Dr Angela Puca: Hello everyone. I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Paganism, Esotericism and all things occult.
This is the recording of a talk that I gave for an event called Quantum Sauce. And my talk is about Paganism, Wicca and more specifically Ostara, the Spring Equinox, which is what we are celebrating these days in the Northern Hemisphere.
Quantum Sauce is an evening of live research talks that takes place roughly once a month in Farsley, on the outskirts of Leeds. This talk was recorded as part of a night celebrating springtime research and I shared the stage with researchers investigating pregnancy and plant genetics. Follow Quantum Sauce on Twitter (@Quantum_Sauce) for all their updates.
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Dr Adam Booth: Alright ladies and gentlemen, we shall reconvene if you are sitting comfortably. Are you? Yes. Thank you. Right, who is in a celebratory, jubilant mood?
[Cheers]
Yeah, of course, you are, right? Wonderful to hear because, of course, there is a lot to celebrate. Around springtime is the return to life and there are a lot of cultures around the place who really, really do celebrate the return to life, the change from those dark winter days [boos] into the brighter, warmer spring days [cheers]. Yeah, absolutely. So, in order to celebrate this one, I’m just wondering if I can put a call out for volunteers. We are going to do our own little Quantum Sauce re-enactment of… I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “The Wicker Man” but, you know, you could come and get involved potentially. Some Pagan practices here and I will also be calling out someone for the role of the Christopher Lee character. There is also going to be some unfortunate individual who takes this unfortunate role and the unfortunate Edward Woodward, this role doesn’t end too well. Spoiler alert there. Yes, not the best ending for Edward Woodward there. Yeah, At Quantum Sauce we don’t like stereotyping anything, we don’t like stereotyping Pagan practice and what they may well be getting up to. So, let’s find out what those Pagan practices actually involve. From Leeds Trinity University a researcher in Religious Studies, Dr Angela Puca.
[Applause]
Dr Angela Puca: Hello, I feel like, after that introduction, you are expecting something very specific. But, yeah, I will be talking about Paganism and Pagan celebrations and we will address, specifically, the Spring Equinox since we are around that time of the year. I don’t know, how many of you are familiar with Pagan, contemporary Paganism that is? A few of you. OK.
What is (neo)Paganism?
According to the Pagan Federation International:
A Polytheistic and Pantheistic Nature-worshipping Religion
* Based on Pre/Non-Christian Religions
* Revival and re-appropriation of the term during the Renaissance
* Paganism live a rebirth from the 1950s onwards, popularise worldwide by Wicca
So in order for us to understand each other, I will be covering what Paganism is as well. And sometimes they say, if you ask ten Pagans what Paganism is you will get eleven answers – I think it is twenty actually, which means that for us researchers on the matter, it’s very complicated to analyse the data that we get from fieldwork – which is mainly anthropological so I work with people.
So what is Paganism? And in some cases it is defined as Neopaganism, meaning the contemporary practice of Paganism. But now researchers are moving away from this definition because some people consider the ‘neo’ as being, in a way, derogatory or undermining of the practice. Saying, you know, sort of underlying that it is somehow fabricated and a lot of Practitioners are not happy with this. Researchers are now preferring ‘Contemporary Paganism’ rather than Neopaganism.
What is Paganism?
Common Principles
1. Non-Monotheistic Relationship to the Divine
2. Non-dogmatic, not based on Scriptures, not revealed
3. Immanent Spirituality (not transcendent)
4. Reverence for the Land and Place
5. Reverence for all Tangible Things
So according to the Pagan Federation International, it is a Polytheistic and Pantheistic nature-worshipping religion. It is based on pre-Christian or non-Christian religions. More specifically in Europe and that is why the emphasis is on Christianity, specifically, because that is the dominant religious system. And these practices tend to be based on beliefs and mythologies that pre-date Christianity or that have lived and survived alongside Christianity.
