To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day (8 page)

Artemis, and on either the sixth day or the sixteenth comes

the Mounykhia festival devoted to her. The discrepancy is

because the Greeks did not have a standard, unified calendar.

Either date can be celebrated as the Mounykhia by a Hellen-

ic Pagan, however you should probably pick one day or the

other and stick to it.

It is fitting that Artemis’ month is followed by Tharge-

lion, which is sacred to her brother, Apollo. The sixth and

seventh days of this month are a two day festival called the

Thargelia. Traditionally, in Athens, two people were selected

to represent the entire city. These people were fed and then

beaten to purify the city. So Thargelion may not be such a

great month to be a Hellenic Pagan, at least not if you are

offered a part in the local Thargelia rites. I am kidding, of

course; such a practice is unacceptable today, but some act of

purification—perhaps ritual bathing or censing—is appropri-

ate for a Thargelia rite in the early summer.

Finally the Hellenic year comes to an end in the early

summer with the month of Skirophorion.

A very devout Hellenic Pagan may go to the effort to

work out a sacral lunar calendar from one year to the next,

but an understanding of the Hellenic months will benefit

f 49 2

the sacral calendar

anyone who follows this path. Even if you are not certain

when the twentieth day of Metageitnion is, you can never-

theless hold a Thelchinia rite in August and offer incense and

libations to the goddess Hera. Hellenic women can gath-

er together in October to celebrate the Thesmophoria with

a feast. While this may seem haphazard, we have seen that

even the Paleo-Pagan Hellenes did not have one universal,

standard calendar.

To enjoy a more holistic spirituality, Irisa incorporates

the Hellenic calendar in her personal Pagan practice, just

as Diane Dahm does with the Irish calendar and I do with a

Saxon calendar. Thus, for each of us, the calendar becomes

more relevant to our work as Pagan people. Your calendar

should be equally relevant to
your own
spiritual path. What holidays were historically observed in your cultural tradition?

How did those people define the passage of time?

Another important consideration when developing a per-

sonal sacral calendar is your local climate and eco-system.

The Neo-Pagan wheel of the year assumes that you live in

the United Kingdom. The more your climate varies from that

of Great Britain, the less relevant the traditional wheel of the year will be for you. The same sacral calendar cannot serve

both the needs of Pagans living in Toronto and the needs of

Pagans in New Orleans; even if those Pagans follow the same

spiritual path, they live in completely different climates.

It will take at least one full year for you to develop a sacral calendar that is truly relevant for your local environment. To

do this you will need to put down the book, step away from

the computer keyboard, turn off the television, go outdoors

and really look at the world around you. The rewards will be

f 50 2

the sacral calendar

well worth the effort. During the coming year, try to discover

the answers to the following questions:

• What trees grow in your immediate vicinity (meaning

within ten miles of your home)? Are they deciduous or

evergreen? If deciduous, at what time of the year do

their leaves begin to change color? When do they drop

their leaves? Be specific; know the exact month, and

whether it is early or late in the month. We all know

that they drop their leaves in the autumn.

• When does the first hard frost come? Assuming you

experience a hard frost at all, which you will not if you

live in Miami or San Diego.

• When does the last frost come in the spring? Again

assuming you live in a temperate climate.

• When does the first snow fall? How late in the spring do

you have snow? Do you have snow at all?

• What flowers bloom in your region? When do they first

come into bloom? How long do they bloom?

• What birds live in your immediate vicinity? Are they

migratory, or do they live there all year? If they migrate,

when do they leave? When do they return?

• What mammals live in your immediate vicinity? Does

their behavior change at different times of the year?

How?

• If you live in an agricultural region, what crops are

grown and harvested? When are these planted? When is

the produce collected and distributed?

f 51 2

the sacral calendar

As you answer these questions, you will appreciate the

importance of the environmental factor in developing a per-

sonal sacral calendar. You will nurture your own understand-

ing of your environment, which you can then incorporate

into your spiritual and magical work.

You may occasionally need to strike a compromise

between your spiritual path and your environment, while

at other times these issues may come together to form a

unique synthesis in your sacral calendar. For example, if you

are a Hellenic Pagan living in Minneapolis, it can be difficult to reconcile the festival of Haloa with the frigid Minnesota

winters. For the Greeks, Haloa was a harvest festival where

recently gathered fruits were gratefully offered to Demeter

and Dionysus, but Haloa usually falls in the Gregorian month

of December, after the harvest season has come and gone

in the northern United States. Of course we can give thanks

for the gods’ blessings at any time of year, and fresh fruit is available at our supermarkets regardless of the season. The

northern Hellenic Pagan could celebrate Haloa by offering

fruits to Demeter and Dionysus, but think about how this

Greek festival could be incorporated more fully into a per-

sonal sacral calendar. Most of the Pagans I know enjoy the

secular trappings of Christmas. In a Hellenic household, the

solstice tree could be decorated with small, artificial fruits

as a reminder of Demeter’s bounty. An “angel” tree topper

could be modified as an image of Dionysus by anyone with

even moderate artistic skills. Ornaments shaped like pigs or

bulls are appropriate, if they can be found, as these animals

are sacred to Demeter and Dionysus respectively. Ivy is also

f 52 2

the sacral calendar

sacred to Dionysus, so garlands of artificial ivy could also be used to decorate the tree and elsewhere in the home.

The solstice almost always comes after Haloa, but the

two days are not far apart, so it would be very easy to incor-

porate the Hellenic festival into one’s seasonal “Christmas”

activities.

