And he will continue to stand this way throughout the summer and autumn.

I am talking about Jack Barleycorn, the scarecrow we Earendel folk build every year in early May as a representation of the life of the fields.  Scott and I have been doing this for many years; long before Earendel was formally established, before we moved east to Pennsylvania.  Although details have changed and evolved, the tradition of Jack Barleycorn has been a part of my life for a long time now.

Today that tradition is well defined by years of repetition.  When Earendel first gathers on or after May Day we build a scarecrow as a part of our first summer rite.  I am almost always the one who sews up Jack’s head.  Taren is usually the person who brings and assembles the wood framework for his body.  Everyone helps, and everyone critiques our group progress as we fill out Jack’s gluts and biceps and abs with handfuls of straw.  When the scarecrow is built, each person comes forward with a small piece of cloth that he or she has embroidered one or more runes on.  The runes represent what that person hopes to harvest in his or her own life through the coming year.  These cloths are carefully stitched to Jack Barleycorn, who is then processed to a garden where he will stand until the Winterfylleth moon grows full.  At that time, six months later, he is burned on a bonfire as an offering to our gods.

Scarecrows have been around for a long time.  2500 years ago Greek farmers carved wooden scarecrows in the image of Priapus, the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite.  The Romans later adopted this custom, and Roman armies introduced Priapus scarecrows to Britain.

Our Jack Barleycorn could be thought of as a spiritual descendant of those early scarecrows, and in fact we do stuff extra bundles of hay into Jack’s crotch to give him a well-endowed, Priapic appearance.  But the truth is that our ancient Pagan tradition only goes back to the early 1990′s.  That’s a funny thing about traditions, they always have to start somewhere.  Whether the tradition is twenty years old (like our annual Jack Barleycorn) or twenty thousand years old, somebody had to do it first.

So if you don’t have a lot of ancient, pre-Christian traditions at hand, start a few of your own!  Don’t make the mistake that many 20th century Wiccans did of claiming a long and completely fake history for your tradition.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve only been following a ritual practice for three years or three hundred years, that practice will gain power in its repetition very quickly.  Create a tradition meaningful to you and your folk.  It need not involve building a scarecrow.  Your own tradition could be staying up all night to see the Midsummer sunrise.  It could be making all of your ritual candles on Candlemas Eve.

Whatever you choose to do, cherish your traditions.  We are defined by what we do, and Pagan traditions both new and old define the life and vitality of our paths.

But the word “Lent” is like Easter in that it predates English Catholicism, and in fact was not used in any specific Christian context until the 11th century.  The word, lencten, or Lent, simply means “spring”.

This use of a word for the vernal season to describe a Christian tradition is unique to the English language.  In other languages the words used are open references to the fasting (if you can call substituting one animal for another “fasting”) that takes place in the weeks preceding Easter.  In Latin – the language of the medieval Church – the season of Lent is called Quadragesima.  In Spanish it is la Cuaresma, and in Italian la Quaresima.  German Catholics call it der Fastenzeit.  In each of these languages the name means “time of fasting”.  Only in English is the time of fasting called “spring”.

We can only speculate why this came to be.  It certainly was not because the English had no word for fasting.  The Old English verb is fæstan, and, logically, English speaking Catholics should call the weeks of fasting something like Fastingtime, which is an English rendering of the German Fastenzeit.

But the English language has never been logical.  We may never know why English speaking Catholics chose to call the pre-Easter weeks Spring instead of (like everyone else across Europe) Fastingtime.  Perhaps it was local slang in one of the Saxon kingdoms.  Perhaps it was the whim of an archbishop or even a king.  All we know for certain is that the word lencten – the vernal season – began to transform into a reference to the weeks of Christian fasting approximately forty years before the Norman Conquest.  And after the Conquest it was the common speech of the Saxons that prevailed in naming this period of Christian self-deprivation, not the French spoken by their new overlords.  Otherwise the Modern English word would be something more similar to the French Carême, which of course means “fasting”, as the season is called in every other language.

Our modern word “spring” is a descriptive we began using in the 16th century.  People would speak of the “spring season”, meaning the time of year when new plants spring out of the ground; when blossoms spring forth on boughs.  But the season has a more direct name, a proper name, and that name is Lent.

So I celebrate Lent, in a Pagan fashion, and Easter too, with its symbols of rabbits, chicks, eggs and flowers.  None of them related to the death and resurrection of a Jewish man, but all of them glorious symbols of springtime.  All of them symbols of se lencten.

