Looking for a good book for your Pagan child?

I came across a childrens' book today and, after flipping through it, I couldn't pass it up for my growing collection of young Pagan literature.  Any parents/educators should be familiar with the hugely successful "Magic Tree House" books.  I see second and third graders reading them all the time.  This book, entitled Leprechauns and Irish Folklore, by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce, is "a nonfiction companion to" a fictional book they wrote called Leprechaun in Late Winter.  I read all 109 pages of the companion in an hour or so.

What's so impressive about this book is how open-minded and scholarly it is.  While the authors don't discuss the evolution of Lugh to leprechaun, they do briefly discuss the Tuatha De Danann.  There's a whole chapter devoted to the modern history of Irish folklore.  It features sections about Douglas Hyde and Lady Gregory, for example, and even introduces the subject of British occupation.

Different spirits are discussed, such as the trooping fairies, pookas, and clurichauns.  The authors give examples of how people have/can befriend the good folk, as well as how to defend against them.  All the examples are consistent with the lore and folklore studies I've been reading.  The selkies have a section too but are called merrows (or múir ógh for sea maiden).  Speaking of Gaelic, the Irish is pretty accurate as far as I can tell with my novice understanding.  Children reading will learn about the filí and raths for instance.  I love that the authors used actual Irish!

My only real complaint is that the Druids are presented only as "wise men" (73) rather than men and women.  The book sometimes relies too heavily on the more modern idea of diminutive winged fairies but makes up for it by explaining that they can appear however they want.  Otherwise I highly recommend it for Pagan parents, especially those with Irish hearth cultures.    It's very well written, contains beautiful illustrations and photographs, and even includes a section with further reading and research tips for youngsters to follow!  Rather than calling a belief in fairies nonsensical, the book leaves it up to the reader to decide for him or herself what to believe.  I really appreciated that bit of spiritual tolerance / allowance for magic.

It's that time of year again!

When I was a jaded high schooler, newly converted from Catholicism to "Wicca,"*  I didn't have a good understanding of ancient or medieval history.  I knew quite a bit about American history thanks to years and years of emphasis in school, but otherwise...  I knew a bit about feudalism, I knew that the Egyptians were some sort of polytheists who built the pyramids and believed in an afterlife, and I had a vague idea that the Druids were from Ireland.  For years after, even into my earliest Druidic studies, I was convinced that St. Patrick's Day was a crappy holiday because it celebrated how mean old St. Patrick kicked the Druids (aka The Snakes) out of Ireland.

Fast forward to the last ... oh, year and a half.  My interest in Druidism has grown so that it's an incredibly important part of my life.  I read about it a lot.  Inspired by Celtic Reconstructionist methodologies, I read history book after history book, even the dry ones, to obtain a greater understanding of my ancestors and the culture I feel most inspired by.  It is impossible for me to wag my finger at St. Patrick after reading as much as I have.  I'm not alone in this revelation.  Several Pagan bloggers have been discussing their feelings and understandings of the holiday.  To make a long story short, St. Patrick has been framed.  He's a scapegoat among the Pagan community - a largely innocent Christian victim to our community's "Waaaa, you stole my toy!" attitude.**

In other words, I have less of a "bah humbug" attitude about St. Patrick's Day.  A couple years ago, a friend of mine (I swear, I think it was one of my sister-in-laws), who is neither Pagan nor Christian, told me that she prefers to celebrate St. Patrick's day in the spirit of her Irish ancestry.  I've come to feel similarly, especially when considering what my immigrant ancestors went through.  I come from a proud, strong, spiritual, creative, and tenacious people.  I am honored to have Irish blood flowing through my veins.

That said, St. Patrick's Day cannot escape my criticism entirely.  Although I don't get very "into" St. Patrick's Day,***  I'm not against celebrating my culture.  I also recognize that many minority groups join in because the Irish are, more or less, a success story in America.  Although they were persecuted and abused, they climbed the social ladder and many of us are successful and happy today thanks to their efforts****.  However, the celebration is just way, way too commercial.  There are too many crappy, plastic trinkets that end up in garbage limbo, too many styrofoam shamrocks, too many greasy attempts at Irish food, and too much ignorant debauchery.  I use such language because it's true!  I love a good drink and a reason to party, but on St. Patrick's Day, at least I know what the hell I'm celebrating.  It's unfortunate how many Irish wannabes and, even worse, Irish descendants haven't a clue what their ancestors went through.  Worse yet, most don't care.  They just like the excuse to drink.  The only reason St. Patrick's Day continues to thrive is, in my opinion, because of its association to booze.  Why do you think St. Joseph's Day isn't a big deal in the States?  Why is Cinco de Mayo a hit  but Chinese New Year isn't?  It's the booze.  The ignorant masses just want to drink.  Any excuse.  If you asked them what they were celebrating and why, I bet they wouldn't be able to explain.  Bah humbug to that!

So roll on my Irish loving friends!  Have a fun (responsible) time but remember what the day is about.  Sláinte!





