Seeds of love

[TBAT are thrilled to present the first article  written by guest poster.]

The imagery of spring is sprouting up all over. In the latest installment of the Left Behind critique, Fred presented one of the manifold nonsense ideas in the book as an opening for those of us who want to break into the closed mindset of LaHaye & Jenkins believers. Although we want to free them in one fell swoop, Fred points out:

How this works is usually slower, requiring more patience. It’s like planting trees. Or like working in an ancient quarry — finding the cracks in the granite, pounding in the wedges, pouring in water and waiting for the expanding wood to do its work.

A Wiccan writer, Star Foster, recently posted something similar about her anticipation for the approaching Sabbat of Ostara:

Our skins have grown so tight over the winter that we’re irritable and on edge until we have the chance to bust out, to bloom, to send forth a joyful noise! … Like a bud swelling, I’m ready to explode into color and open my arms to warm breezes and blue skies.

Ostara, the name of the Wiccan celebration of the vernal equinox, comes from an old Anglo-Saxon goddess of the springtime or of the dawn named Eostre. The Anglo-Saxon monk Bede noted that during the process of Christianization in England, the people had transferred the goddess' name to the new Christian celebration of Easter, which occurred at about the same time as the older spring festival.

The Christian celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection occurred at this time of spring because it was immediately after Passover, the Jewish celebration of the exodus from Egypt. The date of Passover is based on the Hebrew lunisolar calendar, and as a result, Christians celebrate Easter on approximately the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox.

The equinox itself is the time when day and night are of equal length, in perfect balance. Days have been getting longer ever since the winter solstice, of course, but now they finally catch up with and overtake the nights. But the celebrations around this time of year aren't very much about the sun and moon; they're actually very earthy, with all the imagery of bunnies and eggs and things growing and bursting forth.

The celebrations are much more about agricultural concerns and very human needs and desires than about where the sun is.  (Of course, this is all from a Northern Hemisphere perspective; in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the autumn equinox, celebrated in Wicca as the harvest festival of Mabon. With such earthy, personal matters, though, I'm going to write from my own perspective.)

Depending on your latitude and climate, Ostara might be the time of preparing the fields, doing the planting, or the time that the first shoots start to show the promise of later bounty. In Wicca's mythological cycle, these processes are all celebrated at Ostara, along with the cheerfully reappropriated bunnies and eggs.

Wiccan mythology places a lot of emphasis on fertility, both literal and metaphorical, after all, and most Wiccans aren't shy about the bunnies and eggs being blatant fertility symbols, nor about celebrating the feeling that Star described above: like the ground and the plants and the animals, our bodies too are waking up after a long winter's sleep. The larger metaphorical theme of life's renewal makes the Jewish celebration of being freed from slavery and the Christian celebration of Jesus coming forth from the tomb a natural fit with the seasonal imagery of budding and germination and hatching.

Of course, everybody's so excited about this - and it is exciting! - but in the flurry of jelly beans and chocolate bunnies and pastel eggs, even nature-oriented Wiccans often miss how much dramatic change is going on. Chicks have to break the shell of their eggs to hatch, and seeds that germinate don't just break rocks - they have to split their own hull first.

We're all happy about the increasing sunshine, but sometimes the accompanying changes are harder for us to accept. Sometimes it feels like we're not just the chick that's hatching - we're the eggshell. Or, at least, the shell is a part of our life or our mindset being pecked at and cracked apart, and even if we want the result, the process isn't easy and it isn't comfortable.

This is how love works. Love transforms us from the inside out. It makes something inside you swell and move and never give up until it cracks open the old you and something new and full of life emerges.

It's like when you've been having an awful, furious argument, and then the other person finally gets through to you that your comfort comes at the price of afflicting him. The new realization blossoms inside you and splits open your prejudice, your stereotyping, your assumptions, until they fall away like the chaff they are. Your understanding and your empathy and ultimately your love change you, from the inside out.

Fred's right that this usually happens more slowly. There's another Christian celebration, a less well-known one, that's actually tied directly to the vernal equinox: the Annunciation, which was a life-changing piece of news for Mary if ever there was one. The process of pregnancy isn't just about birth: it lasts nine months, and likewise, although germination happens quickly, the growing wheat also takes more than that glorious moment of the hull splitting open to get all the way through to the harvest. But now, at Ostara, we celebrate because we know that process is starting again, and that's what matters. We know, too, that change in our lives isn't easy and is rarely instantaneous, but we know that it happens, and maybe we can feel it starting again right now.

The occurrence of the Annunciation in the middle of Lent is one of the few times that the Christian liturgical calendar really seems like a cycle. It's a reminder that Easter and Christmas are deeply, intimately related. Wicca, on the other hand, characterizes sacred time as explicitly cyclical: the Sabbats make up the Wheel of the Year, after all, and it is constantly turning and constantly coming back to the same points.

We know that the days will become shorter than the nights again at Mabon, but we know that after the Mabon there is also another Ostara coming. That knowledge gives me hope that even when the transformation of love seems to have stalled halfway, when it seems like the shell is too thick to crack, that even then I can believe in the process continuing, and I can work for it and with it.

Ostara is a celebration of the victory of light over darkness, of life over death, of that which is moving and growing over that which covers it up and holds it down. Ostara challenges us to believe that love can make huge transformations and even new life possible. It isn't easy to believe that. Sometimes it's hard not to reinforce the shell and ignore the chick, and it's hard to go down deep into yourself and plant the seeds and nurture them rather than staying on the surface and making more mud bricks to build the Pharaoh's walls. And it's even harder to do that for others.

As Mavis Staples sings, "Isolated and afraid / Open up, this is a raid. / I want to get it through to you: / You're not alone." We know that germination and hatching have destruction as the necessary accompaniment to change, even positive and amazing change like new growth and new life. We resist that change, often times, even when it comes from people who want to help us. And when we're struggling through those changes ourselves, and trying to offer help to others, and we keep getting rebuffed, it's easy to become jaded and give up.

But Ostara teaches me another response: planting seeds. My worship is a way of planting the seed of deity, and deity's love, within myself. I want deity to grow within me, to transform me from the inside out. And then I want to go out into the world and be a seed myself, a seed of deity's love that will transform the world from the inside out.

I want to be a chick making a change. Ostara teaches me that even when the shells of intolerance and cruelty and fear seem too tough for me to crack, that deity is within me, and within the world, and that deity's radical, transformative love is how I work in the world, pecking away at that shell, a little bit at a time. And the more that I celebrate deity in myself, and in everyone as I do at Ostara, the more I grow, the stronger I get, to peck a little bit more.

And as Fred suggests, I'm planting seeds, in myself and in the world, that will grow, with each Ostara, even though there are winters in between. I believe in the chick, and I believe in the seed, and I believe in the love I'm trying to embody. Ostara reminds me that even when it's scary and transformative, that love is the beginning of new life, of something beautiful and wonderful and worth every bit of effort.

 

by Literata

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[CZEdwards]

Oooo.... That is lovely. (Now I need to go think about it.)

[Raj]

First! I'm so excited, the rest of my post will be ALL CAPS!

[Raj]

CONGRATULATIONS, Literata!

And now, to read the post.

[Kit Whitfield]

And the more that I celebrate deity in myself, and in everyone as I do at Ostara, the more I grow, the stronger I get, to peck a little bit more.

