Tags
Bloodmonth, journeying, sacrifice, sami, shaman, winter, Yule
Three things have come together to give rise to this blog: a foolish piece of writing, an unnecessary piece of colour coding, and a memory of a journey into the underworld.
In one way, the blog – the first thing – wasn’t foolish, in that it caught the essence of winter: death and sacrifice. In another way it was, because it tried to place the sacrifice at the wrong time. It tried to place it at the twelve days of Christmas. Specifically, at that one point. Oh, as a representative of the whole relationship between gods and humankind: as the contract, if you will. The gift for a gift, except I missed the point of what gift was to be received in return.
The second thing was a conceit of mine, to play with the Wiccan wheel of the year and assign colours to it. Not for any purpose other than for private ritual. So, between Yule and Ostara I assigned black. But if I do that, then it comes to me as I write this, that I really should assign red to the period between Samhain and Yule.
When I first became a pagan I fell on my feet with the moot I attended. Oh, not the first one – that was a disaster of the usual kind: an Ego using the gathering as a feeding trough. But the second one was run by a woman of wit and generosity, in her own house. Its proximity to London and to Gerald Gardner’s old stamping ground meant one of GG’s coveners attended regularly, but so did many talented people. One was a herbalist, who described the plants we humans turn to get us through the winter, and what their purpose is. The details of that talk are long gone, but the overall effect has always haunted me. Over the years, other things I have read have built on that foundation, so a part of me lives in a very different place in the winter.
For a start, one must move north. Say between latitude 60 and the arctic circle. Far enough north for winter to mean almost constant snow and little light. For the length of the midwinter day to be less than 6 hours – if the sun rises at midwinter.
The onset of winter is not measured by a date on the calendar, but by the change in the world around me. The frost giants move south and settle, and it is time to consider which animals are worth keeping for the winter. Which are the good breeding or working stock? My fodder will only stretch so far, and I must be ruthless about killing anything I can’t afford to feed. That’s why this month is known as Bloodmonth – this is the time of slaughter, when the ground turns red. This is the time to feast, because I have no means of keeping the meat, except by the gift the frost giants bring.
And this is also the time to give to the disir – the womenfolk who keep the larders and so hold the keys of life and death over the winter. A good housekeeper is one who ekes out the foodstock until the next growing season. A bad one… well, you hope not to be in such a household. So the disir are the luck of the family, handed down through the generations. And that includes the goddesses and the elves. This is the time of the year to recognise them all, and to give generously to them and to the neighbours. For who else will help fend off the attacks of the frost giants and see us all safe through the darkness until the ground begins to warm again, and be fruitful?
This is the time when any journey becomes something to be well planned, if one is to survive it. When the rules of hospitality show their true purpose: to help the community survive. So you give traveller’s three nights’ lodging, or more, while the blizzard blows outside. And the skalds sing of the god who wanders the world as an unknown traveller, so it is always best to do what is right, and share what one can.
The hunter is prized, when the frost giants come. Meat is precious. So many animals sleep in the darkness. Even the birds leave. The people to the east say they fly down the bird road in the sky. The one that sparkles like a trail of milk across the clear winter night. The strange folk in the north, the wizards, follow the reindeer and travel on their drums, some say like sleds. Others say they do not move, but travel through the spirit world, and their drum is their map.
Let us return to the present.
The time of sacrifice was when winter set in, not at the midwinter point. Or that was the time when humans did the choosing. The gods had their own time, and the old and infirm would go to them in the dark, as and when the gods chose.
A Sami drum is indeed a map of the worlds. The noaidi (noaidi, noajdde, nåejttie, nōjjd, niojte, noojd/nuojd) rode it on his journey into the underworld and back. The symbols on the drum each have significance and one may study their meanings, though such dry research is without meaning if divorced of the living practice.
And I am done. No, wait, you say – you talked of a memory. Ah, so I did. That was a mistake. Now I have talked of the darkness, and returned to this lit room, staring at the screen, do I really wish to talk of that dark journey?
That winter, when I had just become a new pagan, I was the sacrifice, though I did not know it, when I stared with delight at the full moon. The Bloodmonth full moon. Within days my partner turned from being eccentric to being dangerous. The reasons are for another time. The point was that the gods showed me the door. Go through it, go down into the underworld willingly, and something will change. But do not journey in order to obtain that change, or it will not happen. And so I went down, down, down. That winter, through to Beltane. I was the sacrifice. I was also the noaidi. My fetch woke from the slumber of decades, shook herself, and trotted beside me, guarding my path.
So don’t talk to me of killing wrens and the Lord of Misrule and such things. They take place in that hall on the hill. The one full of light and warmth and laughter. The one I see in the distance on my journey into the darkness. Waiting for the sun to return.
Yes, black is the colour.