The Stand Still, Stay Silent Fan-Forum
General => History and Mythology Board => Topic started by: Jitter on October 20, 2019, 09:20:03 AM
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Following several intriguing but not page-relevant discussions on the page comments, Róisín and me have noted that among the fanbase there is interest towards real-world paganism (including, but not limited to, Nordic faiths asatru and Finnish faith) and magic traditions.
This topic is intended for discussion of these. The intended main focus is on practices and experiences in the real world, both in the present day and in history. The main point here is not to speculate about the religious or magic systems in the comic although comments on that, especially when they tie with the topic discussion, are of course allowed. Personal weird and/or spiritual experiences are also relevant here if you feel they are related to the topic.
This topic is intended to discuss and provide information about the traditions and practitioners. It is not intended for ritual content. So please refrain from posting any spells, prayers etc as the sole content of a message (an excerpt to illustrate a point is ok).
EDIT This topic was started as a thread, got merged with the Global Mythology thread and went missing at least for me. Now that we have a board I feel like several more limited threads might work better so I took the liberty to resplit it here. I hope there will be further discussion here!
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I’ll copy what I wrote on p171 (A2) comments as it’s easier to find here. On paganism in Finland nowadays.
The practitioners of old Finnish faith have an officially recognized religious community Karhun Kansa. They have about 50-60 members and they have for example the right to perform official marriages.
There is also an association named Taivaannaula, who collect and preserve the old ways and customs but they are considering it as folklore rather than practicing the faith. They also cooperate with and collect traditions of the peoples related to the Finns, most of who live in present-day Russia.
On paganism in Finland more generally. one page estimated there are ”thousands if not tens of thousands” practitioners of various pagan faiths and traditions, but frankly I’m rather doubtful.
Karhun Kansa is the only one officially recognized as a religious community. Traditional Wiccans tried to get registered some years ago, but they were refused because the responsible Ministry of Culture and Education didn’t view them as having an established tradition so I think it was more about them not being a coherent community rather than it not being a religion. According to some sources various organizations have about 500 members total and that would be estimated to be about half of the practicing pagans. Of course there are also solitary practitioners the number of which is hard to estimate.
There are cooperative organizations however, Pakanaverkko (the Pagan network) and Lehto - Suomen Luonnonuskontojen yhdistys (the Holt - Association of Earth Religions in Finland). So it seems they are ecumenical here too!
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Jitter, thank you so much for setting this up! I should nerve myself to explain where I fit.
First off, I am in Australia, which has its own gods and its own magic, different to that of Europe and Asia. Adapting and learning to work with what is there has been a long process, and very strange, but nowadays I can generally manage well enough. I have become one of the people involved in the endeavour of adapting European magic (in my personal case, a particular strain of Irish Celtic paganism and its associated magic) to the Australian landscape and its own energies. The job is likely to be endless, but we plug away steadily.
I should also explain that not all magic is flashbangkazowie stuff. In the real world, much of what a serious mage of any tradition does involves a lot of learning, listening, careful observation and waiting. Especially waiting. For my part, I am a very small power. Where I am most useful in community endeavours is that I am one of those boring people who remembers all the words, can carry a tune and maintain a rhythm, and has luck, stubbornness and very good endurance. Also patience. Added to which I am moderately capable in the bush and around farms, okay at calming people down, and can make a decent cup of tea.
Much of what we work on here is healing damaged land, which is also an endless task. More later, but that is a start.
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Would you like to copy your recent story about how you took someone’s personal items to their ancestors’ (??) cave? It was a cery vivid example of feeling the land spirits. Not to mention an interesting story!
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Haven’t time now if I intend to get any sleep tonight, and unsure how to copy it across to this thread. If you know how to I am happy for you to do so, or maybe we could ask one of the people who manage the Forum (maybe Wavewright?)
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If you select and then copy your text on the page comments you can paste it in the box where you write when replying. Or, I can do it fir you if you wish.
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Happy to serve.
From Róisín, 17 October 2019 Disqus comments:
"I’ve met a few places like that. There is one out in the desert near Lake Christopher, and another near Copper Hills. And one cave near the Breakaways. That last one was truly strange. I was actually out there for a reason, making a side trip on my way back from a job in the desert.