I wonder if it's particularly good timing to have that resolution in spring? When everything seems new and beautiful and the cold is lifting and we have light on our skin, it's easier to feel joy ... and I've always believed that the best challenges to improve ourselves come when we have a foundation of joy and hope to build on - when they feel like aspirations rather than punishments.

[MercuryBlue]

Awesome, Literata. Got a link to that Mavis Staples song? I want to hear the rest.

I suspect I will be contemplating this while I help plant the garden. We moved all the bushes except the rosemary from the front to the sides of the house and then rototilled the front garden last weekend, rototilled the back garden the week before that, so this weekend is probably planting time.

Cute, Raj.

[MercuryBlue]

Better to contemplate New Year's Resolutions in the spring than the dead of winter, then?

[Deird, who just woke up]

This is fascinating and needs to be thought about...

(On a side note, Literata, I would like to offer you many hugs, chocolates, and other nice things, simply because YOU ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE EXISTS! Thank you! I get rather sick of all these people on the internet going "hey! summer solstice!" when I'm sitting there thinking "or... winter solstice?")

[syfr]

MercuryBlue,

March 25 used to be the first day of the New Year!

[MercuryBlue]

syfr: ...I knew that. Never understood it, though, because why start a year in the middle of a month?

*contemplates the concept of Ostara Resolutions*

[Andrew Glasgow]

@Raj: ROFLMAO

[Raj]

Literata,

I'm trying to educate myself about Wicca, but, as I suppose is to be expected about such a widespread (albeit minority) practice, there is some disagreement between sources. Could you perhaps recommend a few "Wicca for Dummies" sources? Your article makes me want to learn about it.

And Word! on acknowledging that the Southern Hemisphere's seasonal cycle is the opposite of that of the Northern.

[Kit Whitfield]

Literata will know better than I, but a good book on the history of Wicca as a religion is The Triumph of the Moon by Ronald Hutton. It's scholarly, comprehensive and dense, based on a lot of research. Hutton gives no credence to Wiccan myths that are historically accurate, such as the 'Burning Times' - he largely locates its origins in 19th century Romanticism - but he writes about it with respect as a positive modern religion.

[Literata]

Thanks, everybody!!! Deird, you're welcome! I have to admit, I had you in mind. Kit, I like the idea of Ostara resolutions, and I agree with you about the hopefulness.

MercuryBlue, I don't know how to do an iTunes link, but the song is Mavis Staples' recent "You Are Not Alone," which she also performed on the Colbert Report and at the Rally to Restore Fear and/or Sanity.

[Michael Mock]

Excellent. I don't have anything particularly on-topic to add, but I'm thrilled to see the site still active, and even more excited to see where it goes from here.

[Jason]

Off topic:

Since my blog has seemed to cause controversy among my family to the point that is personally painful for me here is what I am thinking of doing.

a) deleting my current blog
b) starting a brand new blog that has absolutely no reference to my name and is perhaps written under a pseudonym.
c) Not migrating any of my posts from the old one except for the Savage Nation ones, because I plan to continue those.
d) Only publicizing it through private e-mails to facebook friends who I know enjoyed the old ones and perhaps posting it here.
e) slightly rethinking my content
f) not breathing a word of its existence to my parents.

Do you think this would be doable or get me into more trouble?

[Andrew Glasgow]

@Mercuryblue: Why have months that don't coincide with the beginning and ending of seasons?

Of course in Phoenix, Arizona we have only two seasons, "This is nice, actually" and "OMGHOT!"

That said, despite being an atheist, I'm thinking of going to a public Ostara circle that a local pagan church is holding.

[Literata]

Raj,

Thank you for asking! Triumph of the Moon is an excellent source, but it will feel like extremely heavy lifting for someone not already in the subculture, because you'll spend the first third to half the book going, okay, so tell me about Wicca already, not all this other stuff. My favorite 101 resource is Scott Cunningham's pair of books, Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Living Wicca. That's sort of Generic Basic Wicca as it is most commonly practiced in the US today. Starhawk's Spiral Dance is still a classic and is an excellent introduction to some of the feminist approaches to Wicca. Finally, I'm fond of Deborah Lipp's works, including The Way of Four and The Study of Witchcraft: A Guidebook to Advanced Wicca.

I must warn you that the actual "for Dummies" book on Wicca is awful. Silver RavenWolf is an author who you'll see a lot of material from, but she's generally regarded as a hack saying stupid stuff to teenagers. I can go on and on about this, so I'll stop here for now and write more only if anybody else wants it.

[Literata]

Andrew, that's cool; FWIW, there are plenty of quasi-atheist Druids and some quasi- or outright-atheist Wiccans and other kinds of Pagans.

Shameless self promotion: anybody who is in the DC/Northern Virginia area and is interested can see me trying to put the ideas behind this article into action at the Ostara ritual this Sunday evening being sponsored by Sacred Circle bookstore in Alexandria, VA.

[Jarred]

For information on Wicca, I'd also recommend any and all of the following:

Witchcraft Today, by Gerald Gardner
The Meaning of Witchcraft, by Gerald Gardner
Witchcraft for Tomorrow, by Doreen Valiente
Keepers of the Flame, by Aradia Lynch and Morganna Davies
High Priestess, by Patricia Crowther
Wiccan Roots, by Philip Heselton
Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration, by Philip Heselton

And great post, Literata.

[truth is life]

Silver RavenWolf is an author who you'll see a lot of material from, but she's generally regarded as a hack saying stupid stuff to teenagers.

Well, IANAW, but that name seems like a big warning sign for that sort of problem, at least from what I do know.

Being from Houston, I feel more like Andrew Glasgow about the seasons, though. There is "Oh, this is really hot," "This is kind of nice, actually," and "oh, this is a bit chilly". (Sometimes more than "a bit," but rarely). The traditional spring festivals are more like summer festivals here, unless they happen really early, in which case they're mid-spring festivals.

[Jarred]

Being from Houston, I feel more like Andrew Glasgow about the seasons, though.

One of the interesting things is that while focusing on seasonal cycles is probably the most common way to interpret and work the Wheel of the Year, there are other ways to work it as well. I know Wiccan covens who choose to focus on the Wheel of the Year as it relates to the sun's progress through the zodiac or as a retelling of the mythic cycle. Covens in geographic locations where the seasonal patterns are radically different (even when inverted 180 degrees) from the four seasons of Northern Europe or the northern part of North America often find these other interpretations more convenient.

[Jarred]

Well, IANAW, but that name seems like a big warning sign for that sort of problem, at least from what I do know.

Magical names are a funny thing, and the reasons for picking them can get interesting. The first time a friend seriously suggested I adopt the name of a particular god for my magical name (a rather common practice in some circles, actually), I was a bit taken aback.

[cyllan]

I'm going to disagree with Literata (and Jarred) and say that if you are looking for a high-level perspective on "Wicca in the U.S." it is worth skimming through "To Ride a Silver Broomstick." It is utterly awful, (and please pick up a used copy instead of paying for a new one) but it will give you a handle on some of the fluffier, more "ooh, I'm an edgy witch!" pockets of Wicca that are out there. Ms. Ravenwolf is a hack who writes for rebellious teens, but she writes and sells an awful lot of books.

[Albanaeon]

Bring on the hot weather. OMGHOT! is usually about the time I start feeling comfortable, but a misspent youth digging up interesting rocks in the desert will do that to you. At least that's what I tell myself.