There was a revival in the re-appropriation of the term Pagan in the Renaissance, especially in the Italian Renaissance, there was the idea of using the term Pagan with a positive connotation because it started out as a derogatory term towards those who had not converted to Christianity. It was a way of saying ‘villagers’ because Pagan comes from ‘paganus’ – from somebody who lives in the rural area and is not educated enough to know what the true path is and so it was a derogatory way of addressing those who were resistant to converting to Christianity. So there was a re-appropriation in the Renaissance because the Renaissance had a more enchanted way of looking at the world and we will see that is quite in line with Paganism, an enchanted way of looking at the world.
And also Paganism has lived a rebirth and some would argue a birth because the way Contemporary Paganism is lived and received and conceptualised now is quite different from the past. So some would say that it actually was born in the 1950s. And it was popularised, worldwide, by Wicca. Which, according to historian Professor Ronald Hutton, is the only religion that Britain gave to the world. And yeah, that is interesting as well.
What is Paganism?
Common Principles
1. Love and Communion with Nature
2. Respect and reverence toward the eternal
3. An ethic that recognises the individual responsibility
4. Recognition of the Divine in both its Male and Female Aspects
So let’s see some common principles in Paganism. So the first one is a non-Monotheistic relationship with the divine. So it means the divine is not perceived as one God only, one God-creator also there is a difference between Monotheism and Monism; there are some Pagans that could be considered Monists, which means that they believe that everything is one but not that everything comes and is created from one God – that is identified with certain characteristics and has the traits of being a creator-God. So it is a non-monotheist relationship with the divine and it varies but it is usually Polytheistic; sometimes Monist and quite often Pantheist. This means the divine is in everything, that’s what Pantheism means.
Wicca
19th-century Hermetic Societies (for ceremonial magic), Ordo Templi Orientis and Golden Dawn
1950s: Gerald Gardner founds a new Pagan Tradition
1970s: Wicca spreads in the United States (Scott Cunningham, Silver RavenWolf, Phyllis Curott)
-> Seax, Dianic, Eclectic
Also, it is non-dogmatic, not based on scriptures and it is not revealed as a religion. It is not a religion that is revealed by a Prophet. There are no Prophets in Paganism, there are no scriptures, and there’s no central dogma. It is based on the personal experience of the Pagan and their relationship to the divine that they work with. That’s why in Paganism it is more common to say, I’m working with Freya or I’m working with Hekate rather than saying I am worshipping Freya or I am worshipping Hekate because it is more based on the relationship that the Practitioner creates with the specific deity.
Also, it is an immanent spirituality which means that the divine is perceived as being imbued in nature. That’s why it is a nature-worshipping religion. The divine is within everything.
Ostara – the Spring Equinox
* Named after Eostre, The Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring and Rebirth
* The celebration focuses around the rebirth or resurrection of Nature
* The Goddess and the God are represented as the maiden and the hunter or, alternatively, as the Green Man and Mother Earth
So the chair is divine, the desk is divine, and this screen is divine. Everything is imbued with the divine essence. That’s what immanence means. And there is, of course, the idea of transcendence which means that the divine is outside of the material world. That is why Pagans have fun, you know, in the images you saw in the introduction. Because sometimes you have in other religions the idea that the material world leads you astray from the divine because, you know, there is this kind of dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. Whereas in Paganism the two are completely connected. So, through the material, you can get and do get to the spiritual and to the divine. Because the divine is immersed, entrenched in everything that is, in every manifested aspect of reality.
Also, there is a reverence towards the land and place and also reverence towards all tangible things. And so it’s not just a matter of considering the divine, other human beings who have a soul as opposed to other things that are just inanimate objects. Everything is imbued with life and is sentient and it is divine. That is why it is sometimes called an enchanted worldview because it sees everything as enchanted. And this comes from Max Weber who said that after modernity we have a disenchantment of the world.
Ostara – the Spring Equinox
* Celebrations centre around the ideas of birth and rebirth, revealing the life force that has always been there, concealed by the winter’s cloak
* Examples are planting seeds, painting eggs, egg hunting, etc.
