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Pagan Prayers for the New Year

The new year, as celebrated throughout most of the world, is a purely secular holiday – a time for excess, remorse, resolution, funny hats, fancy dress, and fireworks.  Good fun, all of it.

In recent years, Ankhie has gathered with close friends and family in the wilds of Upstate New York for a celebration that has turned from something silly (see above re. funny hats) into something serious and spiritually satisfying. Don’t get me wrong, there are still fireworks and potent potables, but there are other things too – rituals and prayers that have developed organically out of these gatherings.  They are quiet, contemplative, and often recalled in the days and months that follow.  These new year gatherings have become our opportunity to step away from the pressures and expectations of traditional holidays (both Pagan and Judeo-Christian) to form something new and personally meaningful.  The timing works because of the public holiday, and the season is naturally magical.

But not this year. There has been a sudden death close to several of our members, and the time now is for respect, remembrance and grief.

Soon, in the weeks to come, we will have our gathering,  and our rituals and celebrations will not be diminished. The new year, observed this way, begins not on a calendar, but in our hearts, spirits and affection for one another – and it begins whenever we need it to.

In the spirit of making your own, pagan way, may this excerpt from A Book of Pagan Prayer by Ceisiwr Serith inspire you to greet the new year when and how it comes to you:

Prayers for the New Year

These prayers are specifically for the beginning of the secular year, for January 1st. They invoke Janus, from whose name the word “January” comes. The second one (prayer) involves pouring out wine. I do this every year on New Year’s Eve, or, if I am away visiting friends, before I enter my house on my return. I pour it on the threshold, and use some to annoint the door posts. The lid on the inside of the threshold that makes for a tight seal also prevents the wine from flowing into the house. The red stain on my doorstep, which lasts for a while, may confuse the neighbors, but while it is there, it is a reminder to me of the sanctity of the threshold.

***

God of Beginnings, accept this offering,

sweet-smelling incense to make you glad.

Bless me on the beginning of this year,

and bless my beginnings throughout the year.

***

God of the threshold,

who opens up to a new year;

god of doors,

who opens on to a new time;

Janus, who looks both ways,

I pour out this wine to you

and ask you to look behind and ahead

and guide me through the year that begins today.

***

A New Year is born from you;

praise, blessings, and honor are due for this gift!

Hear my words, you who give birth to everything.

A newly born year takes its place among your wonders,

one more thing for which you might rightly be praised.

***

What the Dickens? – A Spiritualist’s Take on the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present & Future

Yule is a haunted time of year. Beneath all the feasting and gift-giving lurks the primal fear of deepening dark and killing cold. In modernized society we are insulated by false light, false heat, and a material wealth that our ancestors could not have imagined. Yet still  – there stirs on these drear winter evenings some distant memory, genetic perhaps, of the nearness of elemental danger. A century ago, that nearness was felt much more keenly.

Charles Dickens, a Victorian author profoundly aware of the liminality of life,  wrote one of the best known Christmas stories outside of the New Testament. It also happens to be one of the most terrifying.

Ebenezer Scrooge – an embittered miser – is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. These spectres show him shadows of his past, present and future –  a wonderful literary device that allows for the trial and redemption of a wealthy man with an impoverished soul.

As a child, Ankhie always wondered what kind of spirits these three entities were.  Marley, of course, is the classic chain-rattling moaner of every spook story ever told – but about the ones that followed?

The flame-like spirit of Christmas past?

The Falstaff-ian abundance of Christmas present?

And the grim wraith of Christmas future?

These are not ghosts in the traditional sense. Are they just works of fiction, embodiments of Ebenezer’s own guilty conscience, or is there some basis for these figures in the “real” spirit world?

When in doubt – ask an expert. So I did! I went to Constance Briggs, author of the Encyclopedia of the Unseen World...

My first thought when considering A Christmas Carol is that the ghosts of Christmas, past, present and future were not ghosts at all, at least not in the true sense of the word. Today, they would be referred to as spirit guides. Guides are beings that are with us to help us learn lessons that we come into the world to master. They are with us from the beginning, walking silently along with us, assisting us along the way. Dickens usage of the word ghosts here is not accurate, but may have been the choice wording of the time.

Ebenezer Scrooge’s experience appears to be the equivalent of an out-of-body experience (or three if you count each trip separately). Although this is fiction, Dickens was able to capture a number of spiritual themes that resembled true stories of people that have had near-death-experiences, out-of-body experiences and most importantly a life review. For your readers not familiar with a life review, it is a spiritual record of a person’s entire life history. According to many near-death-experiencers, once a person passes from physical life into the spiritual world, they are shown their life review. The review has been described as a vivid, full-color, three-dimensional, panoramic review of every single act and thought a person did in life, including the good and the bad. According to some near-death-experiencers, a person can even feel the pain they caused others.

