Cailleach Bhéarra

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

She above all resonates most greatly with me. Being that shes irish and her home is said to be not far from where i live i love her. Maybe that i am too a crone now. The picture here not to be seen in the negative as it just depicts her as old and we all get old. I call on her often but especially each Samhain.

‘Cailleach’; a word that is older than the Irish language itself and a concept that has been deeply entrenched in Irish consciousness for millenia.

In mythology, she is seen as the personification of wintertime, her veil a symbol for a land hidden under a coating of frost. She is usually depicted beating back summer vegetation, or stirring up waves in the sea. Although this imagery seems sinister, she is more of a necessary force; a catalyst for the needed change the land and its people need to regenerate.

This concept is best depicted in the most famous ‘cailleach’, Cailleach Bhéarra, who was the daughter of the little sun of winter, and grew younger and stronger as winter progressed; eventually, transforming into Brigit at the beginning of spring, bringing new life and growth once more.

In the more modern interpretations of the ‘cailleach’, she is depicted as an old woman, often veiled, who doesn’t follow the conventions of society and therefore holds special powers. Communities throughout Ireland would have their own localised stories about the cailleach, often based around actual people and the powers they possessed. 

Spiders in Myth and Folklore

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

Nearly all cultures have some sort of spider mythology, and folktales about these crawly creatures abound!

Hopi (Native American): In the Hopi creation story, Spider Woman is the goddess of the earth. Together with Tawa, the sun god, she creates the first living beings. Eventually, the two of them create First Man and First Woman – Tawa conceptualizes them while Spider Woman molds them from clay.

Greece: According to Greek legend, there was once a woman named Arachne who bragged that she was the best weaver around. This didn’t sit well with Athena, who was sure her own work was better. After a contest, Athena saw that Arachne’s work was indeed of higher quality, so she angrily destroyed it. Despondent, Arachne hanged herself, but Athena stepped in and turned the rope into a cobweb, and Arachne into a spider. Now Arachne can weave her lovely tapestries forever, and her name is where we get the word arachnid.

Africa: In West Africa, the spider is portrayed as a trickster god, much like Coyote in the Native American stories. Called Anansi, he is forever stirring up mischief to get the better of other animals. In many stories, he is a god associated with creation, either of wisdom or storytelling. His tales were part of a rich oral tradition and found their way to Jamaica and the Caribbean by way of the slave trade. Today, Anansi stories still appear in Africa.
Cherokee (Native American): A popular Cherokee tale credits Grandmother Spider with bringing light to the world. According to legend, in the early times, everything was dark and no one could see at all because the sun was on the other side of the world. The animals agreed that someone must go and steal some light and bring the sun back so people could see. Possum and Buzzard both gave it a shot, but failed – and ended up with a burned tail and burned feathers, respectively. Finally, Grandmother Spider said she would try to capture the light. She made a bowl of clay, and using her eight legs, rolled it to where the sun sat, weaving a web as she traveled. Gently, she took the sun and placed it in the clay bowl, and rolled it home, following her web. She traveled from east to west, bringing light with her as she came, and brought the sun to the people.

Celtic: Sharon Sinn of Living Library Blog says that in Celtic myth, the spider was typically a beneficial creature. She explains that the spider also has ties to the spinning loom and weaving, and suggests that this indicates an older, goddess-focused connection that has not been fully explored. The goddess Arianrhod is sometimes associated with spiders, in her role as a weaver of mankind’s fate.

In several cultures, spiders are credited with saving the lives of great leaders. In the Torah, there is a story of David, who would later become King of Israel, being pursued by soldiers sent by King Saul.

David hid in a cave, and a spider crawled in and built a huge web across the entrance. When the soldiers saw the cave, they didn’t bother to search it – after all, no one could be hiding inside it if the spider web was undisturbed. A parallel story appears in the life of the prophet Mohammed, who hid in a cave when fleeing his enemies. A giant tree sprouted in front of the cave, and a spider built a web between the cave and the tree, with similar results.

Some parts of the world see the spider as a negative and malevolent being. In Taranto, Italy, during the seventeenth century, a number of people fell victim to a strange malady which became known as Tarantism, attributed to being bitten by a spider. Those afflicted were seen to dance frenetically for days at a time. It’s been suggested that this was actually a psychogenic illness, much like the fits of the accusers in the Salem Witch Trials.

Spiders in Magic
If you find a spider roaming around your home, it’s considered bad luck to kill them. From a practical standpoint, they do eat a lot of nuisance insects, so if possible, just let them be or release them outside.