* In rituals, there’s a mimesis of the dynamics carried out by the male and female principles in nature
MAGIC: Charging and planting seeds for the intended purpose to grow, Egg painting to make something fertile and bring abundance, prosperity, fertility, and new growth.
We don’t see the world as enchanted anymore and with Paganism, a lot of scholars, it is a bad word among Religious Studies scholars, the idea of the re-enchantment of the world through Paganism and Witchcraft-related practices.
So other common principles are love and communion with nature, the respect and reverence towards the eternal cycle of death and rebirth in which nature manifests itself. An ethic that recognises individual responsibility so you don’t have a God or a Goddess, of course, you have Goddesses, lots and lots of Goddesses in Paganism. But you don’t have a deity that will punish you after death. You don’t have any deity that will punish you. We have seen that that does not belong in Paganism. The ethic is something that is individual. And it is something that the practitioner cultivates. You don’t have an external entity or a specific religious person that will tell you what is right and what is wrong.
Also, there is a recognition of the divine in both the female and the male aspects. And in Wicca, you have these duo-deistic aspects on the entities of the female and the male as the two polarities in nature. And now this discourse is being expanded by Contemporary Pagans due to the evolving cultural situation where the idea of gender is being seen more as a spectrum, perhaps, rather than as a polarity.
Wicca is, as I said earlier, could be considered the only religion that Britain gave to the world. It has popularised Paganism. Wicca is one religion within the umbrella of Paganism but I would argue that it made Paganism more known to the public. Even to those who are not interested or don’t practise Wicca. It is based on and in a way founded on 19th-century Hermetic Societies, for instance, those practising Ceremonial Magic. The Ordo Templi Orientis of which Aleister Crowley, a famous Occultist, was a part of and the Golden Dawn, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which is, perhaps, the most famous order of Ceremonial Magic of the 20th century.
And then we have the foundation of Wicca in the 1950s with Gerald Gardner with the foundation of Wicca. And it creates this new Pagan tradition and it is based on the works of a scholar who has….
[Video edited here]
… For Pagans, it is important to celebrate the changes in the world, the seasons and on the earth. Because of the lived connections between what happens outside and what happens inside. So it is not just a matter of celebrating the days that get warmer and the light that gets to shine progressively more on the earth. It is about that as well but it is also about realising and connecting to what is outside so that you can also be connected to what is inside. Because the belief here is that everything is interconnected and so when you connect with the seasonal changes outside in nature you are also connecting to your inner changes, to your inner seasons because we all go through seasons according to a Pagan perspective on life and on the self. So by connecting with what is outside, we are also connecting with what is inside and you are acknowledging your own internal seasons and by doing that you are more connected to the divine.
So as for the Spring Equinox which, in Wicca, would be called Ostara and this picture is taken at an Ostara ritual in Italy. It is named after the Goddess Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring and rebirth. And it is a celebration that focuses on the rebirth or resurrection of Nature. And here you have the Goddess and the God that are presented as the maiden and the hunter, alternatively as the Green Man and the Mother Earth.
So another thing you have in Paganism and this has been popularised by Wicca is that the festivals that celebrate the seasonal changes are part of a mythological narrative that, especially in Wicca, has been inspired by different mythologies across Europe. Pre-Christian mythologies that have been made by Wicca into a more coherent narrative where you have the Goddess and the God where they have this, sort of, a dance. It starts with Samhain which is what we know as Halloween. As Samhain, we would have the death of the God. And then you have at the Winter Solstice, the Goddess gives birth to the God who, you know, has gone underground in the womb of the Goddess and there is the rebirth at the Winter Solstice. And you have at Imbolc, which is the first of February, both are, sort of, prepubescent – in this kind of prepubescent state where they are purified by death and they are purified by birth as well and they are young and ready to get through the cycle of life again. At the Spring Equinox, they are both like, we could compare it to being adolescents or teenagers and they are trying to have this dance with, mating dance even. They are trying to get to know each other. So you can see them as this female and male polarity, that are in a state of courting each other.
