Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone. I’m Angela and welcome back to my channel. This video was recorded as a podcast for the amazing project called Quantum Sauce. Let me explain this better. A few months ago Dr Adam Booth, Associate Professor in Applied Geophysics at the University of Leeds reached out to me asking whether I’d like to give a talk on the Pagan celebrations for the spring equinox at the Farsley Constitutional Club in Leeds for his fascinating project. I was very excited to take part in it and I said yes immediately. Quantum Sauce is a Leeds-based outreach event; it brings University researchers to the public, in the comfort of their own pub, in times where there is sometimes a gap between real research and its reporting on social media. It’s really important to bridge the divide. However, with the pubs closed, due to the [Covid] lockdown, Quantum Sauce has gone online. So keep your eyes on the Quantum Sauce Twitter account for podcasts from them.
In this podcast, I’ll give an overview of what Paganism is, Wicca, the Wheel of the Year and Ostara or the spring equinox and its celebrations. I’ll put timestamps and bibliography in the infobox. I look forward to hearing your comments and answering your questions in the comments so enjoy all the Academic fun.
Dr Adam Booth AB: And hello Angela, there you are. How are you doing?
AP: I’m okay thank you. How are you, Adam?
AB: I’m alright. It’s getting a bit warm in my makeshift office. I can really feel that spring is sprung and I could do with a refreshing drink. So can you recommend me a sauce?
AP: Well I guess I would recommend you the forbidden sauce, seasoned by some esotericism.
AB: Okay, right, so anything dark and mystical.
AP: Yeah, you know some Italian spirits, perhaps of the healing kind. Might be handy at the moment.
AP: Yeah.
AB: Absolutely.
AP: Yeah and for the Pagans that would be a celebration of spring, of the spring equinox.
AB: That’s right. Now I should say that we recording this on the 16th of April. You were originally scheduled to give an official Quantum Sauce on the 17th of April, so this is also really good timing. So let’s get your screen shared and then we can hear what you’ve got to say.
AP: So yeah, what I wanted to talk to you about is the spring equinox but of course, in order to talk about the spring equinox we have to explain what the Pagans Sabbats are because the spring equinox is one of the eight festivals celebrated by Pagans or Neopagans. So I thought it’d be, an introduction would be useful, especially if the audience is not very familiar with Paganism.
So what is Paganism? Some call it Paganism and some call it Neopaganism because it is a revival which has happened in recent times but practitioners tend to call it Paganism, so I normally speak to Paganism. My fieldwork is actually in Italy, so in Italy, there are some practitioners who also use the English equivalent of Neopagan or Neopaganism, whereas here in Britain they tend to prefer, the large majority, if not every Pagan that I’ve spoken to, they prefer just Pagan without ‘neo’ so what is Paganism? According to the Pagan Federation International Paganism is a Polytheistic and Pantheistic Nature-worshipping Religion. So what is Polytheism? Polytheism is the worship or the belief in multiple gods although it is important to say that in Paganism gods are not conceptualized in the same manner, as it is in monotheisms, where the God is the creator. This transcendental being which has created everything. In Paganism gods are more entities which populate another realm of reality or for some other Pagans they are metaphors or archetypes. So there are different ways of conceptualizing the gods and they are all very much different from the way monotheisms conceptualize their God.
So Pantheism means that the deity, the divine is in everything that lives. So everything is imbued with the divine. In technical terms, it is a form of immanentistic view of the divine. So the divine is in nature, is embedded in nature, it’s not outside, it’s not a transcendental being. Nature worshipping is pretty much self-explanatory. So these are religious movements that worship nature and the cycles of nature. So they are based on pre-Christian religions, even the forms of Paganism which are of recent formed like Wicca, for example, which is the more popular form of Paganism they tend to be based on pre-Christian beliefs and pre-Christian mythologies. There was a revival in the re-appropriation of the term Paganism during the Renaissance and there are quite a few accounts of this especially from the Italian Renaissance.
