Hey! Isn’t That Christmas Star a Pentacle?

by Ambrose Hawk

 
Isn’t that Star of Bethlehem a Pentagram?

 
Well, of course it is.
Just as the Saxon Eostra (or whatever spelling catches your fancy) lent her rabbit and name in English to Pasch. Also, the day of Christ’s Mass is actually the festival of the birthday of Mithra; many of the honorifics bestowed on Mother Mary were originally those of pagan goddesses, and St. Brigid arose from the desire to anoint the stories and virtues of the old Celtic Goddess. Far from shocking the Christian, these facts should affirm to him or her that there is, in truth, only one Deity to whom all paths which are followed in love and in humble sincerity must lead.

Festival Cycles, Christian Feasts and the Sabbats

by Ambrose Hawk

 
A Miscellany of Festivals : Christian Equivalents for the “Sabbats”
There’s a number of reasons why the “Wiccan” wheel of the year and the Christian Calendar don’t match. The most important is all too often overlooked.

Cerklicing

by Aldis Putelis

 
The Latvian god of fields and corn. Mentioned by a little known Jesuit under the name of Joannis Stribingius in his mission journey to Eastern Latvia in 1606. Describing the territory as having returned to paganism due to the lack of attention from the Christian church during the Livonian War, he lists the deities worshipped by these pagans under the leadership of “Pop” (curiously enough – a name used in Russian to designate an orthodox priest). The list comprises a god of sky/heavens (Latin “qui habet curam coeli”), then those of the earth, fertility and different particular animals.

Penda the Pagan

Royal sacrifice and a Mercian king
Alby Stone

 
Penda, a seventh-century king of Mercia, was a noted regicide. Indeed, his other achievements – his military campaigns and a crafty and unlikely alliance with the British king Cadwallon were instrumental in carving out Mercia as an independent kingdom and establishing it as a power to be reckoned with – were almost completely overshadowed by his reputation as a slayer of kings. As Penda was a pagan, and his alleged victims all Christian, it comes as no surprise to find that medieval chroniclers, mostly monks or Christian nobles, viewed his reign and deeds with horror and denigrated him at every opportunity. The reputation of his ally Cadwallon, himself a Christian, suffered by association: in his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, written in the early eighth century, Bede of Jarrow describes him as ‘a barbarian more savage than any pagan’ with ‘no respect for the newly established religion of Christ’ [1]. Bede’s invective was not tempered by the fact that Cadwallon was a Celt.