I parallel, I've been feeling more in tune with the Yin/Yang cycle this year than usual. Winter Solstice in particular felt "Heavy" this year, so I am definitely enjoying the upsurge of Yang right now.

[Jarred]

I'm going to disagree with Literata (and Jarred) and say that if you are looking for a high-level perspective on "Wicca in the U.S." it is worth skimming through "To Ride a Silver Broomstick." It is utterly awful, (and please pick up a used copy instead of paying for a new one) but it will give you a handle on some of the fluffier, more "ooh, I'm an edgy witch!" pockets of Wicca that are out there. Ms. Ravenwolf is a hack who writes for rebellious teens, but she writes and sells an awful lot of books.

You do have a point here. This is especially true if your goal is to understand Wiccan friends who tend to follow the SRW crowd. Personally, when I'm interested in Wicca at all, my own interests lead in a different direction. My reading recommendations are clearly biased by that. ;)

[MercuryBlue]

SPRING IS HERE. How do I know? I'm neither showering nor dressing nor undressing and I am not wearing socks.

I can't wait for the garden to come up. We have the awesomest pizza recipe. Slice cherry tomatoes in half and scatter across rolled-out pizza dough smeared with olive oil, add slices of garlic cloves, salt, and pepper, and toss in the oven. BEST THING EVER.

*is about to have veggie boli noms*

[Sixwing]

LOL Raj. X3

I've actually been starting a research cycle on Wicca myself, so the book recs and the article are both timely - thank you!

I have decided I will not actually change faiths (what a concept) until I have some other stuff sorted (and that stuff contains deliberate and attainable goals, so I'm not just pushing it off forever, either.) But that does not mean I can't start my research. The Wicca for Solitary Practitioners guidebook is one of the first two books I was lent.

[Brin (not Meir)]

>Of course in Phoenix, Arizona we have only two seasons, "This is nice, actually" and "OMGHOT!"<

That's nothing. Here in Southern Ontario, we have (by New Jersey sensibilities) five seasons:
Early spring (March 15th - May 31st)
Late spring (June 1st - September 30th)
Autumn (October 1st - October 31st)
Winter (November 1st - December 31st)
Hyper-winter (January 1st - March 14th)

I'm not sure quite what the reverse (New Jersey seasons by Ontarian standards) would look like, but it would probably involve late autumn and hyper-summer (June 1st - September 15th, maybe?). I do know when you're used to 100F temperatures for pretty much all of July and most of August, being able to go for a long walk in the summer without worrying about heat exhaustion is weird.
Can't imagine what it's like living in the southern US. I've been to Disney World a few times, but (except for 9/11, but it didn't seem any different then) always in the "winter", which climate-wise corresponds to New Jersey late spring/Ontarian summer-verging-on-hyper-summer. I didn't mind the heat then, but did wonder why anyone would want to live in a place where it's mosquito season all year round.

[Angelia Sparrow]

If you want something very simple, Step into the Circle by Rowena Wishom is written for the middle-grade child, but several adults have found my copy helpful because it breaks things way down. I understand she's working on a series of make-and-do books for the seasons, each book covering 2 Sabbats.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Paganism has its moments and is useful in getting a handle on the terminology of the subculture.

Cunningham's Solitary Practitioner is good.

Wheel of the Year (Beginners Guide) by Teresa Moorey and Jane Brideson is a really useful one.

I'm a nondeistic pantheist who rides the Wheel of the Year. And these are what I use.

[Amaryllis]

Lovely post, Literata, and thanks for being the one to break the ice. So to speak.

I'm curious as to why you say the Christian liturgical calendar doesn't seem cyclical to you. I grew up Catholic, so that Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Lent-Easter-Pentecost-OrdinaryTime seems as much The Way Of Things as Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.

Is it because the liturgical seasons aren't formally tied to the calendar seasons? Which is why I also found this interesting:

Of course, this is all from a Northern Hemisphere perspective; in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the autumn equinox, celebrated in Wicca as the harvest festival of Mabon.

Because the Christian feasts have acquired quite a bit of Northern-Hemisphere seasonality, of course. What's it like to celebrate Christmas or Easter in the South? are all those "light shineth in darkness" and "wheat that springeth green" associations still, well, associated?

If I understand you correctly, your Ostara season is an Australian Wiccan's Mabon, which seems to fit with what I understand to be the Wiccan stress on personal experience rather than traditions with any claim to universality.

A Christian on December 25 can go around singing
Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight!
Christmas in lands of the fir-tree and pine,
Christmas in lands of the palm-tree and vine,

but there'd be no Wiccan equivalent: if you're living through the summer solstice, it makes no sense to be celebrating the winter?

As for local seasons, here in Maryland (and also new Jersey- *waves at Brin*) we have three actual seasons-- summer, fall, winter-- and then there's that period we're in now, where on any given day it might be winter, or summer, or even something that might be spring, depending on its whim.

As a local poet once put it:
What kind of a system is it, please,
When in March you parch and in May you freeze?

Today was actually quite warm and pleasant, if a little cloudy.

Also, on unexpected spring blessings: a friend gave us some potted hyacinths last year. After their bloom was over, we put the pot outside and promptly forgot about it. I looked down from the front steps yesterday and there they were, still in their pot, in full purple bloom.

Love will come again like hyacinths? Well, why not?

[Mmy]

@Amaryllis: I grew up Catholic, so that Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Lent-Easter-Pentecost-OrdinaryTime seems as much The Way Of Things as Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.

I too grew up Catholic and so have a sense of a cyclical liturgical calendar but I gathered from what other people have posted here that that is not true of all Christian denominations.

[Mink]

Thank you very much for the post, Literata!

Regarding Silver RavenWolf, I've heard that she's a good read for a basic introduction, but then you go on to other authors for what could be called the 'theology' of Wiccan. I have very little experience with her myself, however, and what I know about Wicca is rather miniscule.

Jason: I'm sorry your family is causing you irritation about your blog. I for one would like to continue reading your Savage Nation savaging, and your other stuff as well. Your plan seems sound, though you may wish to consider if any of them will ask if you are continuing to blog.

[Amaryllis]

@Jason: I hope you continue with your blog in one format or another, but Mink's advice is good: consider what you'll say if you're ever asked directly.

Of course, if your family is like mine, they won't ask what they don't want to know, but you know your own family best.

Also, since we're weighing in lately on blogging "looks" around here, can I make a personal observation? I thought your blog was interesting, but I found that your white text on a wavy dark background, although it looked great, was very hard on my aging nearsighted eyes. Dark text on a lighter background is easier to read.

[Winter]

From an anime series I love that has absolutely nothing to do with this conversation: If it cannot crack its eggshell, a chick will die without being born. We are the chick. This world is our egg. If we cannot crack the world's shell, we will die without being born. SMASH THE WORLD'S SHELL! FOR THE SAKE OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION!

I'm also looking forward to hot weather. I'm tired of having cold feet all the time and being generally cold even when the sun's out.

[ShifterCat]

@Jason: If you do move your blog, my advice would be to keep all of your old posts, not just the Michael Savage ones. You might find them good for later reference, or to look back on and think about how your views and writing style have evolved.