Rosemary Ellen Guiley says in her Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft, and Wicca that in some traditions of folk magic, a black spider “eaten between two slices of buttered bread” will imbue a witch with great power. If you’re not interested in eating spiders, some traditions say that catching a spider and carrying it in a silk pouch around your neck will help prevent illness.

In some Neopagan traditions, the spider web itself is seen as a symbol of the Goddess and of the creation of life. Incorporate spider webs into meditation or spellwork relating to Goddess energy.

An old English folk saying reminds us that if we find a spider on our clothing, it means money is coming our way. In some variations, the spider on the clothes means simply that it’s going to be a good day. Either way, don’t disregard the message

Who is Krampus

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

Krampus is meant to whip children into being nice.

When listening to the radio in December, it’s unlikely to hear holiday songs singing the praises of Krampus:
a half-goat, half-demon, horrific beast who literally beats people into being nice and not naughty.

Krampus isn’t exactly the stuff of dreams: Bearing horns, dark hair, fangs, and a long tongue, he comes with a chain and bells that he lashes about, along with a bundle of birch sticks meant to swat naughty children. He then hauls the bad kids down to the underworld.

You better watch out . . .
St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children. His saints day falls in early December, which helped strengthen his association with the Yuletide season. Many European cultures not only welcomed the kindly man as a figure of generosity and benevolence to reward the good, but they also feared his menacing counterparts who punished the bad. Parts of Germany and Austria dread the beastly Krampus, while other Germanic regions have Belsnickle and Knecht Ruprecht, black-bearded men who carry switches to beat children. France has Hans Trapp and Père Fouettard.
Krampus’s name is derived from the German word krampen, meaning claw, and is said to be the son of Hel in Norse mythology. The legendary beast also shares characteristics with other scary, demonic creatures in Greek mythology, including satyrs and fauns.

The legend is part of a centuries-old Christmas tradition in Germany, where Christmas celebrations begin in early December. Krampus was created as a counterpart to kindly St. Nicholas, who rewarded children with sweets. Krampus, in contrast, would swat “wicked” children, stuff them in a sack, and take them away to his lair.

According to folklore, Krampus purportedly shows up in towns the night of December 5, known as Krampusnacht, or Krampus Night. The next day, December 6, is Nikolaustag, or St. Nicholas Day, when children look outside their door to see if the shoe or boot they’d left out the night before contains either presents (a reward for good behavior) or a rod (bad behavior).

A more modern take on the tradition in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic involves drunken men dressed as devils, who take over the streets for a Krampuslauf—a Krampus Run of sorts, when people are chased through the streets by the “devils.”
Participants dressed as the Krampus creature walk the streets in search of delinquent children .

Krampus is coming to town
Krampus’s frightening presence was suppressed for many years.
But Krampus has been having a resurgance over the past few years, thanks partly to a “bah, humbug” attitude in pop culture, with people searching for ways to celebrate the yuletide season in non-traditional ways. In the United States, people are embracing the dark side of Christmas with Krampus movies, special “Krampus” television episodes. They’re throwing Krampus parties, attending local Krampusnachts and running in Krampus-themed races.

For its part, Austria is attempting to commercialize the harsh persona of Krampus by selling chocolates, figurines, and collectible horns. There are already complaints that Krampus is becoming too commercialized and losing his edge because of his newfound popularity. 

Praise Gryla, a Terrifying Christmas Cannibal with 13 Deviant Sons

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

Gryla, a Terrifying Christmas Cannibal with 13 Deviant Sons
In Iceland, 54 percent of the population believe in elves and other paranormal beings. Grýla—who is believed to kidnap bad children and cook them into a soup—plagues them every year, as do her 13 Yule Lads.

The Christmas season is magical, enchanting, and fraught with heinous stories of diabolical supernatural beings. Boughs of holly deck hallways, sugar plum fairies dance inside children’s heads, and an old man forces himself into chimneys around the world after months of tirelessly surveilling children. There are so many wonderful stories that are told during Christmas—like those of reindeer who fly in the sky, or of Krampus, the Christmas demon that beats children with sticks and drowns them in streams. Then there is Grýla, the hideous Icelandic cannibal troll-woman who abducts children and boils them to death.
Descriptions of Grýla vary across time, but she is often depicted as a monstrous female being with hooves. In some stories, Grýla looks like a sheep who walks like a human; in others, she is clearly a troll. Sometimes she has 300 heads, or a beard, or blue eyes on the back of her head. One description portrays Grýla as having 15 tails, together bearing one hundred balloons filled with children.

