The Festivals of the Year
‘The Reading of the Festivals of the Year’ is a key section of The New Pagans’ Handbook. It is a liturgical text for the beginning of December, and also an exposition of the myth in relation to the main festivals of the year as Chalky, following pagan traditions, conceived these to be.
‘The Reading of the Festivals’, like other texts used by the Regency, underwent various revisions, and at least one older version has had some circulation. The text here represents Chalky’s final revisions, made when he prepared The New Pagans’ Handbook for publication in the mid-1980s.
At a very bleak time indeed, at the beginning of December, at the time the Christians have renamed Advent, the first of the rituals is held, and the simple account I have given of the Basic Myth is dressed out and the significance of the seasonal rituals explained. The ceremony, as befits the season, is of the barest. Either outdoors or in a darkened room the Festivals are read over and their story told. A single candle is used to provide the proverbial ‘light in our darkness’. The candle is called the Light of The Promise and at the end of the ceremony the candle stub is kept to light the Yuletide candles.
This ceremony is known as The Reading of the Festivals.
– from The Implements of Ritual
The Reading of the Festivals of the Year
The Reader speaks:
These are the Festivals of the Year read over every year at the Time of the Promise. And this promise I declare to you, which has always been given at this time upon the Dead of the Year.
Each part of the reading is preceded by a simple statement of the Divine Nature that those festivals iare held to honour.
These things are the promise of the Goddess to you all.
Hear these words on the nature of the Goddess and be encouraged because of them.
The Goddess personifies the Universe, its creation,
its being and its ending.
As such She is its totality, seen and unseen.
As such She embodies the Greater Mysteries.
As such She is the mind behind all minds and all making.
From Her all things come.
To Her all things return.
For us beneath Her visiting Moon
She can be worshipped as Triad;
Maiden, Mother, and Crone.
For She gives life, fosters it, takes it away.
And so that Moon is Her symbol:
At the new, the full, the old.
She governs the five phases of our lives:
She is Birth, Initiation, Consummation, Rest, Repose.
She is our beginning, our youth, our maturity;
She is our old age
And that inevitable end – our death.
Her Festivals are our calendar of life.
Coupled with our celebration of the Gods
They picture out the scenery of the year,
And stand as parable to our lives.
Because She is all things She is
The embodiment of our desires,
Whether of body or mind.
She is the everlasting song of our souls,
For everything is holy
And not apart from Her Divinity.
Also the Goddess has many names,
For all names are Her name.
(The candle is raised and lowered)
She is also the source of wisdom,
The protectress and guardian of the spirit,
The fount of beauty,
The inspiration of poets and artists,
The spirit of prophecy,
And mistress of all true knowledge.
She is the beginning and the end,
All births and deaths are Hers.
But above all
She is.
(The candle is raised and lowered)