@Literata: I just wanted to mention that I loved the post on your blog eviscerating Marianne Williamson's gender essentialism. People who do that "oh, if you're not conforming to socialized gender roles, you're really just denying your true self" bullshit bug the hell out of me.

[MadGastronomer, who is very tired]

I suggest Janet and Stewart Farrar's A Witches' Bible as well, to describe the more formal and elaborate rituals of the British Traditions (Gardnerian Wicca, Alexandrian Wicca, and British Witchcraft). The analogy is something like British Traditions are to American Traditions as Catholic/High Church Anglican are to Protestant. Indeed, some of the really highly ritualized traditions are sometimes called High Episcopagan.

I personally do not recommend Gardner's books to someone just looking to learn a little about what Wicca is. They're very dated and don't have a lot to do with what Wicca is now, and I find them much more interesting as a look into the history and development of Wicca. Cunningham, Starhawk and the Farrars give, IMO, a much better grounding in the general spectrum of Wicca as it stands. Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler is also interesting, as a sort of sociological snapshot of a cross-section of Neopagan communities in the late 70s. It describes a lot of different Neopagan traditions and groups.

I'm trying to work up a piece to contribute that will talk a bit about seasonal cycles in other climates, for those who are interested in that.

I'm told that there's actually some interesting stuff going on in Australia, where some people stick to a European Wheel of the Year, name-wise, and some people flip it around, and groups have to stop and talk about this sort of thing. Likewise, there's some debate about the Quaters, or at least a lot of variation in opinions. The traditional associations for the Elements and Quarters are North - Earth, East - Air, South - Fire, West - Water, which comes out of Northern Europe, obviously. So some Australian groups swap Earth and Fire, and some don't, and some rotate the system 180, and some don't, and any time there's a ritual with a bunch of people from different traditions and groups, they have to stop and talk about it.

(Personally, when I lived on the East Coast of Florida, and the ocean was 15 minutes from my front door, I always called Water to the East, because it was to the East, but I certainly got some funny looks for that, too. There are Prescriptivists in every religion and school of thought.)

[hapax]

One thing I find very frustrating about most of the recommended Wicca books is that they go out of print VERY quickly. I believe it was Jarred who sent me that same list of titles (at my request) a couple of years ago so I could do something about the terrible selection of Wiccan titles at my library, and not a one of them was available through any of our approved vendors.

Unfortunately, they aren't generally available for inter-library loan, either. Wicca books -- along with dream interpretation, ASVAB prep, and smoking cessation -- are among the most commonly stolen titles from public libraries.

(Also Bibles, for some bizarre reason; this really puzzles me, since the Gideons and similar organizations are basically chasing people down to force a free Bible into their hands...)

[Carrie]

Beautiful post. Really lovely.

In addition, I'm so excited to see that this new set up is both working out and producing such quality material for me to read. Now I have TWO intelligent religious discussion blogs to read, not just one! Hurrah!

[hapax, who is perhaps a bit cranky after spending her entire "day off" pulling weeds]

I have ... non-standard reactions to the cycle of seasons.

I don't like light. I never have. I am more comfortable in the dark, and find light physically painful. I associate daylight with labor and strife, and darkness signals to me rest and peace.

Sunrise does not make me think of rebirth, but of shattering; sunset and twilight are my most sacred times. (Yes, the Phos hilaron is m favorite hymn) My vision of Heaven, where "the light perpetual shines", is of velvety blue-black highlighted by a scattering of stars.

If I were to embrace one of the Pagan traditions, it would undoubtedly be a chthonic one.

So to me, Spring never means "renewal", but dread: seasonal allergies! The doubled work load to prepare for the summer busy season! Inevitable expenses, due to a confluence of holidays and annual scheduling! (Okay, there's basketball, but it's not enough to make up for the rest)

Autumn is my season of restoration, thanksgiving, and grace.

Needless to say, most of the "traditional" associations of the liturgical seasons ring sour to my ear. Perhaps I should move to the Southern hemisphere, where my instincts would be more in tune with the seasons.

[Deird, whose culture thrives on cognitive dissonance]

What's it like to celebrate Christmas or Easter in the South? are all those "light shineth in darkness" and "wheat that springeth green" associations still, well, associated?

Um... kinda? But not really?

It's odd - because on the one hand, Christmas is really hot and always has been, but we also have several hundred years of tradition meaning that we know for a fact that Christmas comes with snow and fur trees, and so forth.

Which means you get really hot days, and Christmas cards with snow. And Santa Claus guys sweltering through the heat in extremely warm red outfits.

(I noticed this recently, actually, with my new cookbook. It's the first definitely Australian cookbook I've ever had - and one of the chapters is "Christmas food". I was completely weirded out by it, and thought none of the food sounded right at all, but it took me a few days to realise why: it's because it's actual Christmas food for Australia, of the "seafood and other hot-day stuff" variety, rather than being traditional wintery Christmas food.
And despite having eaten summery Christmas food my whole life, I still expected a bunch of "Christmas recipes" to be wintery food...)

[kisekileia]

To expand on Brin's description of Southern Ontario: Today was the first day of early spring for me, because it was the first day when it was warm enough to wear my leather coat instead of my wool one--around 10 C/50 F. Not much is growing yet, but the snow has mostly melted, and it's warmer than it's been in several months.

As much as I love Canada culturally, I'd definitely swap climates with, say, the Carolinas if I could. I'd love to have everything green and growing and warm in March.

[Literata]

Amaryllis, you raise some good points. I grew up in a highly liturgical Christian tradition (when I went to college, I was surprised that not everyone else knew the names of the Sundays between Epiphany and Lent by their Latinate names), so I have a good sense of that as a temporal cycle, but on the other hand, it doesn't feed directly back into itself, certainly not as strongly as the Wiccan one does, for my interpretation(s) of it. Dying and rising again is a one-time thing, after all (yes, for all time, but it's not literally happening again every spring). And I always thought the short period between Epiphany and Lent was ironic, since in our temporal experience it gives short shrift to the life and ministry of Christ - we have to wait until Ordinary Time to really get to all that. Possibly it also seems less cyclical to me because it's not a cycle I can identify with; I don't experience the events Jesus did, but I experience the events of the Wiccan mythology.

For me, the Quarters - the directions/classical "Elements" (capital is deliberate) are tied to the Wheel of the Year, and the Elements are abstract enough that I can invoke Water in the west even though I live on the East Coast of the US. If I were in the Southern Hemisphere, the system would rotate 180 degrees for me, but I can understand why other people choose to do it differently.

I agree with MadG's assessment of Gardner, and the recommendation of the Farrars' works if you want to see what the Catholic/Orthodox rough equivalent is in Wicca. Sadly, SRW is probably a better light intro to average teen takes on Wicca, but I'd rather just send you on a Wiki walk or to the About.com section, both of which are decent and not so fluffy or obnoxious. There's also Wicca for the Rest of Us, a website originally devoted to the anti-SRW approach, but its 101 section is reasonably good.

hapax, good perspective. I'm also iffy about summer itself (for me, light is good, heat is bad) so I'll have to see how much I take that into account in my subsequent posts. Angelia, I'll have to look at those! Thanks, ShifterCat and everybody!

[P J Evans]

jason, you might want to start a new one, and make it not-searchable by Google (it's in the privacy part of the settings dashboard at WordPress; mine is currently set that way). Using a pseudonym is also a good idea (it isn't unusual; there's no requirement that you use your legal name).

