Hearthside

These posts are sometimes the hardest to keep up with, since it is a long-term project that may or may not yield anything interesting. In addition, I have found this year particularly difficult, at first due to personal time constraints, but also because this year has been surprising me! Rune Rasmussen talks of a 19 year cycle which he associates each year with a rune in the Swedish rune poem. What I am doing each year is looking at the rune poems, plus historical data, to see if I can predict trends for the year. Think of it as a Heathen Farmer’s Almanac or something.  I had initial thoughts based on the rune Sol as to what that might mean for 2024, and went to historical data to see if I might be correct. The year 2005 was marked by drought and wildfires across much of Canada and Northwestern Europe. There was also a tendency towards large winter storms in Eastern Canada. Similarly, in 1986 Winnipeg was hit by a massive blizzard and in 1967 New Brunswick was hit by a huge winter ...

  Glad Jól! I find Yule to be such an interesting holytide for Heathenry because of the diversity of modern traditions. Some choose to celebrate it at Christmas, some at the solstice, some at the midwinter moon. Some choose to celebrate it as one day/night, some as 3, some as twelve, or even as a season. For me the Yule season encompasses 2 lunar months. The Yule moon in December, and the Midwinter moon in January. But when I say Old Jól, I mean specifically the 3 days surrounding the full moon in the Midwinter month. For me this is the most focused time of festivity in the Yule season, although other traditions are interspersed throughout the 2 lunar months.  Thinking about Jól, we are coming out of the Dark Time, looking forward to a new cycle. The sun is returning. We think back on all that has happened in the past year, we take stock of our luck, we remember those who have passed, and then we look forward to the next cycle. We gather together with kin and feast, and remini...

Historically, Midwinter or Jól would have been celebrated according to the lunisolar calendar, so the date of the Midwinter moon would have been in January. Jól traditions were moved after the introduction of christianity to fall around Christmas, which had been influenced in its date by the solstice practices of other pagan groups. In modern times, many heathens celebrate Midwinter at the solstice. That is not my own tradition, but I do recognize the solstice as an important day in the heathen calendar. To me the Yule month (December) and the Midwinter month (January) are ripe with festivity. The Wild Hunt is shrieking through the night skies, the frost and snow is settling everywhere, and the dark time extends itself over everything. The urge to retreat from the busyness of the rest of the year is strong. It is time to slow down the pace, and enjoy the warmth of hearth and home. Still, the Solstice day is a day to be outside, hailing Sol, knowing the light will be returning.  It ...

Happy Winter Nights, all. I have not been posting much lately, and I am working on some more complex posts that require more time and research, but I am not quite there yet. My day job recently changed and I am still settling into my new role. However, I do have a bunch of other ideas typed up, mostly edited, which I could stick on here whenever. (If I remembered.) The following is one of them. Hopefully, my schedule will even out a bit more soon, and I can spend the necessary time to get more complex content out as well. If you have been following along for awhile you may have a burning question about the deities I choose to examine in this blog. Why am I focusing on male deities so much if this is supposed to be a blog about female perspective? And the answer is (clap with me) I. Don't. Care. For. Your. Judgements.  But more seriously, this blog is a female perspective. As in I am female and I am giving you my perspective. And which deities I choose to talk about come at a whim, ...