The Owl
According to Robert Graves in The White Goddess (pp. 210–11) November is the month of the screech owl (the pale, ghost-like barn owl). So now is a good time to post photos of this small stylized ceramic owl, made by Ronald M. White.
At some point I will post a photo of Ron White’s personal copy of The White Goddess. It is quite an eloquent document, because it has been read, literally, to pieces.
In the Welsh legend of Llew Llaw Gyffes, Blodeuwedd is transformed into an owl. Graves identifies the core of the legend as a myth about the sacred king and his relationship with the Goddess. For Graves, the Goddess in her Owl form is the Goddess of Wisdom, and in this connexion he cites the Greek goddess Athena, whose symbol was an owl. The Wisdom goddess, for Graves, is also the Death Goddess, and the owl’s cry is a prophesy of death.
I have no doubt that all these associations were in Ron’s mind when he made this little piece.
On the back of it he put the symbol of the Goddess with her arms raised in blessing that he put on some of his other ceramic pieces: the same symbol that now appears on his grave (see The Symbol on the Gravestones).
The Hallows: Sermon
The sermon completes the section on the Hallows (Hallowe’en) in The New Pagans’ Handbook:
The Sermon
Because, of all the festivals, The Hallows is the most structured and has the most ’set’ speeches and prayers, it requires less in the way of a sermon. Nevertheless, a summary of our main themes and a few observations about its significance as a marker in our annual cycle may help to reinforce and enrich its message.
At the Hallows we meet the Crone, the Goddess in Her death aspect. The festival recognises our own dark side, the fears and terrors we must know, in order to be made whole in ourselves. It honours our ancestors and all others who have joined the ‘Mighty Dead’. We dance with outstretched hands to welcome these powers, for, properly understood, they are not against us, but of us and can be our help. At the Hallows we hope to learn how to walk from the top to the bottom of our minds and be undismayed at what we find there. This is an heroic enterprise. Each must harrow his own hell. Each must pay due honour to the Crone, for She will claim us at the last; and we should love and respect Her, for only through love and respect can we reach trust and be unafraid in understanding.
The Hallows
The Regency viewed Hallowe’en – ‘The Hallows’ – as the culmination and conclusion of the ritual year.
I think it was the festival that meant most to Chalky on a personal level. Death was a mystery that much concerned him, as some of his poems reveal.
The skull in the photograph was used in the ritual every year for many years. It was given to Chalky when he was an art teacher by a pupil whose father was a builder. It was found during construction work in London: a museum specialist identified it as the skull of a medieval plague victim, buried in a plague-pit or mass grave.
Here are the preamble and ritual for the Hallows:
Preamble
Anciently named Samhein by the Celts, adopted as All Saints Eve and Day by the Christians, also called All Souls, I have called it by the more general pagan name of the Hallows, for the term fits it well and shows its holy intention.
It is the end of our annual pilgrimage and the ending of life’s exploration. At it comes the grand climax and combination of our themes in the land where the living and the dead meet. It is a brave and noble ceremony. We have moved in our ritual passage through the stages of our lives. Now we move to contemplate our repose in our deaths, and to consider those many who have died before us. It follows from the assessments of the Autumn Equinox, that, at the Hallows, we consider the paths we have trodden, and the lessons we have learnt from the round of the year, and ponder deeply our state at the end of our lives. Yet this is not to be a gloomy session of self criticism despite its sombre theme. It is a festival offering courage, and with courage goes encouragement to go bravely where our terrors and fears reside; to go deep into the places of the mind and face out these archetypal fears. This is the time to talk with the dead as well as with death in ourselves; to bring out these hidden things and ask them to join in festival dance.
The Hallows is one of the great pagan feasts and ushers Winter in. After this date the leaves will rapidly fall from the trees. The frosts will come and the November gales will hunt wildly across the land.
Two Love Poems
‘Now plot no meetings’
Now plot no meetings but accept
That we shall meet
And always at this moment,
Both in pleasuring.
For we are forged in crucibles of bliss
Intense beyond our souls’ coherences,
With bodies fissioned by a desperate joy
To break down – infinite reactions –
Each burning each to breed of timeless gold.
