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Celebrating the Winter Solstice
Front-Ranger:
I did not know that you're supposed to drink mead on the Yule. Can I substitute Crown Royal?? That reminds me, there is a great movie playing right now called The Queen. There is a scene where the Queen gets her Land Rover stuck and has to wait for her groundsmen to come and she sees a -- oh I can't bear to print it! Too much of a spoiler. Yule just have to see the movie.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 21, 2006, 04:25:01 pm ---I did not know that you're supposed to drink mead on the Yule.
--- End quote ---
Sure. Yule. Imbolc. Ostara. Beltane. Midsummer. Lughnasa. Samhain. Or any day between any of those. ... ;D
(Sorry, I forget the name for Midsummer.)
--- Quote ---Can I substitute Crown Royal??
--- End quote ---
I guess so. But somehow "Crown Royal Hall" just doesn't have that certain je ne sais quoi of "Mead Hall." Beowulf wouldn't be Beowulf with a Crown Royal Hall. ...
Front-Ranger:
It's called Litha, according to yet another of Front-Ranger Jr's books, Wicca Candle Magick (where does she get the money to buy all these books??!!)
And I'm sure she has Beowulf there too. I'll put it on the reading list.
I've been enjoying reading about the special Solstice and Wiccan animals, including two that you've commented on before, stags and snakes. The association between them is that stags shed their antlers, and snakes their skins, and so are in a sense reborn every year. Like the moon which is reborn, and so are we all on this day of the most darkness and the return of light.
The nature god Cernunnos has a stag's horns and a stag often accompanies him. He is often depicted holding a snake. Snakes had a positive connotation before the dawn of Christianity as the givers of knowledge. One story tells of a hermit who finds a little snake and gives it milk to drink. He keeps it as a pet, but the snake grows so large that it threatens to destroy the hermit's cell. The hermit prays to God, and the snake goes to the lake from whence it came and disappears.
More recently Indiana (Gary, Indiana ;)) Jones is looking for the most sacred artifact of the paternalistic Judeo/Christian religion, the ark of the covenant, and falls into a den of snakes. The myth continues....
Front-Ranger:
Happy Winter Solstice! As a special dinner, I served salmon with toasted hazelnuts sprinkled over. Salmon travel upriver, resisting the flow of tide and time, to return to the waters of their birth. They span the distance between the world of the llving and the Otherworld of the dead. Eating salmon conveys the gift of prophecy on those who deserve it. Many people gained knowledge by visiting a special well where the resident salmon eat hazelnuts from a tree overhead.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 21, 2006, 10:12:41 pm ---Happy Winter Solstice! As a special dinner, I served salmon with toasted hazelnuts sprinkled over. Salmon travel upriver, resisting the flow of tide and time, to return to the waters of their birth. They span the distance between the world of the llving and the Otherworld of the dead. Eating salmon conveys the gift of prophecy on those who deserve it. Many people gained knowledge by visiting a special well where the resident salmon eat hazelnuts from a tree overhead.
--- End quote ---
I would normally be cooking my honeyed dates as a sweet and a nice dinner tonight with candles blazing, but my stomach has not been happy with me for a week now so I have very little appetite and am extremely tired, so I will simply burn a candle and think of the rebirth of the sun as the earth goes careening back around in orbit and be grateful the climate is still holding.
The salmon story is fascinating. Didn't know that about them, but while I read Tarot, I never read for myself and never scry. Who wants to see the future? Not me.
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