mangozeen: paganism

Showing posts with label paganism. Show all posts

Sunday, December 21, 2025

The Paganism Of The Christmas 2018

Twelve years ago I rose from sleep at 3:33 AM to view the winter solstice lunar eclipse. I climbed out onto the roof of the Fort Greene Observatory and lifted my eyes to the heavens. A sliver of silver topped the Earth’s satellite. I stripped naked to bathe in the reflection of the sun off the moon. The frost on my skin was the only human sacrifice within sight. After thirty seconds I retreated within the Observatory and shivered myself to sleep .

Today is also the shortest day of the year and this morning I woke at 7:14.

In 2018 I had moved from South Oxford Stree to Myrtle Avenue across the Fort Greene Park. On that winter solstice I climbed onto the roof at 7:15. The sun peeped over East Brooklyn at 7:16. The temperature was 31 F. I stripped off my nightwear and faced the sun naked. My skin surrendered to the cold by 7:17 and I retreated from the roof with haste, wishing I was dancing around a blazing bonfire with a pagan horde celebrating the shortest day of the year in languages no longer known to history, but settled for a return to a bef for the first morning of winter.

Few people in the modern age and even fewer Christians realize that Christmas had been lifted from the ancient Druid's Alban Arthan or the Lighting of the Shore celebration of the rebirth of the sun. The Celtic holiday feast also coincided with the final stages of fermentation of wine and beer.

My friend the ex-model from Paris abhorred Christmas as an orgy festival. Brigitte is a devout fundamentalist. To her the Bible is fact and she wrote on Facebook.

"Christmas is a disgusting pagan holiday that comes from Roman orgies where they would choose a torture scapegoats by forcing them to eat and indulge in all sorts of excess and then brutally murder them."

She later added, "Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reported before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators."

Sounds like a good time had by all.

So happy solstice one and all.

I wish I was drinking beer, but my beer-drinking days are over, so comrades one and all Happy Grianstad.

Friday, October 31, 2025

All Saints Day

Yesterday was the Catholic Church’s All Saint’s Day celebrated by the Vatican since the Fourth Century post-Jesus’ birth. This liturgical holiday commemorates thousands of known only to the Bearded All-Knowing Deity. Later in that millennium according to Wikipedia on 13 May 609 or 610, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs and created the feast of dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres. The date had been chosen to supplant the Roman pagan festival of Lemuria, during which malevolent and restless spirits of the dead were honored by the living.

Pope Gregory III switched this day of prayer to November 1 to coincide with the Celtic Day of the Dead, hoping for pagans to convert to the One True Faith. The Church was very adept at adopting pagan ways to attract followers.

As a devout Atheist I never viewed the Catholic saints as a connection to a non-existent Supreme Being. They and we are all just people. For better or worse, although I am drawn to Brigid of Kildare mythically based on an ancient pagan goddess with the same nam, a druid priestess whose temple was seized by the early Church to be a monastery and is associated with wisdom, poetry, healing, protection, blacksmithing, and domesticated animals. Her feast day coincides with Imbolc, a druid day of cleansing.

Over the years on her feast day February 1 I had gone to St. Patricks Cathedral on 5th Avenue to light a candle before her statue at the first apse to the left. I never pay for the candles. Sometime in the last century diocesan church officials took to covering on the statue on her holy day to prevent pagans from worshipping her. They never stopped me. I carried my own candles to acclaim her holy Soul. After all she had discovered how to make beer and if that’s not a miracle then what is.

Restem en Pacem.