Okay, that was a trick question, because neither of these is worth very much by itself.  It is like asking which is more important, your liver or your lungs?  You need them both, of course.

When historical records and archaeological evidence are ignored, when a spiritual path relies entirely on UPG, Paganism can rapidly devolve into an imaginary fantasy.  This is when we begin to hear nonsense like “Freya is the Norse goddess of the moon”, or “because of their belief in Maat, none of the ancient Egyptians ever told a lie” (I swear by all that’s holy somebody once said this to me).  Fantasy is great fun, but I think it should be confined to movies, books and tabletop roleplaying games.  When it creeps into the foundation of one’s spiritual path, worship and reverence become little more than a mockery of Pagan praxis.

We all know people like this.  I believe the popular term for them today is “fluff bunnies”.

But the opposite position is no better.  When UPG is disparaged and historical proof is the entirety of one’s spirituality, there isn’t much to work with, especially for those of us who revere northern deities.  The Eddas?  They were written by a Christian, and if we believe them then our gods are not gods at all, they were just mortal Asians who came to Europe long ago and became rather famous.  Of course the people who insist on strictly adhering to “the lore” overlook this.  They are like the Christians who pick and choose passages from the Bible, only for scriptures they use the work of a man who did not even follow the religion he was writing about.

It annoys me when someone starts whining (as very often happens on Heathen e-lists) about how we know next to nothing about our ancestors’ beliefs and practices – as if this is news to anybody.  The whiner usually follows this anouncement with negative comments about what other people are doing – and how they are doing it wrong, because there is no proof that it was done that way.  From what I have seen on the internet, it appears that some people live for this.  Investing so much time knocking what other Pagans are doing, they must have very sad personal lives.

Yes, there are huge gaps in what we know of PaleoPagan practices.  And that is where UPG comes in.  Because eventually that unverified personal gnosis will become verified – by our gods, and by our communities.  Like our lungs and our livers, we need both UPG and historical evidence if we are to reconstruct healthy, viable spiritual paths for the 21st century.

“You must face the age of not believing

Doubting everything you ever knew

Until at last you start believing

There’s something wonderful in you”

Some of the most passionate beliefs of the 21st century are actually disbeliefs.  It seems that we have collectively taken skepticism to a new level; to a point where people are willing and eager to disbelieve anything.  There’s nothing new about monotheists desperately disbelieving in all but one deity, or about atheists disbelieving in that deity as well.  Now, though, we appear to be conditioned to disbelieve all sorts of things, no matter the contrary evidence.

There are people – intelligent, educated people – who have told me they “disagree” that there were Saxon druids.  As if their disbelief somehow obliterates the records of the Anglo-Saxon dryas that have survived in Old English documents.

There are people who do not believe the Holocaust ever took place.  Most of these are young people who never knew the men, now dead, who opened the concentration camps and released the surviving victims at the end of WWII.

Just the other day I received a letter from a man who has been wrestling with his “rational doubt” in respect to the old gods.  The gods have called to him, but he has been having trouble believing in them.  So…you know what I told him?

DON’T BELIEVE IN THEM!

And by this I meant, also, do not disbelieve in the gods, for disbelief is just another form of belief.  There is no evidence I’m aware of that belief (and disbelief) are especially significant in any indigenous European religion.  What matters are your actions, not your beliefs.  Piety is a pattern of behavior, honoring the gods and giving them their due.

Some Christians will claim that their forebears were persecuted in Rome because of their “beliefs”.  This is a lie.  Why would the Roman government care what they believed?  Rome acknowledged literally countless gods and goddesses; one more was like adding a grain of sand to Daytona Beach.  No, the early Christians were prosecuted – cruelly, because Rome was often cruel – for their actions.  It was their beliefs that they used as an excuse for an assortment of crimes, and their polytheist neighbors were understandably unimpressed.

Yes, I believe in the old gods, but not in the sense of “blind faith”.  I believe in them because it’s the only thing that makes sense, given my experiences - and the experiences that thousands of other people have had for thousands of years.  It might be more accurate to say that I do not disbelieve in the old gods, because my “belief” is simply acceptance, nothing more or less.

Belief is not necessary or even especially desirable in polytheist religion.  What matters is that you set aside disbelief, which, as I have pointed out, is itself a form of belief.  Once we get past that “age of not believing”, we really do find that there is something wonderful, not only within us, but in the universe around us.

