Image credit: Dana Felthauser
(Music by Adrian von Ziegler :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiwuQ6UHMQg )
On February 1st, Lethbridge pagans will be hosting a ritual and bonfire on the banks of Lethbridge's Oldman River to celebrate the pagan custom of Imbolc from 1-3pm. Come join SAPA at the river bottom, at one of the fire pits directly off the road leading North from Fort Whoop-Up.
What is Imbolc?
Historically, Imbolc is derived from a Celtic tradition to honour the goddess Brigid, a tradition that would later be preserved in Catholicism as a day devoted to St. Brigid. The Ancient Celts would make effigies of Brigid using oats and rushes. Afterwards, they would put those effigies in dresses and place them in baskets overnight. Lamps and bonfires would be lit in Brigid's honour.
Brigid‘s day is not the only celebration during this time. This is also the time for Chinese New Year, Sollal, Dísaþing, and the Egyptian feast of Nut.
Anyone who lives in a city with an established Chinese district has probably enjoyed the festivities associated with Chinese New Year, including the giving of luck coins in red pouches, watching colourful theatrical performances, and enjoying some of the tastiest food you can imagine. I fondly recall when my mother would bring me to shout “Gung hay fat choy!” surrounded by Vancouver’s exciting and festive Chinese New Year celebrations. I have had more experience, however, with the Korean celebration of the coming year, a holiday called “Seollal”.
Around this time of the year, I used to travel into parts of South Korea that were even more rural than my hometown of Gunsan, Jeollabukdo, with my Korean family. The culture in South Korea has a fusion-based ethic of living traditions, stretching from pre-Confucian practices through expressions of Taoist philosophy, concluding with the current religious demographic of established Buddhist and Christian religious communities within a modern secular democracy. Seollal is an example of a tradition that has its roots in a world much older than the newer religions in the region.
Seollal is a time to honour one’s ancestors by performing the ritual known as “Charye” where women prepare food and men serve it, ideally to a table or altar space. After serving it, the family gains the blessing of the ancestors by doing “eumbok”, or the ritual eating of the food of the ancestors. Though modern religions and cultures might look down on this ritual act of honouring the ancestors, considering it primal or superstitious, ancient paths revere the closeness and connection of family, belonging and the support and love of community. Having a time to show gratitude and love for those who came before you is viewed by many as a positive tradition, and it is practiced to this day!
Dísaþing is the traditional Norse winter sacrifice, and unlike the other winter sacrifice of Álfablót, Dísaþing is open for the general public to attend. After the sacrifice, a feast would follow, and female spirits, ancestors, goddesses and Valkyries would be honoured. This was also a time for the various wights, or spirits of the land, the forest, the sea and the mountains, to receive proper reverence so that they will feel included and honoured in our lives.
There was also a “Modraniht”, the Anglo-Saxon “Mother’s Night”, celebrated around this time. In the Nilotic traditions, formalized in Egypt proper, the goddess Nut has her feast and birthday around this time. She was a maternal protector of the dead closely associated with the cow, a sky-goddess who was responsible for re-birthing the sun every morning. Her “maqet”, or ladder charm, was placed in the sarcophagi so that the dead could climb to the heavens. Nut is well known as one of the original deities of Heliopolis, so this would probably have been an important feast, although no known temple sites or cult centres currently constructed are identified with her.
In conclusion, if you like bonfires, good times, and learning about interesting February traditions, pay SAPA a visit at the river bottom on Feb 1st! Hope to see you there!
Tusen takk!
Din bror,
Leifr
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