[Cliff]

@Andrew Glasgow:
Hello, fellow Phoenician!

Spring is an interesting time here, because as pretty much everyone else in the nation is celebrating the return of the sun and warmth and leaves and so on, I feel like I'm entering a period of mourning. I won't be able to poke my head out of the apartment without tremendous pain until mid-October.

Also, thank you for the post, Literata.

[onthethreshhold]

Winter, yes! I was thinking that all through the article.

hapax, I have somewhat similar reactions to day and summer, due to my skin's reaction to heat. It's.....not fun.

MadG, welcome back! Are you sticking around? (Have you been back and I haven't noticed?)

And thank you Literata for the post, it's a great start for the site and cool in it's own right.

[MadGastronomer, who is very tired]

@onthethreshold I'm still mostly lurking, so it's not surprising you missed the two comments I've made so far. I'm around, though. Thanks!

[Nenya]

Literata, what a great start to the group blog. :D I eagerly await anything more you have to post. This one is making me go "Hmmm!" a lot. The part about change and the effort that goes into it and how that can be difficult even if you want the good results is really, really applicable to my life right now. And I'm loving that it's a tradition with which I'm not that familiar, but that people are reccing books all over the place so I can read up on it... (I say I'm an agnostic panentheist sorta-Christian, but I am kinda sorta looking for other rituals or traditions that ring more true to me than the crucifixion narrative, so.)

And of course I do have "love is come again like wheat arising green" in my head now--I was raised in a church that was so low-church we didn't celebrate Christmas or Easter, but my big-sister-of-the-heart is Episcopalian & sends me Easterthings every year. :)

[Skyknight]

Eostre...? That sounds quite a bit like "Astarte", actually (well, so do "Easter" and "Esther"...). This makes me wonder how much linguistic drift was going on from Mesopotamia to Britain when. Especially since you can find "Eos" in there--the Hellenic goddess of the dawn. I don't suppose we have any pre-Christian Frankish dawn/birth deities with a name that could be contorted from Astarte, do we?

[redcrow]

>>>Bring on the hot weather.

*shudders*
It was a horrible summer in Russia last year - with peat fires, forest fires, smock poisonings and no rain for weeks. So, okay, bring on the hot weather, as long as you don't bring it over here, okay?

Winter - exactly the speech that started to recite itself in my head the second I read about chicks and eggshells.

Glad to see you're back, MG.

[redcrow]

("Smog", of course, not "smock". Sorry.)

[Elizabby]

(On a side note, Literata, I would like to offer you many hugs, chocolates, and other nice things, simply because YOU ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE EXISTS! Thank you!")

AMEN!

@Amaryllis: I grew up Catholic, so that Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Lent-Easter-Pentecost-OrdinaryTime seems as much The Way Of Things as Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.

I too grew up Catholic and so have a sense of a cyclical liturgical calendar but I gathered from what other people have posted here that that is not true of all Christian denominations.

I'm Anglican, married to an Orthodox, so to us as well in both traditions the year is very cyclic to us. And I think Easter and Christmas *are* intrinsically linked, although I prefer Easter - less distraction from the spiritual meaning that I enjoy celebrating in the season.

But for complex reasons I'm currently attending a Baptist church and they don't seem to know anything about the Liturgical calendar at all. Which I think is a shame.

@Dierd - yeah, I know what you mean about Christmas food. Every year while my grandmother lived we forced ourselves to eat the whole Christmas turkey/ham/pudding thing, even when it was over 40 degrees C. Once my mother was in charge (she's Vietnamese and Buddhist) we had much saner, albeit less traditional, Christmas family gatherings. Actually, we now usually celebrate Christmas on Boxing Day, as all the kids are married now and tend to spend Christmas with our more traditional in-laws. My mother couldn't give a rat's what day we all get together, as long as she gets to give outrageous numbers of presents to the grandkids - that part never changes!

@MadG - welcome back! I was sorry to hear that you left, but glad you are back!

[Andrew Glasgow]

@the southern Ontarians (Ontarioans?):

I know how that is, I grew up in Buffalo, NY. Kurt Vonnegut held that upstate New York and surrounding regions (i.e including Southern Ontario) had six seasons, Summer, Fall, Locking, Winter, Unlocking, and Spring.

@Cliff: Because of heat, sun, or pollen?

[Raj]

Thanks, Literata, Kit, Jarred, and cyllan for the recommendations. It didn't occur to me that there would literally be a "Wicca for Dummies", but I wouldn't use that as a learning resource anyway. I think the "For Dummies" books are fine for learning new skills, but for understanding spiritual matters that are More Complicated Than That (usually?), probably not so much.

Among many other things, I want to learn whether Wicca celebrates, as I do, the beauty of darkness and cold as well as the beauty of warmth and light. Literata?

[Raj]

Huh; there's a Wicca 101 course being advertised in the sidebar.

[MadGastronomer, who is very tired]

As a matter of fact, Raj, it does. Try looking up Dark Moon rituals.

[Literata]

Raj - absolutely. One of the first things that helped me, and one of the things I still love most about Wicca, is that it tends to emphasize balance, and the importance of both parts of any polarity. Of course, since this is an important principle to me, I focus more of my personal theaology on that as well, but I think it's fair to say that in Wicca in general there's much less tendency to take any polarity or spectrum and say that one side is "good" and the other is "bad." (It's almost too bad that I started this series now, rather than at Samhain (Halloween) or in the winter festivals.)

Since Wicca is rooted in nature, it recognizes that night and winter are just as necessary for life as day and summer. It's easy for people to have psychological and physiological problems when they live in areas with almost no night, just as much as when they live in areas with almost no day. Plants and animals depend on winter and night in similar ways. Wiccans tend to emphasize the ideas of rest and turning inward as the benefits of darkness and winter; there are times that we need to be inside our own shells, to use my metaphor above. Neither darkness nor light is necessarily good in and of itself; both are valuable for the advancement of life.

And even though Wicca generally retains the connection between darkness, cold, and death, that too is not necessarily negative. Many Wiccans believe in reincarnation in some sense (I'm agnostic on this point), so death isn't necessarily seen as an ending or a source of existential fear. Like winter, it's a necessary part of life.

Those are ways that I see darkness and cold as beautiful - at least as beautiful as light and heat! Does that help? As I said, I can go on and on, so I'll stop here for now. Oh, and anyone who wants to know more about Wicca from my point of view and practice is welcome to email me off-board at literatahurley at gmail dot com. I'm no authority, but I'm happy to share what I've got.

[Ruby]

PJ: jason, you might want to start a new one, and make it not-searchable by Google (it's in the privacy part of the settings dashboard at WordPress; mine is currently set that way). Using a pseudonym is also a good idea (it isn't unusual; there's no requirement that you use your legal name).

I would recommend a pseudonym, too. That's what I do...for the opposite reasons as Jason. My parents could not care less what Christian movies and books I make fun of, but I don't like the idea of my blog coming up with a Google search of my real name, or being spottable by other relatives, etc.

[Mmy]

Chiming in to agree with PJ and Ruby. A pseudonym not only makes it harder for your relatives to spot your work it also creates a wall between the you who posts and the you who applies for a job. Many of the employers who do a google on you when you apply don't care about your political/religious opinions they do care about whether your opinions would seep over into your work.