So far the inclusive identity has always won, and so ADF druids include Pagans from all Indo-European paths: Hellenic, Norse, Irish, Roman, Welsh, Vedic, Slavic and so on.  This is why, as a Saxon Pagan, I felt comfortable joining ADF more than six years ago.

However, with or without ADF, I would still identify as a druid.  The Celts themselves never used the words “druid” or “druidry”.  These came into Modern English from the French language.  The Pagan Celts used cognate Gaelic words to describe their priestly-magician caste.  Likewise, the Saxons had cognate words for their own druids.  In Old English these people were known as the drýes, or drýmenn.

Surviving Old English texts give no reason to believe that the drýes followed a Celtic religion or were of Celtic descent, something that surely would have been mentioned.  The drý or drýmann (female, drýicge) was clearly a Saxon druid.  We do know that their druidic practices were considered “devilish” by the Christian scribes who mentioned them.  One scribe openly described the Saxon druid as ðæt deófles drý (the devil’s druid).  We also know that the Saxon druids practiced magic.  An Old English text warns, Ðýlæs-ðe se deófol us be dríum máge (lest the devil have power over us by druids), and another, Hí sædon ðæt hío sceolde mid hire drýcræft ða men forbredan (they said that she should overthrow the men with her druid-skills).

“Druid” can mean several things.  Today it can refer to any member of Ár nDraíocht Féin, or to at least some members of other modern druidic organizations such as OBOD or AODA.  It can also refer to an Irish, Welsh, Scottish or Gallic Pagan who serves his or her community in some way as a priest/magician.  And finally, it can refer to a Saxon Pagan who serves his or her community in a similar way.

As a Saxon who has studied and practiced magic for more than forty years, I am proud to be a druid.  Proud to be a 21st century drýmann.

The primary, critical difference is that Wicca is a duotheistic religion.  Many Wiccans will deny this – just as the majority spell their religion with two c’s, even though Gerald Gardner and later Buckland spelled it as ‘Wica’ – but Wicca or Wica, as defined by its founder, adheres to Mary Violet Firth’s assertion that there is only one goddess and only one god.  With no central authority, there is nothing to stop a self-professed Wiccan from worshipping a dozen distinct deities or from worshipping only one all-encompassing Great Goddess, but neither of these paradigms are truly Wiccan.

Buckland himself emphasizes this in Buckland’s Book of Saxon Witchcraft (p. 21):  “Everywhere in Nature is found a system of male and female; because that is the way of the Gods – a God and a Goddess – believe the Witches.  No all-male or all-female deity.  It is, then, a duotheistic religion.”

I could explain in depth why I am one Witch who does not believe this, but the relevant fact is that I simply do not.  I believe in the very real existence of countless gods and goddesses – sovereign spirits – some who I worship, most who I do not.  For this reason alone, and for this reason before all others, I cannot define myself as a Seax Wiccan.

The rest of it is more superficial.  I do not cast a magic circle before worship, nor do I celebrate esbats.  Many of the differences are semantic rather than substantial.  On another level, I think that I am less eclectic than the average practitioner of Seax Wica, although that is of course a generalization.  Buckland freely admits that Seax Wica is first and foremost a tradition of Wicca and not a reflection of authentic Saxon tradition.  In the introduction to the 2005 edition of his book, he says (p. xi): “I was not trying to reconstruct the ancient religion of the Saxons, nor the magic that they employed…What I set out to do was to create a modern form of Wicca…and to make it something with which I, personally, would feel comfortable.”

In contrast to this, I have tried to create a modern, relevant form of Saxon religion…with which I, personally, would feel comfortable!  I may have been influenced by Wicca, in the same way that I may have been influenced by my parents’ Presbyterian Christian religion and everything else I have been exposed to over the years, but it is not the foundation of my own Saxon beliefs and practices.

To be honest, it is not beyond imagining to see me someday practicing Seax Wica.  It is a positive, life-affirming path.  But if that were to happen, I would be something of a heretic, if the Seax tradition can be said to recognize anything like that.  I would revere “Freya” by her English title, Fréo, and would acknowledge her and Woden not as the ONLY two deities – not as “the Lord and Lady” – but as the two deities among the Saxon gods who take the most interest in wiccecræft.

In that sense, I could indeed define myself as Seax Wica (or Wicca).  But at this time, at least, I do not.  Seax Wicca can be said to be a variety of Saxon Paganism, but not all Saxon Pagans are Seax Wiccans.

