recommend this as a place to visit whether Pagan, Christian or just someone who likes quiet reflective time. I will most definitely be returning again.

Jack in the Green: How old is he?

With May having gone through a full swing of seasons in one month I would like to look at one of the quintessential May characters in British folklore. It appears that Jack in the Green maybe one of the youngest. It seems that with the upsurge in popularity of the old figure of the Green Man & Robin Hood characters he has been lumped in with them. It isn't until the 18th Century that he is depicted & not until 19th Century when the term Jack in the Green was first named in writing. So here is my theory, the Jack in the Green came out of some over posturing of garland making which was popular in 16th-17th Centuries or as a piece of art imitating life with depictions in both written & drawn form could have been greatly exagerated & people took it at face value & it somehow ran away with itself & in this case quite literally so. I somehow get the feeling it may be a bit of both. So old maybe but not ancient. But why do we seem to put group all foresty type beings in one great lump, why can't Robin Hood, the woodwose, Green Man, Jack in the Green, the Holly King, the Green Knight etc be seen as a different being by some of the fluffy or New Age lot. Before you know it the Jolly Green Giant will be the next thing added into it & I'm not entirely sure what a sweetcorn logo would have to do with the other characters. I like my May customs & different folkloric characters, but that is because they are different. In Britain we don't have the gods of many other countries so please don't deminish our folk characters too.

A toast to Merry England

As per usual I made the trip to Clun for the Green Man festival on May Day for a bit of merry England style folk festivaling. The festival seems to have quite a wide appeal to varying different people from all walks of life, most of them looked like your average Joe Normal's but it it was peppered with the beardy weirdies you would also expect to see at such events. So what is the appeal? Is it just an excuse for a party? Or is it that people want to get a slice of the rural life that they don't have in urban/suburban life? Or is it that people want ot connect with the past? Which ever way it always feels like a bit of a pilgramage to me as my dad is a Salopian & the Beltane May Day connections are also prominant. The festival involves a fight between Green Man & the Ice Queen & the Green Man usualy wins (last year been canceled due to flooding & look what a horrible summer we had last year, I blame that for the weather we got, that & the gulf stream being in the Med rather than on Northern Europe). I'm hoping to explore a little more of Merry England hopefully this year or at least its modern enterpretations. But I'm not the only one, it appears many people are, so is it more a quest for cultural identity where some people feel we are losing it or just an affirmation we have one? Well in which ever case any a excuse for a party is a good one. So hats off to the people who make it happen.

Unicorns are not real! well sort of

A 'facebook friend' of mine posted up a very realistic 'photo' of a unicorn, to which someone replied is that real? I almost head butted the computer table in disbelief. I didn't realise that some people could be that gullible, but then why should I be? I once said me hoodie was lined with genuine yeti fur & I got a "really" in response. Unicorns are a misunderstanding of what was being seen, the most likely candidate for the unicorn is the extremely rare Arabian oryx an antelope from the Middle East which is where the first unicorns were reported to have lived, they have 2 horn but if the lose one in a fight it doesn't grow a replacement. The Indian version of such a beast was the karkadan which is mistranslation of what people saw when the encountered an Indian Rhino, which possibly is one explanation of it's scientific name of rhinoceros unicornis. The same way that the centuar is what happened when a none horse riding civilisation saw people riding on horseback & early explorers who met a phoenix fowl came back with the notion of the phoenix. As to what a yeti is I have no idea, perhaps the indigenous race wearing fur, a person playing pranks I have no idea. So go against the juorney song & do stop believing otherwise you will sound foolish