Several years before I took that job, an old Aboriginal friend had died in a nursing home in Adelaide, in extreme old age, and had asked me, when I went back to the desert, to take back a small kangaroo-skin bag containing some of his stuff which needed to go back to the land his family had come from. Which I did, having found the cave he had described quite easily. It was freezing cold in there, in the middle of a hot day, and felt quite hostile until I explained what I was doing, whereupon it went back to a feeling of alert waiting, and when I put the bag on a ledge in the back of the cave and backed away without touching any of the other things there it felt as if the whole area just relaxed.
After that several interesting things happened to me before I left the area. The first was that night, when I had set up my camp stretcher by the cliff edge to sleep outside in the air (while my two friends with whom I was returning to Adelaide slept in the truck we were using, which was warmer but very stuffy), I was woken in the small hours of the morning by something snuffling near my face and tugging at my hair. I stayed very still, opened my eyes slowly, and saw that I was surrounded by a small herd of brumbies, who were investigating me with great interest. It’s a strange sensation to wake with a mob of wild horses nibbling your hair.
The next day we stopped to investigate a dry wash that just felt really odd. As we wandered about the area, I noticed, firstly, that it was an area where ochre had been mined (and probably still was, some of the marks looked quite recent). And also, something among the rocks really drew me. I couldn’t see what it might be, there was nothing there but the weathered pebbles normally found in such washes, so eventually I closed my eyes and let my fingertips find it. It turned out to be a nondescript pebble with a sandblasted matt surface. When I held it up to the light it was translucent. I was puzzled. I don’t usually take stones from the desert unless I am doing something like opal or sapphire prospecting, but this little rock was insistent. Years later, I polished one end and discovered it to be an unusually clear quartz crystal. I still carry it.
Then there was a place near Walhalla in Gippsland, back when I was living there. At that time the population was seventeen, and the place was considered a ghost town, but back in the day it had been very big for a bush town, big enough to have three breweries and a larger number of pubs and shops. I was living there because a mate and I were mining gold. He lived there because he had been born and lived a long life in the town, and his mother had built one of the first houses there. My side interest was poking about in the ruins where thousands of people had once lived, and which the bush had taken back, looking for the remains of their old gardens. I found some fascinating things - old heritage apple and plum trees and roses, pæonies and old garden vegetables among them.
But there was one patch of land where it looked as if a building had burned to the ground, which always gave me the cold creeps. I’m normally fairly hardy about such things, being psychically as thick as the proverbial three short planks, and more given to endurance than to running away. But this place really creeped me out. Eventually one of the old locals told me about the history of the place. Back in the early days of the gold rush a family with several small children moved in there, not knowing that they had come up from Melbourne already infected with smallpox. The local doctor quarantined them in the house, and did make an effort to treat them, but caught the smallpox himself. After which the locals burned the house down, without checking that everybody inside was dead, little say whether all the kids were infected.
Kitty Kane, a local character who had been taking food in to the kids despite the quarantine, was most indignant and berated people at length. She didn’t catch the smallpox, it probably didn’t dare.
Kitty’s own grave is not far from there on the track up to the cemetery rather than in the cemetery itself, and that is a whole nother story, but the area around that one feels fine. I think her ghost remains in the town because she loved the place and wanted to protect it rather than for any bad reason. When I heard the story of the burned house, though, I could quite understand why the area felt that way."
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Wavewright, thank you!
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Róisín, I have got to ask you: you've been a lot of places. Have you ever been to Pisa, to the church by the famous leaning tower?
If so, did you feel anything there?
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I have been, and I didn’t go into the church, it felt as if it would be rude of me to do so. The ground feels strange in that whole area, no idea why. If the ground reminded me of anything it was that part of the Cathedral Ranges in Victoria where local tradition is that an earthquake sleeps under the range. Pisa is not a place I would care to live.
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I have just come from having a truly fascinating discussion with the friend and current employer of one of my old botany students. My old student is part Aboriginal and part Afghan, (a not unusual combination here in South Australia where the old Afghan cameleers whose camel trains opened up the Outback before there were many roads would sometimes marry Aboriginal women),and she accordingly knows both cultures, as well as the city culture which she had to move into while studying in Adelaide. So she has a lot of useful contacts in both the traditional and scientific/medical communities. Which is where I come in.