I believe that Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) is the future of Paganism in America.  ADF will not have a monopoly on polytheistic religion any more than Catholicism has a monopoly on Christian religion, but its concepts will surely influence our culture as more and more people become aware of this international Pagan fellowship.

For decades contemporary Pagans have been faced with a choice of two extreme movements.  At one end of the spectrum is the if-it-feels-good-do-it philosophy; a Paganism with little respect for the cultures and traditions of our ancestors, where the only thing that matters is that everyone is having fun at the party.  Those at the opposite end of the spectrum are so put off by this that many of them insist on identifying by a term other than “Neo-Pagan”, although, of course, it is what they are.  (Neo-Pagan simply means a contemporary, 21st century polytheist.)  The reaction has been Icelandic Pagans (Ásatrúar) who will only associate with other Icelandic Pagans, Roman Pagans who only associate with other Roman Pagans, and so on.

ADF has found the balance between these two opposing perspectives.  An ADF ritual has a format that does not fit exactly with any specific Pagan culture, but is instead a satisfactory compromise for all Indo-European Pagan cultures.  Within the parameters of this format, ADF recognizes and respects cultural integrity.  Rather than chopping and dicing Paganism into eclectic hash, each ritual addresses a specific hearth culture: Irish, Norse, Roman, Hellenic, and so on.  Including, of course, Anglo-Saxon. 

When I join in a ritual honoring a foreign god, the format recognizes this also, and during the ritual a celebrant welcomes the “High Ones” or “Shining Ones” – where I can connect with Ing Fréa or Woden – in a way that does not clash with the liturgy.  In ADF, I can join in worship with my neighbors – be they Hellenes or Welsh or Slavs – and still be proudly Saxon.

I have been a member of ADF for six years now.  During those six years I have worshipped with Sassafras Grove, which is an awesome group of people, but which is a distance from me, down in the city of Pittsburgh.  I am still a friend of Sassafras and will be attending some of their events, but it is my hope that Cranberry will grow into a viable, thriving group here where I live.

To be as inclusive as possible, we plan to hold rites with two hearth cultures.  Not simultaneously, of course.  At solstice and equinox we will hold Anglo-Saxon rites to honor the gods of the English.  At the “cross-quarter” high days we will hold Romano-British rites honoring Celtic gods and goddesses.

These efforts may very well bear fruit.  Cranberry Protogrove was officially recognized only two days ago, and already we have two people interested in joining us for our Yule rite in December.  By “us” I mean Scott and me.  Hopefully “us” will soon grow into a larger group.

If you know of any Pagans who live in Pennsylvania, in Butler County or northern Allegheny County, please send them our way!  They can email us at Cranberry@alaricalbertsson.com, or connect with us by subscribing to cranberrydruids@yahoogroups.com.

For many years after that, one god in particular watched over me.  Some might call him my “patron god”, although the term patron traditionally refers to a deity’s role as a protector of a group (city, nation, tribe) or conceptual area of life (archery, blacksmiths, animals).  I presume the idea of a patron god for an individual person has crept into Paganism with recovering Catholic Christians who have been raised with ”patron saints”.

By then I had heard of Wicca, although all I knew was that it was a word used by Gardnerian witches to describe themselves.  And I was not entirely sure what a “Gardnerian” witch was.  But after the move it seemed like everyone I met was using the word Wicca or Wiccan, so I began doing the same.  I was soon initiated by an Osirian Wiccan.  I could relate well enough to the “Great Goddess” as the Earth Mother, who I knew as Herthe.  In 1974, Buckland’s The Tree was published, and his Seax tradition seemed to confirm that the old gods were indeed a part of the Wiccan movement.

And so, after a time, I began to think of all gods as a mash-up of one Horned God, even though most of the gods were never depicted with horns or antlers or anything of the sort.  And all goddesses, from all cultures, became (in my mind) facets of Herthe; herself but one more name for a single Great Goddess.

This became more difficult to hold as the years passed, and I had also come across other falsehoods – some innocent errors, others blatant lies – in the beliefs I had once accepted.  It became more and more difficult to ignore how little the “old religion” of Wicca resembled any pre-Christian spirituality.

During this period of disenchantment – which continued for well over a decade – I grew aware of an entity or presence observing me at times.  I was not sure what this was.  At first I was not willing to accept it as a deity, since there was only One Lord and One Lady; distant principles of Yin and Yang, of Fire and Ice.  The presence I felt was a “person” of some kind.