If you have already established the fact that you keep a wall of separation between your personae then your employer is less likely to care about your private opinions (given that the employer even finds out about them.P

[Jarred]

@MadGastronomer: I personally do not recommend Gardner's books to someone just looking to learn a little about what Wicca is. They're very dated and don't have a lot to do with what Wicca is now, and I find them much more interesting as a look into the history and development of Wicca.

It depends on the Wiccans you talk to. ;) As I said, where my interest in Wicca lie, Gardner is still considered essential reading. And seekers are actively discouraged from reading the Farrar book. To each their own.

I grant you, the Wiccans most people are most likely to run into would agree with your sentiments, though.

@Hapax: I don't remember what books I originally recommended to you. I know that the current list all contains books that were in print at least two years ago (that's when I picked up my latest copy of WT and TMoW.) But they're also published by houses that may not be widely carried by distributors....

[Jarred]

On the topic of the Christian calendar, I would note that some denominations and many "independent" churches don't pay much heed to any sort of calendar. The Baptists are notorious for this, for example, as my college friends (Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics) were all surprised that I never observed Lent.

[Jarred]

@Raj: Among many other things, I want to learn whether Wicca celebrates, as I do, the beauty of darkness and cold as well as the beauty of warmth and light.

Indeed. Wicca is very much about balance, so everything gets celebrated in its proper place.

One of the less popularized images of the Wiccan god today is in his role of the Lord of Death and What Lies Beyond. It's an image that I personally find myself strongly drawn to.

[Albanaeon]

@Jarred. That sort of thing is what drew me to Taoism as well. The idea of a continuous cycle where everything is balanced with each other is very appealing to me. It implies both a simplicity and a complexity to life.

[renniejoy]

Raj - IANAW, but I recently found these books, focusing specifically on night energies and deities, quite fascinating...

Nocturnal Witchcraft: Magick After Dark,

Gothic Grimoire

I flipped through a third book by the same author, Nocturnicon: Calling Dark Forces and Powers, but I'm too much of a wimp to want to work with the kinds of dark spirits he talks about in this one... :(

Some of the Amazon reviewers of Nocturnal Witchcraft recommend Shadow Magick Compendium: Exploring Darker Aspects of Magickal Spirituality, FWIW.

IMO, the two authors, Konstantinos and Raven Digitalis, are not talking about the same thing. Night=/=shadow.

OTOH, I personally lean toward fluffy bunniness, and I don't actually practice ritual magic, so heaps of salt are in order here. :)

[Lila]

Yesterday it became officially springtime at my house...I pulled the first tick off myself. (Not attached yet, fortunately.)

It's totally worth it to be warm and surrounded by flowers. I love spring.

MG, good to see you!

[Rakka]

People talk about spring and we get more snow. It's been a wonderful winter, snowy and cold and long, but would it be too much to ask for it to be over maybe before April? It's far too early to speak of waking earth yet. Our spring celebration tends to be in May. I'll pour mead when the leaves are budding in trees.

[Neohippie]

Hello, non-Wiccan pagan here (I used to be Wiccan, but have drifted into a sort of liberal Asatru-ish... thing).

Anyways, I find it perfectly appropriate to adapt seasonal celebrations to your own local climate. I've very much a proponent of learning about your local ecology as much as possible, and I try to incorporate LOCAL seasonal things into my celebrations (sorta like Lila's tick... only nicer). I think it's important to pay attention to nature in my own habitat rather than following what some book written by someone thousands of miles away has to say about what the holiday means.

For me (in Texas), Ostara is when the bluebonnets are in bloom, the mockingbirds have started singing, and it's pretty much our last chance for mild weather before the BURNING HOTNESS comes.

Oh, and also it's time to plant my tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, and other heat-loving crops.

If you live somewhere else, then I think it's perfectly smart and good to adapt it to your own habitat and climate. Eating wintery foods in Australia in December would seem really odd to me.

But that's just my approach to paganism, since I am a nature lover and really want to get out there and experience the seasons in a hands-on way, rather than thinking about nature as some sort of theoretical construct.

Oh, also perhaps it should be noted that this equinox comes right after a "Super Full Moon" tonight. Neat, huh? (And last Yule was during a solar eclipse... which was also really neat.) I certainly plan to get out there and at least have a look tonight.

As for books on Wicca, Scott Cunningham is where I started out, and I still have his books ("A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner" and "Living Wicca") even though I'm no longer Wiccan (and sold my Silver Ravenwolf and Buckland books a long time ago). I also still have The Witch's Bible by the Farrars, which has some nice, meaty philosophical stuff that make it worthwhile even if you don't care for all the high ritual they're into.

[Nick]

"The equinox itself is the time when day and night are of equal length, in perfect balance."

Ah, no.

It seems like it should be, doesn't it? But no. Those are equiluxes, and the equilux already happened, I think it was Friday, but some time last week anyway.

An equinox is a moment, twice per year, when the Sun is in the same plane as the equator. We often use the word colloquially for the whole day in which this occurs (which this year will be March 20 and September 23)

[Raj]

You know what I really admire about you Wicca types? Your skill in making all that woven rattan furnit-

Oh. Wait.

*runs from rattan-wielding Wiccans*

[Literata]

*lol* at Raj. Another joke like that and we'll make *you* the Wicker Man. (Kidding!)

Nick - duly noted. I'm sorry that I wasn't aware of the difference. How much difference in time is possible between the equilux and equinox, though? I think they would still occur close enough together that Wiccan mythology would conflate them.

[Literata]

Wait a minute - would the equilux coincide with the equinox for an observer at the Tropic of Cancer? *thinks furiously about geography bits never taught in school* Is this conflation a relic of the simplification that everybody in the Northern Hemisphere lives at about 30-40 degrees north, give or take a bit? (Like they have on the star chart thingies you get at the Smithsonian?)

[anamardoll]

This is so beautiful, thank you. I'm something of a Wiccan myself, and it's so nice to find this really affirming post - it's just lovely. Thank you.

[Rupaul]

@Skynight,
Some linguists think that Phonenician made its way into Germanic languages, notably the whole "changing tense by changing a vowel in the middle" thing: ride, rode, think, thunk :) which is a feature of semitic languages.

I'm not sure if Mesopotamian is semitic, but there might be a connection there somehow.

[Izzy]

Oooh, morning.

Loving this post--thank you!

I'm actually okay with the cold and the darkness, or would be if I could stay inside more during same*. It's a nice season of resting and letting things be. That said, I could use a little less of it, and am very excited to see the crocuses coming out at this point. (Also, I can wear skirts again! I lose SAN when I can't show a little leg.)

I also remember my part of California, where we *basically* had four seasons, only spring was shorter and Winter and Summer were really Rain and Fire. After June or so, there wouldn't be many weeks without at least one day of smoke and haze. The rain would just be ending about now, and it'd be somewhere in the sixties, and around April or so everything would sort of explode in green.

*One of my current pet Things is that, during times of inclement weather, everyone who physically can telecommute should be allowed to do so. Not only would it give them a rest, but it would mitigate the pit of Hell that all forms of transportation tend to become, so people who actually did have to go into work would also have it a bit easier.

[Raj]

Morning, Izzy! Hey, nice legs!

[Nick]

Literata, yes, the equilux varies depending on where you live. I should have said that because obviously most Slacktivist readers won't live where I do. In Sydney, Australia for example, it won't be until the middle of the week.