Her friend/boss is an administrator of the part of the Aboriginal Health Service that organises the visits to Adelaide of the nungkari/ngangkari who are traditional healers from up in the APY Lands. These healers use a combination of herblore and traditional healing magic, and they are good. Many of them work in the Aboriginal Health Service, and nowadays there are even some working within the mundane hospital system.
So, why they visited me was for an exchange of information and plants. I have some native medicinal plants growing which they didn’t have, and their collection included some Eremophila species which I had been unable to find. Useful on both sides. I was also able to help them with western style preparation methods for some of the herbs which city Aboriginal people, cut off from their own cultures, don’t know how to use as they are prepared out in the desert. For example, some of the herbs for skin conditions work just as well if prepared as a cream or ointment as they do prepared as a paste of the crushed fresh leaves, and stay fresh a lot longer than the fresh leaves would in a city.
We ended the day with a lengthy discussion about similarities and differences in the healing magics of both cultures. So nice to have the systems working together, and working in with conventional medicine - best of all worlds.
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I have been, and I didn’t go into the church, it felt as if it would be rude of me to do so. The ground feels strange in that whole area, no idea why. If the ground reminded me of anything it was that part of the Cathedral Ranges in Victoria where local tradition is that an earthquake sleeps under the range. Pisa is not a place I would care to live.
Do you mean that you don't go into churches in general, or that you felt you shouldn't go into that particular church?
-- I did go into the church; and fairly rapidly came out again. I had a very strong sense that there was a terrible incident in its past, not because the congregation of that time had actively done something, but because they had failed to do something. I had no sense of what they'd failed to do, but the failure seemed to have been so wrong that its wrongness was still reverberating, probably hundreds of years later.
I may of course have imagined the whole thing. I was short on sleep at the time, well off my familiar ground, and had been looking over the previous days at a great deal of various artwork some of which was disturbing.
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No, I go into churches, either for reasons to do with birth/marriage/funerary rites of people I know who are Christian, or because the church building is historic or beautiful or has precious art. Plus some churches are simply welcoming. I don’t go into churches that are not either neutral or welcoming, because it would show discourtesy. Your experience in Pisa sounds very nasty.
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There was a discussion on the comic site about Finnish spiritual traditions concerning holy trees, on page 173 of the second comic - the party coming across some dramatic mage-stuff propably done by Onni and left hanging in some (http://www.sssscomic.com/comic2.php?page=173)trees.
I made the following comments and was kindly asked to include them in this thread. So- here goes (edited for clarity):
First:
It seems that old treelore is becoming a bit obscure and even to many modern Finns the myth has become a legend and ultimately been forgotten. Anyway; designating holy trees was (and to some degree still is) really a thing in Finland. Holy trees tended to serve many different purposes and were located either in the forest or within the household yard - an "anchor" for spells if you will - but with a twist.
The household tree is called either "pitämyspuu" or "elättipuu". It is a sapling that is already growing in the yard when the master of the house starts building the first buildings. (very important: the sapling needs to be younger than the master of the house; otherwise it will not yield to serving the master of the house. ). The tree is given offerings from the produce of the household and the personified spirit (kotitonttu, kotihaltija) then protects the house.
Another holy tree is "karsikko" which is a bit of a cross between a cult to passed ancestors and a "book of history" as it carries markings commemorating comings and goings of the dead ancestors. This is a practice that was supposedly discontinued when Christianity came to Finland, but one still occasionally comes across these "karsikko"- trees. Usually the locals project a combination of both smugness and pride about it. (Bragging about it but not printing anything to list of tourist attractions or the like.) "Those who know, know. " as the attitude is sometimes described among Finns. (Interestingly, for myself I became aware of this only when I had passed well into adulthood. It's my impression that in many communities these "old superstitions" are not actively spoken of with children or adolescents. Their significance is shared primarily with adults - with the expectation that they can put these stories in proper context and not get carried away with superstition.)
Anyway; in my experience, the last remaining part of this old cult-practice that is really, seriously practiced in Finland nowadays is the releasing of the spirit of the bear after hunting him. Bear skull-trees are still a thing. Would be a bit of bad form if you went ahead and killed a bear and would have the audacity of not going thru the ritual party, getting drunk to feast the passing of the bear and all that. Then one needs also do all the appropriate rituals to release the bear back to the "above" (Ylinen) from whence he eventually returns to the forest. (Minnas depictions of Finnish mages releasing the spirit of the trolls to beyond seem well grounded in the actual Finnish folklore about releasing the spirit of the huntsmans prey into the beyond.)