“She is told to come to town around Christmas time and pick up naughty kids, disobedient kids, and take them to the mountain where she lives,” explains Magnus H. Skarphedinsson, the headmaster of The Elf School, a Reykjavik-based institution devoted to Icelandic folklore. “She cooks and makes a soup of them.”

In Skarphedinsson’s opinion, Grýla is most likely some combination of fact and fiction: “I think the origin of her is somebody saw a mean nature spirit around Christmas in the dark, and that’s where this started, and it’s escalated.”

To be clear, Skarphedinsson firmly believes in elves, hidden people, and other supernatural entities. (The distinction between these two first categories is that elves are small magical beings who look strange and have big ears, whereas hidden people are quite similar to human beings—they tend sheep, keep house, and sow fields, but exist in a dimension that overlaps with our own.) “I’ve met more than 900 people who’ve seen elves and hidden people, and I’ve met five or six people that have seen trolls, and probably one of them has seen Grýla,” Skarphedinsson tells Broadly. His experience with these witnesses has left him “totally convinced” of the existence of these phenomenon.

Skarphedinsson is far from alone in this regard: Belief in mystical beings like Grýla is quite normal in Icelandic culture. As the Atlantic reported in 2013, a 1998 study found that 54 percent of Icelanders believe that elves and hidden people exist. Icelanders are so concerned with supernatural entities, in fact, that civic development will sometimes take these paranormal entities into account. Most famously, there was an eight-year-long debate between the government, environmentalists, and elf believers spanning from 2007 and 2015, when the construction of a new highway threatened to destroy a 50-ton “elf church.” Naturally, the elves won and construction workers uprooted the massive rock to appease them. (According to the Guardian, the threat of displeasing elves is so real that “even non-believers would rather play it safe than risk incurring the wrath.”)

Similarly, many Icelanders fear and respect Grýla, who is an iconic folk figure in the Nordic island country. “I remember how scared we Icelandic kids were of this terrible troll, Grýla—and she still gives me the creeps,” one native put it in an article for Iceland’s largest online travel guide. Indeed, the ogress appears in texts throughout history. In The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia, folkloristic professor and author Terry Gunnell writes that Grýla “was clearly recognized as an ugly troll figure in Iceland at least as far back as the 14th century.”

Stekkjastaur’s only passion in life is to sneak up on sheep and suck on their nipples.

Grýla has remained a staple in Iceland in part because she is the mother of the nation’s version of Santa Claus, the Yule Lads. These 13 troll-like men come to your home sequentially in the 13 days preceding Christmas, and they either give children rotting potatoes or presents.

More importantly, these freaks are each defined by their unique fetishes. For example, the bowl-licker Askaskleikir enjoys hiding beneath children’s beds and licking bowls. Then there is Gluggagægir, charmingly known as the window-peeper. Around Christmas time, this voyeur enjoys sneaking up to windows and watching the people inside. Perhaps worst of all, Stekkjastaur has long, stiff legs and can’t bend his knees. The condition is quite sad, as Stekkjastaur’s only passion in life is to sneak up on sheep and suck on their nipples, which is hard to do without kneeling down.1700s it became illegal for parents to use Grýla to frighten their children. But Skarphedinsson does it anyway: One time he called his home and played a prank on his family by pretending to be a Yule Lad. When his daughter answered the phone, Skarphedinsson told her that his mother Grýla was angry with her for being disobedient. “She hid beneath the bed in the bedroom and she was very good and obedient after that,” Skarphedinsson says

Frau Perchta

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

Frau Perchta, also known as the belly slitter or Christmas witch from German lore. Like Krampus she goes after naughty people but mostly lazy ones. She hates dirty houses and she keeps a knife in her dress, and she uses it on those she finds slovenly.

She’s a witch/goddess who can look like a crone or Frigg, some say she is Frigg. Adding to that is the story that she rides in the wild hunt. She also has an army of Krampus like minions.

Her night is January 6

Mermaids

Posted on by A Solitary Pagan

Mermaids throughout time have been considered guardians and avengers of women and predictors of storms and future events. As true water spirits they can replenish our energy and be called upon to assist within the magick of water and Lunar energies. They refresh, clean and renew our spirits. Female Mer-people, often called water nymphs, are not always female nymphs. Mermaids, in the form of water nymphs, work to awaken our deepest emotions, stimulating our compassion and intuition. Each of us has a part within ourselves which is ruled and guarded by water spirits throughout our life.