I found a nice web site with pictures to explain why it's like that, but I've lost it. The essential part is that we consider it "daytime" when we can see the sun. Sunrise occurs long (some minutes) before the centre of the sun is above the horizon, and sunset occurs long after the centre of the sun is below the horizon. Nature conspires to exaggerate this, since even the light itself bends in our atmosphere in such a way as to give us more daylight rather than less.

No, I don't think the tropic of cancer is relevant. Because the offset is caused by the apparent size of the sun and by the refraction of the atmosphere, it wouldn't be (unless by amazing coincidence) neatly cancelled by geography.

This whole topic falls neatly under the "more complicated than that" banner. Apparent day length is controlled by a bunch of physical processes (like the rotation of the planet, axial tilt) and human factors (sunrise is a more striking event than "the centre of the sun is above the horizon") and mixtures of the two.

[Literata]

Nick, okay, thanks. Yeah, we're past the equilux here too, but only by about two days. I'm aware of the "When is it daylight?" issue. (I actually have this nifty widget that shows three different kinds of twilight in addition to sun "rise" and "set" plus moon stats.) I'm still going to stick to my rule of thumb that the equinox is "technical astronomical thing (which I now know more precisely, thank you!) meaning that it is roughly the middle of when the days are getting longer and also roughly when nights and days are very roughly equal." Also known as: Yay! I saw sun today! :) It's in the same family as my essential religious observance of going outside to catch the first snowflakes on my tongue.

[Raj]

Literata,

Most astronomical phenomena are Moar Complicaytud Than That. Think you know what a "day" is? Iz Moar Complicaytud Than That. The day/night cycle is caused by the Earth's axial rotation - we all learned that in first grade (some of us earlier) - but the duration of daylight is affected by the Earth's movement along its orbit. But hey, we're lucky. On Mercury, the interplay of rotation and orbital movement causes double sunrises.

[Izzy]

Thanks, Raj!

Y'know, if I was going to write SF, there could be a bit of interest in how pagan colonists adapted the Wheel of the Year to different planets. Of course, that would have required me to have paid attention in class back in The Day. Still, interesting concept.

[Lila]

Izzy: Babylon 5 had a subplot about that, way back when.

[truth is life]

Y'know, if I was going to write SF, there could be a bit of interest in how pagan colonists adapted the Wheel of the Year to different planets. Of course, that would have required me to have paid attention in class back in The Day. Still, interesting concept.

A related issue, which I believe is somewhat more commonly considered, is what Muslim colonists/astronauts do. After all, if you're supposed to face Mecca...and Mecca is somewhere "up there"...what do you do? It's actually worse in low Earth orbit, because your relative position to Mecca is constantly changing. So far, I think the solution has boiled down to facing the Earth, or towards the Earth, or (if sufficiently distant) the sky or other designated more-or-less correct direction.

[hapax]

@truth and life: determining sunrise and sunset for religious rituals is difficult too.

I have a vague memory of a group of imams trying to figure out when an astronaut could eat during Ramadan.

[Madhabmatics]

There's an excellent Sci Fi duology by Donald Moffet set in a future where Islam became the dominant religion. They are having an election to see who will become the head honcho of the galaxy and it comes down to two candidates, both of whom are wanting to gain political capital by making the Hajj - only, one of the candidates is from Alpha Centauri and so the trip would take him longer than the election.

So he decides to zbir rnegu gb Nycun Pragnhev.

One thing I absolutely adore about the series is the fact that he portrays Islam realistically in the sense that the series is actually about a multiplicity of Islams and how a society converting to an Islamic one pretty much interprets Islam through it's own lens.

[P J Evans]

hapax, I'd think they'd have to go with applying sunrise/sunset times in the time zone the astronauts or space station are using. Otherwise, I don't think it's a solvable problem.

One of the local radio stations used to play a recording for the sunrise and sunset announcements during Ramadan. They stopped sometime around 2006, and I miss hearing it.

[Mmy]

@Madhabmatics: So he decides to zbir rnegu gb Nycun Pragnhev

oooh, that sounds interesting.

BTW how do you feel about the images of Islam/Arabs/the Middle East in SciFi in general. That is, in my opinion, one of the areas in which a lot of SciFi is dreadfully weak. Even when the author(s)/future described is/are atheist they are very much Christian/western atheists if you know what I mean.

I was thinking of things such as the portrayal of Horace Bury in The Mote in God's Eye

Horace Bury had never developed any real appreciation for expensive liquors. He bought them to show his wealth, and for entertaining; but for himself anything would do. Coffees were a different matter.

He was a small man, as were most of the people of Levant, with dark features and a prominent nose, dark, burning eyes and sharp features, quick gestures, and a violent temper that only his intimate associates suspected.....

The Empire had come to Levant ten years after Horace was born, and at first its influence was small.....His father was careful with investments, and he'd used his influence to have Horace Hussein educated on Sparta. He'd even given him a name suggested by an Imperial Navy officer; only later did they learn that Horace was hardly common in the Empire and was a name to be laughed at.

Bury drowned the memory of early days in the Capital schools with another beaker of wine. He'd learned! And now he'd invested his father's money, and his own. Horace Bury wasn't someone to laugh at. It had taken thirty years, but his agents had located the officer who'd given him that name. The stereographs of his agony were hidden in Bury's home on Levant. He'd had the last laugh.

We also learn that wine is an illegal substance on Levant and that Bury blames everything on "the Jews."

I sometimes wondered if Niven/Pournelle were consciously trying to pack as many stereotypes as possible in a few short paragraphs.

[Brin (not Meir)]

Since this is the post inspired by a holiday, I'll put this here:
Happy Purim, everybody! *offers chocolate hamantaschen* (Contains milk, eggs, and wheat, but I'm pretty sure Internet cookies are hypoallergenic regardless of ingredients.)
Okay, so technically it's not sunset in my location for about 2.5 hours, but any time is a good time for cookies, right?

[MercuryBlue]

COOKIES

[Andrew Glasgow]

COOKIE COOKIE ME WANT COOKIE OM NOM NOM NOM NOM

[ShifterCat]

Glad to see you're back, MadGastronomer!

[Mmy]

Flagging Andrew Glasgow.

You posted a wonderful typepad primer -- could we use that on our Frequently Needed Page?

[Literata]

Hamantaschen! Nom! Thank you.

If anyone's interested, here's the ritual I did today on this theme.

[Mmy]

Signs that the seasons have changed.

Today is the last day before the March break ends here. The neighbourhood was quiet for most of the last week but tonight we heard the sounds of laughing and playing out on the street.

For the first time it is both light enough and warm enough to kids to go out and play after dinner. A one point there was a game going on the involved 5 kids, three bicycles, two skateboards, two hockey sticks and a hockey goal net.

That to me is spring and the renewal of life -- the voices of children playing intensely and wanted to expend every single minute of daylight playing completely unorganized (by adults that is) games.

[Laima]

Great post, Literata.