Also, a Paganism lives a rebirth from the 1950s thanks to the Wiccan tradition, which was born in Britain, actually in England and yeah, basically, they popularized worldwide Paganism and even though, of course, we cannot say that the majority of Pagans around the world are Wiccans, Wicca has had a massive impact in the popularization and in the spreading of Paganism worldwide.
So the common principles in Paganism are love and communion with nature. As I just said, it is a nature-worshipping religion so it is really focused around nature and worship of nature. Also, there is a respect and reverence towards the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, which is present in our lives and it is manifested in a cyclical manner in nature, in those in the seasonal changes. Also, there is an ethic that recognizes the individual responsibility, so you don’t have gods that will punish you or you don’t have a reward in the afterlife. It is mainly based on the personal, individual ethics and also there is a recognition of the Divine in both the male and female aspects. So in Paganism, you have both goddesses and gods and some Pagans say that all goddesses are somewhat a manifestation of one Goddess which means the female principle in nature, everything there is receptive and creative whereas all the gods are a manifestation of one God which would mean the male principle, the projective principle, the Sun which is in everything that lives and that we experience as people living on the earth with the seasonal changes.
Now let’s go onto Wicca. So, as we said, Wicca was extremely important in the spreading of Paganism worldwide because it popularized Paganism as a religion and its principles. And even though we cannot say that the majority of Pagans are Wiccans, Wicca has, sort of, laid out the foundations for eclectic Pagans to take inspiration from, we may say. So Wicca is kind of a continuation and an evolution based on 19th century Hermetic societies like, for example, forms of ceremonial magic like the ones we find with it with the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Order of the Golden Dawn. And in the 1950s Gerald Gardner, who was an Englishman, he decided to found this new religious movement. Actually, he claimed that it was an old religious movement which he was just uncovering but he was part of this lineage that went back for centuries and centuries and yeah, he claimed that that was the case and so he said that this practice, the religion of Witchcraft was called Wicca because he claimed that, basically, word Wicca is the ancient Anglo-Saxon word for Witch and so that Wicca was basically the religion of Witchcraft which had survived through the ages and that was still present and quite lively in the 1950s when he brought it to the light.
In the 1970s Wicca spread in the United States and there are other authors who, sort of, changed Wicca and made it into a less ceremonial tradition and more open to individually tailored practices. And so we may say that, at the moment, worldwide, Wiccans tend to be at large, mostly eclectic practitioners who individually tailor their practice, based upon some aspects laid out by Gardner, but also sort of reshaping it’s depending on their own belief system and their own practices.
Now let’s move on to explain what the solar seasonal cycle is. Although we may say and we may see that some of these celebrations were present in pre-Christian times across different parts of the world and across different religious traditions, the way the Wheel of the Year and the solar seasonal cycle has been laid out is mainly Wiccan. So some of these celebrations, for example, were found in ancient Rome as well but the mythology that has been created and the systematization in eight festivals on that specific times of the year, was laid out by the Wiccan tradition and now, more or less, all Pagans follow this kind of layout.
So these are the solar festivals, so these are the festivals based on the movements of the Sun. There are also lunar festivals which are based on the Moon and these are called Esbat and they are the celebrations of the full moon, so it’s 13 full moons for each year. Whereas in this case it is eight solar festivals and they are the equinoxes, solstices, and the midpoints in between. So we have and basically, according to this mythology that has been laid out the Wheel of the Year, it is all based on how the Sun changes in relation to the earth. So we have the equinoxes which celebrate the harmony and balance between the Sun and Moon between the night and the day and we have the solstices which celebrate either the birth of the Sun, the new birth of the Sun with winter solstice, or the death of the Sun which is celebrated just before we approached the winter solstice where the Sun is born again.