Scrooge is visited by three spiritual beings who take him on a journey to show him how his life has affected those around him. He is informed that he can change the future he sees (which is a dismal, loveless, friendless one), if he changes his life for the better. In the end, Scrooge does change. His transformation is sincere, heartfelt, upbeat and he is excited to have been given a second chance. He also tries very hard to rectify some wrongs he has done. His changing for the better at the end of the story is a good example of how a life review can alter someone’s path.

Often people that have crossed over are given a second chance to return to their life on this side. After looking at their life review, people are sent back into their present life, and are changed for the better. Some have become ministers and spiritual teachers. Others became more loving and charitable, and still others have entered upon a spiritual journey. Their out-of-body experience coupled with their life review, changed them profoundly. This is what happened in the case of Scrooge.

I can’t help but wonder if Charles Dickens himself had some experience with spirits, or even had recollections of his astral experiences (we all have them). Also, when I look at the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, I wonder if there is even a little of Dickens himself in each of these characters. I say this because of his own close call with death, which happened in 1865 in a train accident when he was returning to England from a trip to France. Ten people were killed and forty were injured in the accident that took place in Staplehurst, Kent, England on that fateful day. Dickens himself assisted with pulling people from the cars. It is said that this event affected him greatly, and that he even incorporated his experience into his writing.

Could the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future have been Dickens’s way of encouraging people to examine their own lives in the face of the one eventuality that we all have in common? Did he realize, through his experience with the  train accident, that life is fleeting and that we should use our time here wisely in showing love to others and being charitable? I know that Dickens was very concerned about the poor in his day. Were the ghosts he created for A Christmas Carol simply mirrors of his own thoughts? I like to think so. 

Wonderfully put! Thanks Constance!

And “God (Goddess) bless us, every one!”

And the Big Winner of the Complete Set of Weiser Field Guides is…

NYDIA MACEDO!

Congratulations Nydia! Email me your mailing address (publicity@redwheelweiser.com) and I will get these beauties out in the mail to you, pronto!

Thank you SO much everyone for playing! I only regret that I can’t give books to each and every one of you.

I do have some wee freebies though – bumper stickers and bookplates… far less fabulous than the other offerings, I know, but I’d be glad to send some your way if you want – just email me (publicity@redwheelweiser) your snail mail and a little Ankie love will come your way

Day #5 of Our 5 Days of Yule Giveaway!

This is it! And boy was it worth the wait!

A complete (to date) set of Weiser Field Guides,  including the hot-off-the-press Weiser Field Guide to the Paranormal!

You know what to do! Tweet, post, “like” us and tell your friends.

The winner will be announced on Monday so you have all weekend to add those entries – Good luck!

Thursday’s Winner of Our 5 Days of Yule Giveaway is…

Kenneth Brown!

Congratulations Kenneth!

Send me your snail mail and I’ll get these books out to you, pronto!

One day left,  people – and it’s a big one….

Day #4 of Our 5 Days of Yule Giveaway!

Ohh… I think you’re gonna like these. I mean, who doesn’t love a book of secrets?

Good luck everyone!

#WBC5 Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic – The Weiser Book Club for December

I knew a little about Ida Craddock, had read excerpts of her work (mostly on the excellent OTO run site idacraddock.com) but  until recently, had not spent any extended amount of time in her company.

Now – having just finished Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic I feel as though I have been fully immersed in a mind outside my own. The material written by Ida Craddock and reproduced in this volume had me riveted – not only because of its explicit and (still to some extent) shocking nature, but because of its inherent scholarship and the clarity and agility of its argument.  I found myself  writing out questions in the margins, only to have them fully answered in the paragraphs that followed. I can think of no other circumstance in my reading life when that has happened more than once. It happened three times while I was reading Heavenly Bridegrooms. The end result is that, although I may not agree with Craddock’s assertions,  I am fully convinced of the soundness of her mind and the “truth” of her argument.

Regarding the book itself, what makes it different – and in this particular case, more satisfying (my opinion) – than a traditional biography is that relatively few pages are devoted to the details of the subject’s life. We learn the important facts, but are spared speculation and poetic elaboration.  Don’t get me wrong – I love lyricism as much as anyone – but here, in the case of this book and this subject, what does and should take priority is Ida Craddock’s work itself. The focus of this volume is the fierce intellectual and spiritual life of a woman who lived (and died) for the rightness her vocation. For a woman of Craddock’s intensity and integrity,  it is, one imagines, the kind of biography that she herself would have chosen.

I realize that I am rambling a little bit here – my notes on Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic are extensive and wide ranging. I really don’t know where to start – except to say that what fascinated me most about Craddock’s writing was the relationship between fantastic diary entries (full of ecstatic detail), and her scholarly published writing (especially Heavenly Bridegrooms).

Do you think that the details of Ida’s personal relationship with Soph advance or undermine her theories regarding Borderland relations and/or sexual well-being?

So let’s take it from here, friendly readers! What did you think of Vere Chappell’s Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic and the wicked and wonderful Ida Craddock?