A simplified collection of some main tree-lore stuff for Finnish-speaking among us: ;-)
Then, someone asked about "Taivaannaula" and whether they identify as a Pagan organisation - which I couldn't answer (being wholly in the dark about what constitutes a Pagan religious organisation and whatnot) replied copy-pasting from to their web-page, which is this: http://www.taivaannaula.org/in-english/ (http://www.taivaannaula.org/in-english/)
Hope this is helpful!
-Northman
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Thank you for putting this up. They seem to be very much about understanding the land and its lore, traditions and stories. This is a worthy thing for them to be doing from the point of view of giving the land and lore their due respect. Pagan religion and magic both are based on understanding and respecting those things.
My understanding is that the power used for magic comes ultimately from the life in the land, the patterns embodied in the lore give an understanding of how to channel and use that power, and the seasonal ceremonies reinforce the life in the land and build connections to it. We are not separate from nature, but a part of it, and at least in my opinion we have an obligation to apply our intelligence and understanding to learning the patterns of nature, and caring for the world we live in. We have minds, hearts and souls - let us use them for the good of all, and the good of the world in which we exist.
This rant may seem to stray from a discussion of magic, but I think natural magic cannot exist without that understanding.
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Thank you Northman!
I recently came across a very interesting recent case, where a spring was consecrated as a holy spring in 2015 in Lapland! I’ll try to write it up later.
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From our very own Róisín on October 24th 2019. In comment section about page 174 of Adventure 2, where Reynir is painting a great big ward on the ground when the team are making camp. The discussion was about how does Reynir know what to do in a dangerous situation when he’s only been schooled in farm magic. Róisín’s comment however contains several real-world examples of warding an area for protection.
”If Icelandic magic is anything like Celtic magic, there will be basic patterns that can be adapted for use to work in a particular situation. Our patterns are mostly words, music or knotwork patterns rather than sigils, though there are a few of those. For instance, in the circumstances shown here, a Celtic mage might make a poem defining the boundaries of the area to be protected, naming the things to be protected against, and calling on the land, the trees, the landspirits and the gods to reinforce the wards, keep watch and give warning of incoming danger. They would walk around the area to be protected singing the spell, and/or draw or carve protective symbols on particular rocks or trees.
Whereas an Australian marngit might walk around the area marking things with ochre, defining the area, and calling on the land and the local landspirits and the relevant guardian ancestors to give protection. Or if very skilled they might dance the spell.
One year back in the early days of the Mount Franklin Pagan Gathering we had a practitioner of Native American magic who came along with the West Irish Druid whom he was visiting, and showed us how he would do it, with smoke from a charring bundle of sweetgrass, boreal wormwood and white sage carried around the circle while speaking suitable words. And the Sussex Craft witches at the same event did it by setting up a circle using the cardinal points as anchors.
There are at least as many styles of doing such things as there are systems of magic, I guess.”
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Well I guess I might as well hop in here since it was what attracted me to the forum in the first place, and since protecting a space was the last thing mentioned....
How I do it depends on a lot of factors, honestly. For religious ritual, I usually make 3 circles around the space to purify it carrying fire. Indoors, candles are fine, but outdoors you need more of a torch situation. While I do this I say certain prayers to Thor and, depending on context, the ancestors. The idea is that fire burns away the "infected" or unwhole part of the land and Thor drives out and protects from the malevolent spirits that may have taken up residence in the place. Once this is done, we usually put up a rope fence or lay down stone markers to keep the place separate from the unpurified world.
For witchcraft though, I get pretty creative. I've cast circles in a semi-wiccan fashion, starting from the east. I've also done very impromptu rituals that basically consists of turning in circles with a makeshift flamethrower yelling "Okay, get out of here, you nasties!". So there's kind of a spectrum of how "professional" it is, which varies based on whether or not I'm going to be doing direct interactions with spirits on that particular job.
For the dead it's a whole nother matter- I usually just wear protection on my person and ask the ancestors to watch over me. Seems to work.