[Madhabmatics]

@Mmy

Well, there are good parts and bad parts. :P

Sci-Fi actually has some really good portrayals of Islam - more than Fantasy, at least. I can think of a bunch of science fiction series that have Muslim characters. Maybe not as main protagonists, but at least in the background, being human members of society and professionals (are more than two enough to make a cliche? Because then I feel safe saying "Muslim Clone Technician" has become one). Accelerando, The Mechanical Sky, Imperial Earth, Dune (Well, half-buddhist, but I'm counting it anyways), The Chronicles of Riddick, and so on had pretty good Muslim characters. We even have an Imam in the Star Trek novel universe, which gives us a definite leg up in Sci-Fi Religion talk... :P

(Not to say Fantasy doesn't have some good Muslim stuff going on - Glenn Cook included Fantasy-Muslims in the later Black Company books, "Instrumentalities of Night" series, and the Dread Empire prequels.)

In terms of RPG writing, Fading Suns had an interesting split with House Al-Malik, which was basically an exploration of "Islam as a Christian Heresy" (which is an interesting topic) combined with "Muslims preserving knowledge through the dark ages" and then a separate Islam-inspired religion that explored "Islam as a cynical means of social control." It was a good way of being able to explore Islamic themes without "ISLAM IS GOOD" or "ISLAM IS BAD."

(Although, again, there's some good fantasy equivalents - GURPS Banestorm has a ton of Muslims in it, although I'm wary of actually ever trying to play GURPS.)

The problem is that the age of hippy progressive Asimov-style sci-fi is passed, and now a lot of decent science fiction authors are actually were-conservatives. For instance, with Niven, he's capable of being really conservative on his own, but when you pair him with Pournelle the writings get this wild-eyed craziness that's kind of hard to describe. In most of Niven's own stuff, religion is gone (but "why" isn't really addressed) and Arabs are generally just Niven Characters but with Different Names. Once you add Pournelle, though, you get settings that involve black civil rights advocates becoming cannibals because of the weakness of their liberal spirit, (this isn't a fun book spoiler like my last Rot13, big time trigger warning):jbzra snyyvat va ybir jvgu gurve encvfgf.

Orson Scott Card may not have written any particularly anti-Muslim fiction, but he's literally written essays that call for denying Muslims civil rights because it's too dangerous to allow us free speech. He spends essay after essay telling us what he thinks we feel: "Muslims may say they don't believe people should be killed for leaving Islam, but in their barbaric beating hearts they long to murder them." His naivety only makes this more enraging ("If only they could excommunicate people, they could join the ranks of civilized religions!")

Dan Simmons is perhaps the worst, because he went crazy and then started writing manifestos about it and then let it fester and ruin his perfectly good fiction. With Orson Scott Card, at least I don't have to be exposed to his nonsense without reading his WorldNetDaily column. However Dan Simmons went from "that cool guy who writes Sci-Fi Canterbury tales" to the kind of guy who would write this "essay":

“Under sharia – which will be the universal law of Eurabia,” persisted the Time Traveler, “the value of a dhimmi’s life, the value of your grandchildren, is one half the value of a Muslim’s life. Jews and Christians are worth one-third of a Muslim. Indian Parsees are worth one-fifteenth. In a court of the Eurabian Caliphate or the Global Khalifate, if a Muslim murders a dhimmi, any infidel, he must pay a blood money fine not to exceed one thousand euros. No Muslim will ever be jailed or sentenced to death for the murder of any dhimmi or any number of dhimmis. If the murders were done under the auspices of Universal Compulsive Jihad, which will be sanctioned by sharia as of 2019 Common Era, all blood money fines are waived.”

"He stood and set the Scotch glass back in its place on my sideboard. “How, we wonder in my time,” he said softly, “can you ignore the better part of a billion people who say aloud that they are willing to kill your children . . . or condone and celebrate the killing of them? And ignore them as they act on what they say? We do not understand you.”"

which was not written as a science fiction story, but as a "sourced" warning to his readers about the coming Eurabia and the blood-thirsty musselman in real life. I seriously can't read the Time Traveller story without grinding my teeth. It's terrible.

He then went and ruined Olympos by turning it from an interesting sci-fi/shakespeare mash up into a political warning about how THE MUSLIMS and THE FRENCH all hate the Jews and that's why the world will end, because Muslims are irrational and willing to kill everyone in order to get of them and the "west" isn't ruthless enough dealing with them.

Outside of those three, though, I think we've had some good representation. Not all heroes, not all villains, but as people with real foibles. There's a tendency to Arabian-Nights it up, but I don't really get worked up about that because it's basically the same as fantasy authors using Tolkien as a basis. I think that there are a lot of Islamic themes that could be explored, but probably won't be until we get more Muslim Science-Fiction authors.

There's a really strong emphasis in Islam about purity laws and some sins not being a big deal to God, but being a big deal to the community, and I think there could be some good cyberpunk stories written about attempts to cover up sins from a community that is increasingly dipping into surveillance and the disconnect between everyone knowing that something isn't really that terrible vs. the penalties the community would leverage if they found out. People who commit the same sins that you do - and who are forgiven the same way - who have to come together to enforce standards that no one follows.

I'd also like to see more stuff like "50 Fatwas for the Virtuous Vampire" but that's my own preference. I mean we literally have real life Fatwa's about whether or not it's permissible to have sex with a merman/mermaid so obviously the step over to "What kind of Fatwa's would a scholar give an elf" is the next step.

[Andrew Glasgow]

@Madhabmatics

"50 Fatwas for the Virtuous Vampire"

I had no idea that this story existed! It's brilliant.

@mmy: Yes, absolutely. I sent it by email to the slackmods address.

[Mmy]

@Madhabmatics: I actually have had (if you can believe it) a Canadian moment with Niven / Pournelle. Both like to "speak" so authoritatively about everything but when one knows something about many of those things one realizes that perhaps they didn't know "damn all." And certainly have done no basic research.

Take, example, the character of Sir George Reedy from Oath of Fealty. Reedy is supposed to be the Canadian Deputy Minister of Internal Development. Just a little problem with that -- Canadians, like Americans, do not hold titles. Conrad Black renounced his Canadian citizenship in order to claim the peerage Blair offered him. To quote James Nicolls (writing years earlier than the Black imbroglio) I know Pournelle has been to Canada. Apparently he didn't pay any attention when he was there.

When people don't both to check up on things and write authoritatively on the basis of what they "just know" it undermines everything they write.

[P J Evans]

Mmy
If you can get Pournelle to actually pay any attention to anyone but his wife - who apparently knows how to make him listen - you either Have Power or wield a hefty cluebat. (Someone once said it was a good thing he never went into aircraft design, because all of his planes would have had two right wings. I heard that back in the 80s!)

[Madhabmatics]

@Mmy, I guess they haven't had their Canadian version of the "The Ringworld is unstable!" chants yet. :P

I think the only Niven / Pournelle novels I actually like a like are Inferno / Escape from Hell, although it's been a while since I read them so I can't remember if there were any horrible, troubling things in them, hah.

I kind of feel bad for taking a pass on authors because of their opinions, but Simmons seriously burned me and I just can't read anything by him after reading his non-science fiction writing. I haven't read any Orson Scott Card since I read his anti-homosexual writings, which means I still have no clue what happens to Ender!

[ShifterCat]

Thanks for the referral to the "50 Fatwas" story, Madhabmatics. I've forwarded it to Mr. ShifterCat, who GMs our World of Darkness games.

[Pretreatment]

It will be cool to have several different deconstructions that we can tune into when we feel the need. I like it Pretreatment

[Nenya]

Whoa, dude. I just got quoted by a spammer. That's kind of freaky.

The singularity is nigh, my friends.