Of necessity, Pagans living south of the equator have

adapted a sacral calendar to their own environment. The

Pagans of Australia, South Africa and Argentina have

reversed the Neo-Pagan holidays. They celebrate Midsum-

mer in December because, for them, June is mid-winter

rather than mid-summer. Their spring equinox comes in

September, and the autumn equinox in March. On the sur-

face this seems simple and straightforward, but reversing the

calendar changes the tone of the Neo-Pagan holidays. For

Pagans south of the equator, it is at the summer solstice, not

the winter, when most of their neighbors are celebrating the

birth of Christ!

A Pagan living in the southern hemisphere also needs to

determine whether or not each Pagan holiday is truly season-

al. Many traditional Pagan holidays—perhaps the majority—

are seasonal because the production and acquisition of food

was so very important in pre-industrial cultures. In north-

ern Europe, especially, most holidays were related in some

way to planting crops, harvesting, the birth of livestock or

some other aspect of agriculture. But this is not a univer-

sal quality. Looking again at the Hellenic calendar, there is

no discernable reason why it would make any difference to

observe the Panathenaia festival in the winter instead of the

summer. Nevertheless some Pagans in the southern hemi-

f 53 2

the sacral calendar

sphere may choose to reverse this holiday, too, holding it

after their December summer solstice. There is no “correct”

answer unless a holiday is obviously and undeniably season-

al. Two hundred years from now, Pagans may look back to

see how and when people in the 21st century observed these

holidays, but today, if you live in anywhere in the southern

hemisphere, you must rely on your own intuition and good

judgment for guidance.

But what about Pagans who live
on
the equator? While

writing this chapter I began to wonder about this, so I asked

my friend Mario Munive Avendaño. Mario lives in Bogotá,

Colombia, where “winter” and “summer” are almost abstract

concepts. “Here in Colombia we don’t speak about winter

solstice or summer solstice,” he told me. “Here we have two

seasons only: the dry season and the rain season….The rain

season is April to October, and it rains so much. The rivers

grow and the temperature falls a little, and the air is wet the majority of the time.” This climate can be easily incorporated into the personal sacral calendars of Colombian Pagans

by celebrating the advent of the rainy season each year at

the March equinox. Whether March 21st is considered the

“spring” equinox or the “autumn” equinox is largely irrele-

vant; it is the “rain” equinox!

Mario, who is a Wiccan, tells me that “many Wiccans in

Colombia do their practice as if living in the North Hemi-

sphere.” This seems to be the default, since there is no real

reason for Colombians to reverse the Neo-Pagan holidays.

The same northern hemisphere default favored by Colombi-

an Wiccans would work equally well for Roman, Slavic, Hel-

lenic or Saxon Pagans in Colombia, but a truly relevant sacral

f 54 2

the sacral calendar

calendar should also observe the dry and rainy seasons at the

appropriate times, since these are such prevalent forces in

that equatorial climate.

What Colombia lacks in seasonal change it makes up for

with its numerous national holidays. The month of February

is especially notable for its celebrations, with annual carnivals held in cities like Barranquilla, Santa Marta and Riohacha.

Mario says there are festivals held in Colombia throughout

the year, including “some so bizarre, like a donkey festival in some little town in Colombia, I cannot remember (where)

now.” Which leads us to another consideration when cre-

ating a personal sacral calendar. Whether you live near the

equator, like Mario, or near the polar ice cap, regional cele-

brations often can and should be acknowledged as spokes in

your own “wheel of the year”.

At first it may seem that there is a vast difference between

a holy day like Beltane and a national secular holiday like

Veterans’ Day, but that difference diminishes for those who

seek to follow Hal Sidu. Why should one moment in your

life be any less sacred than another? For some people a secu-

lar holiday like Veterans’ Day may mean nothing more than

the banks closing. But any secular holiday can reflect your

spirituality, and in fact many American Asatrúar observe Vet-

erans’ Day as a holy day they call Einherjar, or the Feast of

the Einherjar. By doing so they have incorporated Veterans’

Day into their sacral calendars. The Einherjar are the spirits

of warriors who have fallen in battle; those who have been

taken up to Valhalla. The Einherjar are typically reverenced

with a
blót
, a ritual in which mead (honey wine) is offered to the honored spirits.

f 55 2

the sacral calendar

Any secular holiday can be sacralized in this way and

given a special place in your personal calendar. Valentine’s

Day? A Hellenic Pagan could give libations to Aphrodite (the

Hellenic goddess of love), while a Norse Pagan could offer

mead to the goddess Freya. Or if Arbor Day is meaningful to

you, incorporate it in your sacral calendar as a day to honor

dryads, wood elves or however else you perceive the spirits

of the trees. Thanksgiving Day is self explanatory. For Amer-

ican Pagans, Thanksgiving is essentially a fourth harvest fes-

tival, following in the wake of Lammas, the autumn equinox

and All Hallows Eve.

Since 1970, Earth Day has been observed in the United

States every year on April 22nd to inspire a greater aware-

ness of the environment. I have sacralized the observance

with the following ritual to the earth goddess Herthe. The

wording is based on a prayer from an 11th century book of

Anglo-Saxon herbal charms (although it is probably much

older), while the offerings are inspired by another 11th cen-

tury charm known as the Æcerbot, or “Field Remedy”. As

a celebration of the earth, the ritual is intended to be held

outside. If held indoors because of inclement weather or any

other reason, there must be a bowl to receive the offerings.