Then at the Beltane, which is perhaps if I point at this – at Beltane, you have the secret wedding between the Goddess and the God where the two mate.
And then you have Litha, the Goddess who is often portrayed as being pregnant. And then, of course, she gives birth at Yule. But you have then all these seasonal changes have this sort of narrative and in some cases, this is connected to certain mythologies that come from different places of pre-Christian or non-Christian Europe. And yeah, there is this sort of alternation or dance between the Goddess and the God, between the female and the male principle. Because they are seen as these two polarities in nature that alternate and are in this state of constant evolution and they create the death and rebirth that we see in the light that comes and goes, in the crops that die and get reborn, in everything that we see around us that is in this constant cycle of being alive but then dying, in a way, seeing a new life again. So it is sort of based on this concept of life and death, to being interconnected and alternating themselves through the dance between the polarities that we have in nature. In this case, they are represented as being female and male, so the Goddess and God, because they are perceived as being divine. But you can also articulate it in a way that is not based on this sort of polarity but in a different… you can also conceptualise it by not using these two polarities but by seeing the principles active in nature and how they interact with each other. But in Wicca, you have these polarities between the male and the female or the Goddess and the God.
So then you have it that when it comes to Ostara or the Spring Equinox the celebrations, for Pagans, tend to centre around the ideas of birth and rebirth. Because Ostara is about, sort of, approaching the sacred union between the male and the female which happens at Beltane. Which is between the 31st of March and the 1st of April? I always tend to confuse the 30th and the 31st – which months have the 31st or not. Yeah, but it is on the 1st of April. And on that occasion, you have the sacred wedding between the Goddess and the God. So it is, sort of, the mating, the sexual encounter between the two.
And then the Spring Equinox is approaching that state and so it is still a festivity that has to do with birth and rebirth and so you have a lot of eggs and even bunnies. And this celebration centres around these ideas and also reveals the life force that has always been there, concealed by the Winter’s cloak. And it is interesting because I once attended a Pagan ritual during my fieldwork in Italy and quite often when you have Pagan rituals you have a Priestess and a Priest who embody, during the ritual, the Goddess and the God. And then you have a re-enactment, a ritual re-enactment of what is happening in the world outside, in the seasonal changes in a way that is, sort of, a narrative created by the Priestess and the Priest. And some cases, when they are present in ritual, also by the elements.
So this ritual that I participated in, you had the Priestess and the Priest, the Priestess would embody the Goddess and the Priest the God and you would have another four Practitioners that were calling upon the elements. So you would have one for Air, one for Fire, one for Earth and one for Water. And so what would happen during this ritual is that after casting the circle, so creating the sacred space, this was in natural space, of course, because that is what often happens with Pagans. I should have said that and not assumed that you would know. But yeah, Pagans quite often celebrate in nature and they have cast the circle. They would have the four people representing the elements calling upon Air, Fire, Water and Earth. And then you have the Priest calling the Goddess in the body of the Priestess for the time of the celebration. The Priestess calls upon the God to enter the body of the Priest for the duration of the celebration. After that, you represent what was happening in the world, in the season. The Priestess would sort of have this slow dance, going through the people representing the elements and she would get something on her body – there was, sort of, a gift from each of the elements. So, for instance, I remember that the Water would give her a necklace with seashells. And you would have this dance where every element would give something to the Priestess to wear on her body so the idea is that the body of the Goddess, so the Earth, is getting dressed again by the elements. So, representing that the Earth is now flourishing and all the elements in the world are allowing her body to be rich with what the different elements have to give her. Whether it comes from Water or Air or Fire or, what’s the one that I am forgetting, Air Fire, Water and Earth, Air. Yes, they are still four.