The history of the Mer-world is ancient, reaching back as far as we have acknowledged and felt the sea’s magickal attraction. Surprisingly to most, the earliest evidence recalls the male of the species first. He is called the Sea-God Oannes (or Ea), the “great fish of the ocean,” who was also the Sun-God, seen rising from out of the ocean each day and disappearing again back beneath the waves each night. Oannes was worshipped by the Babylonians in recorded history from around 5000 BCE. It is believed Oannes taught mankind about the arts and sciences.

The ancient Syrian Goddess, Atargatis, is a symbiotic Moon Goddess and was the first officially recorded Mermaid listed within history. She was depicted with a fish’s tail and fish where her sacred totem. It is not unusual that this Moon-Goddess was depicted as a Mermaid, for the tides ebb and flow with the moon.

There is belief that during the suppression of Pagan deities, Mermaids and other supernatural beings also considered insignificant, were not seen as a threat to the growth and popularity of Christian beliefs and doctrine. Some historians and writers even go so far as to report that the Church actually believed in the Mermaid mythology. This comes from evidence found in ancient Church records depicting manuscripts and drawings on the existence of Mermaids and the Mer-World.

Mermaids are the symbols of feminism, beauty, sexuality and fertility; however, the male-dominated Christian Church used the symbol of the Mermaid to turn people from sin and the temptations of the flesh. According to T.K., “Mermaids are represented in early Irish and Christian medieval and post-medieval art, frequently as a warning to Christians against the sins of vanity, pride and lust.”

Mer-Magick
In ancient wisdoms, Mer-people worked with the Magickal essence of the Moon. Mer-Magick was used for Shape shifting and Transformation, and with time has become a nearly lost tradition. Mer-Magick is empowering and can be found within the sounds of the ocean waves and her creatures. The power can be found within the taste and smell of the sea as well as the movement of her waters. The reflection of the Moon on her waves and her surface is also a point of empowerment. Anything related to the sea is a source of power for Mer-Magick and those who call upon it.
Mer-Magick has its greatest power and its greatest energy potency during the Full Moon phase. Full Moons are approximately 14 days after New Moons and the energy lasts from three days before to three days after the actual Full Moon. The magick best worked within this time is for prophecy, protection, and divination or any working that needs extra magickal energy. This phase is also a good time to work magick for love, wisdom, manifesting goals, passion, healing, strength and power.
The primary colors of Mer-Magick are aqua, blue, cream and sea foam green. The planetary colors for Mer-Magic using Cancer are silver and white. The purpose within Cancer is the emotions, influence, fertility and lunar energy. Colors of Pisces are sea green and mauve. The planetary energies used are for escapism, entertainment, confusion, spirituality, psychic development and past-life regression work. Scorpio’s color is dark red. The purpose within Scorpio is for the work of intensity, stability, making plans, merging, fertility, lust and secrets.
For magickal work, calling on the energies of Mer-Magick, Monday is considered the day corresponding within this power. To a degree this is equal with the corresponding day employed with Moon Magick. Any day under the Full Moon stage of the moon is amazingly enhanced and excellent for calling the powers utilized within Mer-Magick.
I have found that working with the tides can be like a secret key for the working of Mer-Magick. Your magick, whatever it may be, is excellently enhanced by means of the natural rhythm of the tides.
Drawing energies uses the incoming of high tide while ridding or banishing uses the outgoing tide and the parallels go on. Mer-Magick for calling/drawing something or someone to you – love, money, power or people – should be worked when the tide is coming in.
Mer-Magick for strength, energy, power and growth should be worked at high tide. This is to assure that you are working for the highest possible success in whatever the need might be.
Mer-Magick for ridding yourself of problems, fears, banishing and cleansings – by means of cleansing your inner self – should be cast upon the waters of the outgoing tide. In this way the tide carries away all the undesired fragments of life.
Mer-Magick for balancing your life-force, focusing and clearing metaphysical sight, which is contained within magick or others, should be worked on the low tide and when the waters are as calm as possible. This is a time when all the things we hide inside the shallows of our lives can be seen or have been washed up within the waves of life.
As with the Moon, Mer-Magick’s planetary corresponding hours are 9 am to noon and 9 pm to midnight. These hours are best for: land cultivation, like gardening or farming; seeking favors from the feminine gender; attending to family matters; the needs of mothers, sisters and daughters; artistic pursuits; starting out on long journeys and the starting of a new business venture.
The gems corresponding with Mer-Magick include: pearl, shell, emerald, coral, lapis, blue crystal, jade and opal.
Herbs corresponding with Mer-Magick include: bladderwrack, Atlantic kelp, Norwegian kelp, sea salt, Irish moss (chondrus crispus), agar, algae and seaweed.