Modern Heathen

A big part of my practice includes being aware of local folklore. I am not a Heathen living in tenth century Iceland, but a Heathen living in twenty-first century New England. Doesn't matter if I read it in a book if that's not what the local wights are doing.

Of course, sometimes you have no local custom to go on and you have to go by what you read or what you intuit. But when there's a local custom to tie into, it should be respected. In that spirit, I bring you Halloween in June.

A cartoon for our times.

May 1 marks the final victory of Spring over Winter, but before departing, the witches and their cohorts have one last fling. The night from April 30 to May 1 is called "Walpurgisnacht", the night of Walpurgis or Walpurga. The festival is marked by numerous rituals to ward off evil. Legend has it that on Walpurgisnacht the witches would gather on the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains. Because of the Walpurgisnacht scene in Goethe's Faust, in which Mephistopheles takes Faust to the Brocken and has him revel with the witches, the witches gathering became widely known.

Read more here:

The females who cast their face into the wind as ship's figureheads, the "Flying Ladies" of classic automobiles, the women adorning WWII bombers and fighters and the beautiful ladies of the cemetery all serve a similar purpose. Each escorts a passage or a transition into the unknown, offering comfort in the face of mortality and a promise of rebirth, continuity, renewal and salvation.

Sounds a bit Freya-like, doesn't it? The entire article is here.

Finland has received what appears to be the first doctoral dissertation on traditional forest trolls. Master of Philosophy Camilla Asplund Ingemark, 30, has researched the subject for six years. She will defend her doctoral dissertation, which is classified as a work on folklore, at the Åbo Akademi University in Turku on Friday. The study describes the world of trolls according to the beliefs in the folklore of Swedish-speaking Finns.

The full article is here.

The Way of Wyrd is back in print. The author's website is here.