So it is a mythological construction of how the seasonal changes happen in relation to the movements of the Sun. And the Sun is perceived as a male God which is in constant change and it is in a constant relation with the Goddess which is the female principle. So the female principle may either be the Moon or the Earth. So, for example, the Beltane, which is on the first of May, is the celebration of the marriage between the Earth and the Sun, so the Goddess and God get united and it is time to celebrate fertility and yeah because it was also the time everything in nature was sort of mating and producing new life. Yeah, so each of these celebrations is focused on acknowledging what is happening on the earth, the movement of the Sun and also a metaphorical, mythological interpretation of what this means for us as human beings. So when the, for example, on the winter solstice, when we are celebrating the rebirth of the Sun, it is a time where Pagans get in tune with the seasonal change and with the darkness that is surrounding them. It is the darkest day of the year and it is also a time to reflect upon the light that needs to come from within in order to get a rebirth.
So basically the idea is that what is happening and outside its sort of mirroring the seasonal changes that we live within. So when we get in tune with what is happening in nature we are in a more balanced state, according to Pagans, because, of course, it is a nature-worshipping religion. So getting attuned with nature and the seasonal change is happening in nature makes you acknowledge, see the inner seasonal changes within ourselves. Does it make sense?
AB: It makes really good sense. It sounds like great life lessons anyway.
AP: So moving on to the spring equinox. I needed to give an overview otherwise it would have just been out of nowhere. So yeah another thing that I didn’t mention is that most of the names of these eight festivals are drawn from Celtic or Anglo-Saxon Gods and yeah, of course, I don’t have time to go deep into each and every festival, so I will be focusing on Ostara. Ostara or the spring equinox. So Ostara is a celebration named after Ēostre which is an Anglo-Saxon Goddess of spring and rebirth and the celebration of Ostara is a celebration which focuses around the rebirth and resurrection of nature. And yeah, the Goddess and God are represented as the maiden and the hunter or alternatively as the Green Man and Mother Earth and the picture here is taken from a ritual which I participated to. As you know I do ethnographic research with participant observation. So this was taken Naples at a spring equinox celebration by a group of Pagans.
So, the celebrations centre around the ideas of birth and rebirth, revealing the life force that has always been there, but it was just concealed by the winter’s cloak. So it’s like saying it seemed like everything had died out but actually everything was just about to get rebirth under the surface. And examples of celebrations that happen during the spring equinox are: planting seeds or painting eggs or egg hunting. So normally the solar celebrations were, for Pagans the Sabbats tend to be focused around getting attuned with the seasonal change. Although there are some Pagans who also perform magickal practices but usually the moon celebrations, the Esbats, which happen every full moon of each month, they tend to be more focused around magickal workings whereas the Sabbats tend to be normally gatherings of Pagans who get together and celebrate in order to get attuned with what is happening in nature, to get also in line with the seasonal changes which are happening within us.
So in rituals, there are always, usually, there’s a mimesis of the dynamics carried out by the male and female principles in nature. So, for example, since the spring equinox is a time of balance, being an equinox, is one of those two points in the year where the Sun and Moon, well the light and the dark are in perfect balance on the earth and so this is mirrored by how the Goddess and God interact. So often in rituals Pagans represent this balance, which is happening between dark and light, showing a form of balance form of, in disguise in this in this case with the spring equinox, a form of courting between the God which is represented, embodied by the Priest and Goddess which is embodied by the Priestess. So they tend to, for example, one of the celebrations I attended to, they were, sort of, dancing in a very balanced way and sort of, portraying a form of courting each other because they, in the next festivals, they will be united and so it is, sort of, what happens before – the courting phase. Yeah, and also, for example, another ritual I attended to, there was the Priestess who was embodying Mother Nature and there were the four elements, which were represented by four participants and the Goddess was the Priestess, sorry, representing the Goddess, was moving clockwise and every element was giving her something to put on her. So it was like all the elements were dressing Mother Earth so that she could be flourishing again and show to the world and to human beings that she’s alive and she’s getting reborn.
Also, another thing which is important to point out is that there are different mythologies which are followed by different Pagan traditions. Because, of course, Paganism is an umbrella term but you have lots and lots of traditions falling under this umbrella. So depending on the tradition they may follow a different mythology like a Celtic mythology or a German mythology, in Italy, for example, they tend to follow the Roman mythology or the Greek, for example. I come from the South of Italy so I’m most familiar with the way Pagans in the South of Italy celebrate these kinds of festivities and they tend to use a lot of mythology bought by the Roman and the Greek times. So, for example, the spring equinox would be a time for them to manifest and show the myth of Persephone and Demeter. Do you know the myth?