Sharing Sorrows
After two days of May-made wonder,
Once more the gouge of love
Carving the anxious hollow,
And my last harshness come again
To fight this unasked hurt in me;
Turning self – anger inwards
Mine, your pain tearing.
Then in that dawn,
Acceptances.
Both paired to burdens
In a bond of loss,
To gain such love
That gladly we must cry each others’ tears.
© The Estate of Ronald M. White
The Autumn Equinox: Ritual and Sermon
Here is the second and final part of the Autumn Equinox section of the New Pagans’ Handbook.
The Ritual
The Lord and Lady stand together in the centre of the circle, surrounded by the elements of the feast. The Lady then chooses one of the men to come forward and make his presentation of food and drink before Her. The Lord then does likewise with a lady. The presentation then goes forward, lady and man going alternately. The libation bowl is then passed round in similar fashion, each going forward to make obeisances and pour libations.
The Lord then presents the Lady with Her harvest crops of wheat and barley. This can be in the form of a wreath which She can wear. The set part of the ritual follows as He addresses the assembly:
The Autumn Equinox: Preamble
My apologies for the hiatus. I have been overwhelmed with work. Here is the next instalment of Chalky White’s New Pagans’ Handbook.
Preamble
The festival of the Autumn Equinox is a harvest festival. It is a continuation, in part, of our Lammas celebration, for the theme is still rest. Rest after our labours, and the reward for those labours. Harvest festivals were held upon the first full moon nearest the Equinox. It is a joyous and grateful festival. But as with all religious matters, there is more to it than just a party. Fittingly it is celebrated under the sign of Libra the scales; and as with day and night it is a time of Balance, Audit and Assessment. These three predicate a further three; Justice, Equity, and their concomitant, Mercy. It is therefore time to seek out the harvest of ourselves, considering how we have managed ourselves and our life in the year up to this point.
If She Left
If She Left
I would take my grief to the moon.
Only that night’s one flower
Would hear me.
Time this time could not stay
My tears.
Inroads she made on me:
Walks, paths, most private woods
Are hers.
So much of her dear love
Out of time’s travel lives,
Will suffer no erosions
From its flowing qualities.
Only the owl could speak some comfort
From sad trees.
Yet sacred stones, altars of sorrow
Stand.
© The Estate of Ronald M. White
Rubicons refused
Potvaliant
Potvaliant I sweep the country
Level with my lion’s eye.
Leap mountains and ford floods,
And crisply set decisions on
To make up empires for my travelling.
But at the sober day
Are Rubicons refused, which brook up feeble waters,
Damping the drunker enterprise of night.
So walking sunwise to the clear eyed air
I travel no journeys.
© The Estate of Ronald M. White
Bones have beauty
Dark Child
Dark child – born of the night,
Who will not accept – death as of right
In your hands.
Child of the dead hours who found
The running ghosts in your head
Spoke less but offered
Certain testimony – circling.
Who in the dark when one light
Was a sinister star,
Could not accept that – or less,
And now light too many candles to forget
The totentanz your heart beats (archetype of dance)
Over the flagstones of worn years.
Dark child – you must know
Bones have beauty,
And the gull’s cry is the wind’s work,
And the frost at night
Just pearls a bright moon scatters.
And fear has no cold, being of ecstasy or near it.
But fear of fear
Ah! That chills.
And dark,
Dark has dignity, exhilarations
We despise at peril.
For dark does not mean
That necessary death is dread;
But in my child walks alive;
And dark – Yes, dark laughs
Bringing (strange thought)
A darkest happiness.
© The Estate of Ronald M. White
Lammas: the Second Sermon
Here is the final part of the Lammas section:
The Second Sermon
Before leaving our account of Lammas, there are important points to be stressed from the ritual, and others that depend from them and are inherent in our ceremony.
Lammas deals with death, sometimes in symbolic forms of great beauty; but equally it deals with life. Our rituals with the deepening year become deeper in themselves, layer upon layer of meaning and wisdom being added. Our simple story, our foundation is being built upon adding all life’s scenery to its basic narrative.