And my go to for protecting houses is wards on doors and windows- this has been everything from animal heads, symbols drawn, iron nails, and concoctions I made from various kinds of dust.
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Salt and iron are pretty good for housewards, though in my experience basing the wards around a living tree is best. On the other hand that is how I do, because it suits my style. Some people use a stone or a carved or painted icon of some kind - depends on culture/religion/magical system involved. Many cultures also use salt water, holy water, light, fire or sacred herbs to make a boundary or barrier. I’ve even seen copper wire used.
One pattern I have found useful for both personal and area protections is very simple. Not sure if it could be properly called a spell, more like a meditation/concentration exercise. What I learned to do was to first find the spot where my awareness of self is based in my body. For me it is within the body, around the solar plexus, for many people it is in behind the eyes, or in the heart, throat or base chakra areas. For a few it seems to be under the feet, or even outside the body or floating above the head. Varies vastly from person to person.
Once you have determined the location of that point of self-awareness, the usage I learned was to picture a small bright light there. Some people use a flame or spark image, I use a small white star. Once you have that well pictured, expand it out, evenly in all directions, until it reaches a natural boundary, pushing out ahead of it anything dangerous or unwanted (some use this method to control and cast out rage or fear as well as things from outside yourself). Again, this varies among individuals. Mine is roughly me-shaped and a few inches outside my skin. For some folk it is a glowing sphere yards across, for some it stops at the skin. Once the shell of light reaches that boundary, tell it to stabilise there and reflect any dangerous or hostile energies. If you want to strengthen the protection, send out more shells of light to reinforce it.
Simple and not requiring a lot of equipment and fuss.
Also meant to mention about the rain calling we did last week: small success, several small sprinkles of rain that night and early the next morning. A bit cooler and lower winds than had been expected. Not a huge result, but some. Mind you, there were only three of us plus a few old trees. Me, the marngit friend I mentioned, and a Buddhist nun. Each of us worked in our own style of invocation or prayer, doing what we could to reinforce the other two as they were working.
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Further about the weather working: I think having the trees on side has helped a lot. We have now had several days of gentle misty drizzle. Not enough to break the drought, but enough to lay the dust and smoke from the air, help to damp the continuing fires a bit, and keep plants alive without damaging ripening fruit. I was worried about the cherry harvest, which can be utterly destroyed by storms or hail at this time of year, but everything seems to be okay so far. Here’s hoping!
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Hello all! In the spirit of the festive season, would you like to describe some of the celebrations for e.g. the Solstice?
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Most Solstice celebrations that I know of involve light and fire. Winter and Summer both. This year I kept Solstice with a mixed group down in town, since my own folk are far away from where I am at present. This group are several styles of neodruid and two oldfashioned druids, as well as myself (ollave/bard with only sixteen full years of training out of the 21 years considered proper in my own tradition; my life has been far too busy and full of obligations to spend a lot of time on fulltime study), plus several Sussex craft and Cornish craft witches (the Cornish craft guy being the senior of the company, who has worked for some years with one of the neodruids to organise things, the rest of us contribute as we can). Adelaide pagans are somewhat eclectic, we cooperate with one another and in some cases with the local marngits.
We have crafted a mixed ritual that works for everyone, calling on the quarters and the elements in Wiccan style combined with the Druidic prayers for peace and accord, and acknowledging the land that supports us. It seems to work and not offend anyone or anything. We follow the formal ritual with an Eisteddfod where everyone presents a work appropriate to the season and our intent, and follow this with a shared feast. I usually make a new song or poem, and a pastry or dessert for the feast.
For myself, I plan to spend today watering my garden and trying to keep things alive.
Edit: I should have mentioned that in some places I have lived the Solstice is celebrated with the usual feasting, light, fire and music, but also with a staged battle between the Oak King and the Holly King, which symbolises the tipping points between the light and dark halves of the year.
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I’m continually impressed with the way you work together between the various faiths and traditions. If only the big religions would manage the same!
Although of course I assume there is the small proportion of extremists among the pagans as well, but with the overall small number (in comparison that is) of practitioners the small minority of a small minority becomes so small you have to know them in person to know id them.
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There are isolationists/separatists in most faiths, I suppose, but we don’t have many. And some who are solitary practitioners by choice. Working together isn’t always easy, but I find it good, for us and for the return we make to the land.