My visitor had some connection with or interest in the vegetable kingdom: trees, grasses and crops.  This was one thing I was sure of.  I thought of him as the Harvest Lord, although I was aware that the presence could be near me at any time of year, even in deepest winter when green growing things were encased beneath ice and thick layers of snow.  The presence did not fit into one “archetype”.  He was my Harvest Lord, but he was just as easily the Green Man or even Jack Frost.

I knew him, this presence, but on another level I did not know him at all.  It took another move – this time a move across the continent – for me to cast off the concepts that kept me from seeing the Harvest Lord for who he was.  After the move I met some true polytheists who spoke of the gods as I had once known them.  After hearing these people out, I knew that my Harvest Lord – the presence that had observed me, had guided me, had inspired me to build a scarecrow each year as his effigy - was Ing Fréa.

I went into our back garden late one evening and gave Lord Ing an offering of ale.  When he responded it was with such intensity that I could understand why a monotheist might believe his god to be the one and only god in the universe.  Ing was in me, flowing through me, around me and above me.  He was in every flower and herb, he was in the breeze and the night sky.  It was difficult to breathe.  “I am,” he said.  “I am not one small part of something else.  I am not one name of a distant power.  Know that I am, and that I am nothing less than myself.”

He was not angry.  I had the feeling that my dear Lord understood how I had come to wander away from the gods.  Now I was back again, and could know him for who he really is: the Lord of this World, the Lord of the Elves, Battle Wise and Bringer of Peace.  My Harvest Lord.

Gehæl Ing Fréa.

http://www.6thnight.org/summerland.html

This gathering is an Ár nDraíocht Féin event, but you do not have to be active in ADF Druidry to attend.  In fact, if you are not ADF this gathering can be an excellent introduction to one of the largest Neo-Pagan organizations in the world.  And don’t be put off by the word “Druidry” if your spiritual path isn’t Celtic; ADF welcomes and embraces all Indo-European faiths.  (“Druidry” isn’t so much of a linguistic stumbling block for us Anglo-Saxons, since we have our own drýlic tradition.)

Summerland is very affordable, only $65 if you pre-register, or $75 (for adults) at gate.  You must be 18 or over, or accompanied by an adult legal guardian.  If you want to spend more for amenities, you certainly can, and these are worth looking at.  You can rent a cabin that sleeps up to eight people for $45, dividing that up with your friends or fellow híredmenn, or just ask for a single bed for $15 if you don’t mind bunking with strangers.  Of course by the end of the gathering those strangers may be new friends who you’ll cherish for years!

The festival also offers a meal plan, available by pre-registration only, for only $40.  If you get the meal plan and cabin space there is very little you’ll need to pack other than clothing, a pillow and sheets or a sleeping bag.

6th Night Grove determines who presenters will be, so you can be assured of interesting, quality workshops throughout the festival.  Friday evening will feature a bardic circle, followed by drumming and dancing at the fire circle.  An ADF Unity Ritual will be held on Saturday.

I have attended Summerland for a number of years now, and I have always had a good experience.  I hope some of you can be there.  If you do go, be sure to look for me and say wes hal!

Some years, of course, are better than others.  Last year saw a bumper crop of blueberries.  Scott put a cup of the berries on his cereal every morning, I munched on them sporadically throughout the day, and we still had enough for Scott and Taren to brew some delicious blueberry meads.

We can already see that this year’s crop will be much smaller.  We’ll have a couple of pies, and maybe a few blueberries to sprinkle over oatmeal.  For us, this is only a mild disappointment, but I am keenly aware of how devastating it would be to our ancestors.  Of how devastating it would be to me now if I were wholly dependant on the food I grew myself.

Pagans today sometimes approach their spirituality as if it were a vending machine, and I confess that I am not wholly immune to this syndrome.  We quickly turn to our gods when we want something from them: a romantic relationship, more friends, prosperity, improved health.  And while this is not altogether wrong, we are not so quick to give thanks for the many blessings we enjoy.  We tend to take those things for granted.

How blessed are we who have something to eat each morning!  How fortunate to have a day with no war in our immediate vicinity.  What a miracle it is even to arise, our hearts beating, our lungs taking in fresh, life giving air.  Gehæl þa godas!  Gehæl þa ylfe!  Éala!

Take time to consider the good things in your life.  Give thanks, and open your heart to receive even more blessings.