So some examples are, you know, that they would do during the ritual are planting seeds, painting eggs, egg hunting and so on. So, for instance, in this ritual that I was talking about, after the Goddess being, sort of, dressed up again by all the elements because nature is getting rebirth, she would have this sort of, mating – it’s not really a mating dance but more like a courting dance with the God. And it would just end with this kind of dance and after that, the Priestess and the Priest would give the participants some seeds so they could charge the seeds with what they wanted to grow in their lives. So there was this kind of representation of the seeds that get planted and give, you know, a certain result, a certain plant that flourishes with something that you want to achieve in your life. That you charge those seeds with that intent, plant them and as the plant grows the plant is imbued with your intent and that could also manifest in your life. So that was also part of the ritual so you would also have, quite often, not always but quite often you would also have a magical component, a magical element in these kinds of rituals. As, I didn’t mention earlier, in Paganism, I wouldn’t say that all Pagans practise Magick but I say that the majority of Pagans believe in Magick and quite a lot of them practice Magick. Or they have a belief system that encompasses Magick as something that is… the word ‘real’ would imply a long conversation but something that is part of their framework.
So, in ritual, there is a mimesis of the dynamics carried out by the male and female principles in nature which is something that I was expressing earlier. So, for instance, even in the [points to image] over there, as you can see, there is the pentacle. The pentacle is a symbol often worn by Pagans and it represents the four elements the upper point represents the Spirit. And then the circle around it represents the ongoing process of creation in the world and the perpetual nature, the eternity that binds all of these elements together. Also, as I said, there are also magical practices. For instance, charging and planting seeds for the intended purpose or egg painting to make something fertile or bring abundance or there would also be rituals for prosperity, fertility and new growth.
So even when it comes to Magick practice in Paganism you would have the different seasons associated with specific intents. So, for instance, Samhain would be associated with death. So it would be Halloween, around Halloween. If Samhain is associated with death that means that you can, you know, it is advisable perhaps, some Pagans would do Magick rituals to allow something that they don’t want in their life to die out. Whatever it is – a specific vice that they want to abandon or something about themselves or something about their lives that they want to leave behind. That would be the perfect time of the year just as the different moon phases for Pagans are associated to different intents.
So the waning moon is more about decreasing things and having things diminished and the waxing moon is about allowing things to grow. So if you want to bring something in your life that requires you to add something, something that is creative and adds something, the waxing moon is considered to be the right time, the right moon phase as opposed to the waning moon that is associated to decreasing and even warding off.
It is fascinating also how Pagans include this enchanted worldview, also the belief in Magick and the practice of Magick, which is considered not just to be a practice that is about achieving things in your life but also a practice that allows you to be in contact with the divine. Because if you have the framework if you have the belief system that everything is divine, you know, you don’t just have the god out there and here we are disconnected from the divine. Everything is divine so everything is interconnected. As a consequence, you have it that Magick is considered to be possible because it is leveraging on those connections in a way that allows for things, even that are, apparently at a distance and apparently not connected in the material world to affect a change because they are indeed connected on a subtle level.
This reminds me of a quote attributed to Galileo Galilei, which I often use in my social media, which says, things are connected by invisible threads; you cannot pick a flower without upsetting a star. It was an interesting belief to have in Renaissance Philosophy, especially Italian Renaissance Philosophy, this idea of things being interconnected. But even if you don’t see the tie that links two things that are not visibly connected, they are still affecting each other, even at a distance, even if you don’t see it, the change is going to occur.
So that’s what I wanted to say. And these are further readings in case you are interested. And I look forward to your questions.
[Applause]
For Pagans, it is important to celebrate the changes in the world like the seasons. Because of lived connections between what happens on the earth and in ourselves. In the Wiccan wheel of the year the Spring Equinox is called Ostara after an Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring and rebirth whose name is reflected in the Christian festival of Easter. Wicca sees the cycle of seasons as a story of birth, death and rebirth. Hence Ostara is the festival celebrating rebirth with images of eggs, bunnies and nature in full bloom.
Summary
REFERENCES
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.
FURTHER READINGS
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.
First uploaded 25 Mar 2022