AB: I know the names but I don’t know the myth.
AP: Well, basically it is a myth which is connected to the spring equinox that’s why they utilize it for the rituals. So the ritual is sort of shaped around is this myth. The myth is that Persephone, who was a daughter of Demeter and she was kidnapped by Hades and basically drawn to the underground, to the underground world and she was made [to] eat the pomegranate. But she only ate half of it. The pomegranate, in the Roman and Greek mythology, is a fruit that will bind you to the underworld once you had eaten it. Since Persephone was kidnapped against her will, her mother was really upset. Demeter was the Goddess of spring and fertility and agriculture and according to the myth, she was she used to provide human beings with a whole year of abundance, an abundance of fruit and vegetables flourishing everywhere. But once her daughter was kidnapped and brought to the underworld she was so sad that she wasn’t able to, she didn’t want to, she refused to give this abundance to humankind. And so basically, Zeus mediated this dispute between Demeter and Hades and since, luckily, Persephone only ate half of the pomegranate they decided that she would stay in the underworld for half a year and for the other half of the year she would be in our world, in the world of the living and that’s the time when Demeter would give us human beings the abundance of nature and fruits and vegetables. And so this is the myth that it is followed by a few Pagans in Italy. They tend to mirror this story in their ritual, they’re sort of a mimesis of this kind of myth and these kinds of stories in their rituals, so that they kind of embody those archetypes and by embodying those archetypes they get in line with the seasonal change.
AB: Cool
AP: Does it make sense?
AB: yeah absolutely, yeah.
AP: And yeah, I guess that’s all I wanted to say. But I look forward to answer questions. I just left here a few readings.
AB: All right, thanks very much, Angela. It was really interesting and a really good fun talk. So thanks very much. I did have one question, if I may and that’s when you talk about these kinds of like Saxon origins of the names you’ve got the word like Ostara and Ēostre and I can’t help but notice the similarity to the word Easter and then some of the, you know, painting eggs and you know doing things with eggs. It sounds like Easter so, how much overlap do you think there actually is or is it just a coincidence that we’ve got these two similar-sounding festivals at the same time?
AP: Well yeah, I wouldn’t think it’s a coincidence. First, most Pagans believe that, basically, most of the Christian festivities are actually a reinterpretation of or even an appropriation, some might say, of Pagan festivals because even with Christmas, for example, it is celebrated around the winter solstice and it is focused around rebirth of the God. So yeah, Pagans do believe that Christian festivities have borrowed or even appropriated from Pagan festivals and even Pagan traditions like, for example, the painting of eggs.
AB: Right, yeah yeah.
AP: The symbology is even like the Christmas tree, for example. Yeah in the main Christian festivities you will find lots and lots of elements which were found in Pagan, pre-Christian festivals.
AB: Okay right, I would say to anyone watching this, that if they’ve got questions for Angela then Angela can be found at Instagram – if you look up Angela’s Symposium, I think was your account. Cool and Angela also has an extensive YouTube archive of discussions and all things Pagan, so check that out as well. Yeah, so I would invite anyone to get in touch with Angela.
AP: Thank you I hope you really liked it and I’m really happy you invited me. Thanks for having me here.
AB: No problem and thanks very much to you for being here today so great take care and we’ll speak to you soon.
AP: Bye.
AB: Bye-bye.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Harvey, G. (2000) Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth, NYU Press.
Hutton, R. (2019) The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Oxford University Press.
Sermon, R. (2008) ‘From Easter to Ostara: the Reinvention of a Pagan Goddess?’, Time and Mind, Routledge, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 331–343.
Strmiska, M. (2005) Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, ABC-CLIO.
FOLLOW QUANTUM SAUCE: Twitter (@quantum_sauce) and Instagram (quantum_sauce)
Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTUfGpPZgbA
Constitutional Club’s Website: https://theconstitutional.co.uk/tv-lounge
First uploaded 19 Apr 2020