*I put Wicca in quotations because I'm coming to the conclusion that, while I read about it and attempted to practice Wiccan liturgy, I wasn't really a Wiccan.  This has nothing to do with initiation or anything.  I simply wasn't living a Wiccan life.  I called myself one, but I was more akin to a Catholic who rarely prays and only goes to church on Easter.  I should expand on this in a future entry...

**It's obviously more complicated than this.  There are other stories the Patrick myth has grown out of, and people do love to perpetuate falsities or hyperboles.

*** It's still a Catholic holiday and has a history of solemnity in Ireland.  I'm not Catholic, don't care to celebrate the St. much, and prefer to let Catholics do their thing in peace.

**** Before anyone points this out, yes I'm aware this was facilitated by skin color.

The Watertown Irish Festival

My husband and I went to the Irish Festival in Watertown this afternoon.  I went to it with low expectations thanks to what other people had told me and, even though it wasn't quite as bad as they made it seem, it wasn't as good as the Great American Irish Festival near Utica.

I'll start with the good.  I got to see Merry Mischief perform and I really enjoyed seeing them.  They're a favorite pair of minstrels that frequent the Sterling Renaissance Festival and have been to a few Pagan festivals as well.  I love a good Irish ditty, and its even better when there are Pagan themes snuck in!  I also enjoyed seeing the local Irish step dancers (I should try that sometime...) and listening to new Irish bands.  There were a few vendors and it's always nice to see Pagan wares - tarot, ogham sticks, fairy statues, etc...  It was fun to get out and go to an event in my new home city.

That said, there was a lot to be desired from something in its 25th year.  The location was crowded and it was really, really hard to find a parking place.  GAIF, near Utica, has its Irish fest on fair grounds, meaning there's ample parking and plenty of room.  I understand that Watertown probably wants their festivities close to St. Patrick's Day, but Utica has theirs near Lughnasadh, the traditional gathering of the tribes in Ireland.  There are more cultural activities at the Utica event, including language lessons, Irish dog breed exhibits, dance lessons, and even an Irish mass.

Really, I think I would have liked it better were it in a more convenient location.  The building was just too small.  The main stage, on the 11th floor, felt so claustrophobic that we decided not to stay for the main act.  Will I go next year?  Maybe.  It's okay for a few hours and, like I said, it's always fun to get out and do *something*.  I hope there are improvements in the future.

Ancestors

When we look back at our past,  it's often easy to see the obvious sign posts we passed on our way to the present.  I'm one of those who believes that I was always a Pagan - I just didn't realize it until the age of 17 or 18.  My father raised me to be respectful of fire, an independent thinker, and a survivor.  My mother raised me to be a third generation feminist, to believe in magic, love nature, and appreciate the world around me.  They both taught me how to be creative.  They planted the seeds of animism and nature worship in me.  The Catholicism they raised me in, with its archaic rituals and saints, acted as a gateway to polytheism.  My mother kept a small altar to St. Theresa of the Roses in her room, prayed to St. Francis to protect animals, and encouraged me to ask St. Anthony for help whenever I lost something.   Though conversion can naturally have a certain amount of uncertainty and fear attached to it, I'm sure it helped make praying to the Old Gods easier.


  My Catholic, genealogy-obsessed grandfather would probably never understand if I attempted to tell him how much his interests impacted the conversion I went through in my late teens.  Only, it would take me a few years to understand the importance of ancestors.  As I studied Wicca, I thought of my ancestors as much as I would in Catholicism.  They came before me.  Some of them lived a long time ago practicing a foreign, ancient religion and I had a vague idea that this was somehow important spiritually.  They died.  They went somewhere else.  Wicca and Catholicism honored them once a year - Samhain or All Souls Day.  Pick your faith and pick your holy day.


Druidism looks at ancestors a bit differently than Wicca.  We strive to remember them daily.  We venerate them.  We may even set up altars to them - and not just on Samhain (when we believe the ancestors are able to return to this realm for a time).  Their importance to us lasts all year long.  Many of us believe that, given their connection to us, ancestors are sometimes more concerned with our wellbeing than the Gods.  The Gods may be busier than the ancestors.  Ancestors may be in the Otherworld/Spirit World most of the time, but I and others believe we share some sort of emotional/psychic link with them.

   I've never asked my grandfather why he's so interested in genealogy - I really should.  I suspect he would say something about how the past is important because it's where we come from.  I agree.  However, I'm going to bet that it would end there.  Maybe -maybe- he has some spiritual ideas about it as well.  Maybe he looks forward to meeting them in heaven, impressing them with what he knows, and interrogating them for all the missing links.  Why have I become interested in it?  I feel that our ancestors are connected to us spiritually.  They want to help us and, maybe, they've "been there and done that" and don't want to see us make similar mistakes.  Grandparents care about their children so, if you believe in an afterlife, it makes a lot of sense that a great, great grandparent would care about you as well.  To our ancient ancestors, family and tribe were extremely important.  They meant survival.  We're linked to them - perhaps they're even in us.  Perhaps we are them reborn.  I have small intuitions about these things but, in the end, I must remain largely agnostic.