Crystals

It's been a while since I touched upon a Witchcraft subject, so I'm going to talk about these sparkly beauties. Crystals have been big business in the New Age & Pagan markets & many books have lists of crystals & their attributes. I've trained in crystal therapy, don't judge me it was a free course & it did definitely do something, but I have a feeling that it was more down to the placebo effect, I believe this due to the fact if 'energy' came into it sure it would bare the scars of a wounded planet possibly wounded men & women as a lot of our beloved crystals are far from ethically sourced, the recent political battles with the platinum mines are case in point. So if they have these energies that heal why don't they bring the energies that harmed the people or landscape in extracting them? Yes gemstones have different properties in their make up diamond being pure carbon, quartz being a silicone dioxide as well as a high scoring word in scrabble, but are we holding on to superstition just for a mass market or does it really work & my scepticism is just working overtime. Does the leaving them out in the sun destroy the 'negative energy' by radiation & the full moon 'realigns the energy' through it's magnetic pull. I never thought I'd see the day when I might put science into said post. I suppose quartz does power watches, but if you wanted quartz that badly go in your garden, those white round pebbles are quartz, Britain is full of quartz, you don't need to get it from some country thousands of miles away, flown in at the expense of the carbon footprint of the planet & at least you know it's ethically sourced & you haven't harmed the planet to get them. I do admit though that I have kept some of the crystals I bought in my less enlightened as to how they were sourced days.

Dragons

I see many people on Pagan forums with pictures of dragons on them, some of them have the notion they walk/fly/slither among us, it does kinda make me cringe a little as my theories on dragons are less than romantic. It would be cool to have them exist, perhaps that is just the fantasy geek inside of me coming out, but as per usual I have my theories on such creatures & more & more recently I'm finding people who agree with me & have found books & even saw a TV program that also backed it up. Dragons are in fact misinterpreted dinosaur bones, it is difficult to say that it isn't feasible, they are giant hulking great lizards, some even fly some swim in whole sea serpenty way, they lay eggs, they are found underground & it they are always put in a time long ago, in times when people didn't know much about the whole evolution thing, so this was how they explained them. If you compare cultures like the Chinese, Native Americans (though they are described as water monsters, thunder birds & thunder horses) & the Greeks you will find similarities, the dragons may not not look exactly alike but then the numbers of different species of dinosaur could account for that. It does become a bit cloudier when the mythologies of dragons come to a slightly more modern mythos, with Saints killing/taming dragons it is thought that it is actually a euphemism for a Pagan Viking leader just as the same that serpents were Druids. In the case of the Lambton Worm it could have been an exotic snake such as a python or just a regular adder or grass snake that people were scared of & when it was killed the tale was over exaggerated (the I caught a fish & it was this big tale springs to mind). But then what are people seeing when they see dragons today? Are they allowing their mind to wander to a place where fantasy & reality merge, like when I daydream or go into a meditative state? Are they channelling the spirits of the past? Or is it just a trick of the eye? Or is it a face that is put on spirit of place? Whatever it is I will still be spellbound by Skyrim & legends of these mysterious beasts whatever they are, as you should never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

The Easter Bunny & Others of his Ilk

So why was it that people thought that rabbits brought us eggs at Easter? The answer is they didn't, near enough everybody assumes that the Easter bunny is a rabbit when in fact the original Easter bunny is a hare, this will help explain this curious notion a little. Remember this is from the time when people thought flies had 4 legs, barnacle geese hatched from goose barnacles & cuckoos turned into hawks in winter. The reason why is makes slightly better sense it being a hare is that unlike rabbits hares don't burrow but create forms which is a scrape in the ground lined with grass to create a sort of nest for its young, abandoned forms make good nests for lapwings so occasionally have eggs in them, so it would make sense to them somehow, after all they didn't know as much about species & the ins & outs of the reproductive cycle as well back then. So to the Mad March Hare, people see them boxing in the field around this time of the year, it was originally thought it was males competing for a mate, another misconception as it is a male & female, with the female saying the equivalent of 'not now I have a headache, leave me alone you freak, I said no' clunk as she bitch slaps him in the kisser. There is also the lunar associations with the hare as people used to say you can see the hare in the moon, the are a fair few cultures that say this, though myself I have never seen this, perhaps I should look at the moon without my glasses on but then I'll end up seeing 2 blurry moons & you tell me you could see the entire works of Shakespeare on there & I probably wouldn't argue, that is more to do interpretation of lines in people's heads more than anything, but it is a good thing to tell children as they still have that kind of imagination & magic & you can tell them that are mimicking their friend the Moon Gazing Hare looking at his friend. Ah what it would be like to have that innocence again, it is all too fleeting as they grow up too quickly these days & stop believing at a younger age in such things.