Still, it's strange how the ancestors reach out sometimes.  Over the Yule/Christmas season, I visited my family near Utica.  I made a point to visit my grandparents and I found out that my prolific grandfather was working on yet another history book - this one more personal than the rest which investigate the annals of small, Upstate NY towns.  He showed me the massive pile of pages chronicling his research on our ancestors - my ancestors on my father's side.  We talked for some time about it.  All these years he's been talking about the earliest recorded male in our family, John, and suddenly I started to learn about his wife, Susan(a).  Why hadn't I ever thought about her before?  At the time, he told me where she was from but I wasn't familiar with it - I only knew that it was in Northern Ireland.  (That's where John met her while he was serving military time in British occupied Ireland.)

A month went by since learning of her.  The other night I decided to email my grandfather to see how his project was going.  I also wanted the name of Susan's hometown for further research.  Today, in the mail, I discovered a CD version of the book.  Can you imagine my amazement at receiving such a gift a few hours after inquiring?  It is as if we were on a similar wavelength or Susan was guiding us.  Here it all was - every known record of my family, including my most recent Irish foremother.

Here she is, Susan (at some point she dropped the "a" at the end of her name).  At least, this is believed to be the only photo of her. *

She looks so ghostly in the blotchy, black and white photo, but it's not a fearful feeling for me.  It's more like...  I sense her looking back at me through the ages.

The more I read, the more the pieces click into place.  She's from Armagh which, according to what I've been reading, was the ancient capital of Ulster.  Ulster!  To someone who is enamored with ancient Ireland, that's a big deal.  I'm not about to spout nonsensical claims of being related to Cúchulainn or anything daft like that - it's simply exciting to find some small connection to the place I've been reading about, loving, and yearning to see.  I can claim some small connection to that magical land!

What makes the story even more interesting to me is that Susan and John immigrated from Ireland to Canada and, form Canada, settled in Watertown, NY - meaning they lived around my new home turf!  My grandfather found her gravestone a few years ago.  I intend to find it myself this summer.  I would also love to go to Armagh when my husband and I finally get to Ireland.  I would love to bring a stone back and build a small cairn on her grave.  Would my presumably Christian ancestor appreciate veneration from a Pagan descendant?  Who knows.  I remain agnostic about the afterlife and whether or not it transcends religion or accommodates it all.  Perhaps she would just be happy to have a bit of her home turf and some attention from someone who still finds her wisdom important.






* LJ friends, check my blog at http://adfcatprints.blogspot.com/

Eating local means eating within season.

A couple years ago I was attending a Wicca 101 class lead by my good friend Katrina. At this time I had already left Wicca for Druidism, but I felt the desire to attend her class for various reasons: friendship, a hope to learn something different, a new perspective, and an excuse to practice my meditation skills. One of the biggest things I got out of the class was a newfound understanding of the Wheel of the Year and its connection to the land and agriculture. Intellectually I realized that certain foods were connected with the seasons and were therefore symbolic of the holidays. It wasn't until her discussion on food and the High Days that it dawned on me - eating, especially to someone on an Earth-centered path, is an incredibly spiritual act!

That lesson, combined with my desire to be more sustainable and ecologically responsible, has lead me to seek out different ways of eating and cooking. My husband and I have cut out most of the HFC in our diet. We're now trying to limit the amount of corn we have. Basically, if we don't expect corn to be in the product but it shows up on the list, we don't buy it. This means no more Kraft Mac and Cheese or Smuckers jam! In other words, we're attempting to avoid processed foods while simultaneously starting to boycott big business farms/monocultures . We still buy veggie burgers but we don't eat them often and I'm moving more towards making my own out of lentil, nuts, and bread crumbs. We've been religiously buying organic, naturally sweetened cereals. Our snacks are pickled veggies, fruit, nuts, and dries berries from the Mennonites and Amish. (I like to keep a dish full of nuts on the coffee table for snack attacks.) Trying to wean myself off the Veggie Bootie... I loves it... I may make it a weekend treat. Hubby still likes his chocolate syrup too... Baby steps, right?

Anyway, I was thinking more about our desire to be more supportive of our local farmers' market and how that means, for the most part, eating within season. What's available at the market right now? Eggs, preserves, onions, squash, and potatoes, potatoes, potatoes! We already have tons from a future in-law.

So eating in the winter means eating potatoes. Who ate a lot of potatoes? My Irish ancestors, of course! In fact, our rotund starchy friends have been a staple of the British Isles as a whole for decades. It only makes sense to look to them for inspiration. During my lunch break today I started to collect different potato recipes - Irish, British, and "Newish."

Tonight I'm trying my hand at Cornish pasties. I remember loving them when in Penzance. I only had a couple, but I've always meant to try making them myself. My first batch isn't really anything spectacular, but if I continue to practice I'm sure I'll get better at the construction. Next on the list is vegetarian shepherds pie.

Oh, and my hubby makes some pretty mean homemade French fries.

A Traditional Imbolc

Skip sent this wonderful video to Muin Mound members. It shows a traditional Imbolc celebration held every year in Donegal. Listen to the bilingualism! I love seeing how the whole community gathers to honor Brighid - saint or Goddess.

Cros Bhríde from Paula Geraghty on Vimeo.