The Dead Moon

     Long ago the Lincolnshire Cars were full of bogs and it was death to walk through them, except on moonlight nights, for harm and mischance and mischief, Bogles and Dead Things and crawling horrors came out at nights when the moon did not shine. At length the Moon heard what things went on in the bogland when her back was turned, and she thought she would go down to see for herself, and find what she could do to help. So at the month's end she wrapped a black cloak round her, and hid her shinning hair under a black hood, and stepped down into the boglands. It was all dark and watery, with quaking mud, and waving tussocks of grass, and no light except what came from her own white feet. On she went, deep into the bogland and now the witches rode about her on their great cats, and the will-o'-thewryks danced with the lanterns swinging on their backs, and dead folks rose out of the water, and stared at her with fiery eyes, and the slimy dead hands beckoned and clutched. But on she went, stepping from tuft to tuft, as light as the wind in summer until at length a stone turned under her, and she caught with both hands at a snap nearby to steady herself, but as soon as she touched it it twisted round her wrists like a pair of handcuffs and held her fast She struggled and fought against it but nothing would free her. Then, as she stood trembling she heard a piteous crying, and she knew that a man was lost in the darkness, and soon she saw him, splashing after the will-o'-thewykes, crying out on them to wait for him, while the Dead Hands plucked at his coat, and the creeping horrors crowded round him, and he went further and further from the Path.

     The Moon was so sorry and so angry that she made a great struggle, and though she could not loose her hands, her hood slipped back, and the light streamed out from her beautiful golden hair, so that the man saw the bog-holes near him and the safe path in the distance nearly as clear as by day. He cried joy, and floundered across, out of the deadly bog and back to safety, and all the Bogles and evil things fled away from the moonlight, and hid themselves. But the Moon struggled in vain to free herself, and at length she fell forward, spent with struggle, and the black hood fell over her head again, and she had no strength to push it off. The all the evil things came creeping back, and they laughed to think they had their enemy the Moon in their power at last. All night they fought and squabbled about how best they should kill her, but when the first grey light before dawn came they grew frightened and pushed her down into the water. the dead folk held her, while the Bobles fetched a great stone to put over her, and they chose two will-o'-thewykes to guard her by turns, and when the day came the moon was buried deep, until someone she find her, and who knew where to look?

     The days passed, and folk put straws in their capes, and money in their pockets against the coming of the new moon, and she never came. and as dark night passed, the evil things from the bogland came howling and screeching up to men's very doors, so that no one could go a step from the house at night, and in the end folk sat up all night, shivering by their fired, for they feared if the lights went out, the things would come over the thresholds.

     At last the went to the Wise Woman who lived in the old Mill, to ask what had come of their Moon. She looked in the mirror, and in the brew pot, and in the Book, and it was all dark, so she told them to set straw and salt and a button on their door-sills at night, to keep them safe from the Horrors, and to come back with any news they could give her.

     Well, you can be sure they talked, at their firesides and in the Garth and in the town. so it happened one day, as they were sitting on the settle at the Inn, a man from the far side of the bogland cried out all of a sudden, "I reckon I know where the Moon is, only I was so amazed I never thought on it." And he told them how he had been all astray one night, and like to lose his life in the bog-holes, and all of the sudden a clear bright light had shone out, and showed him the way home. So off they all went to the Wise Woman, and they told what the man had said. The Wise Woman looked in the Book, and in the pot, and at last she got some glimmer of light and told them what they must do. They were to set out together in the darkness with a stone in their mouths and a hazel twig in their hands, and a cross, and a candle, and that was where the Moon would be. Well, they were main feared, but next night they set out and went on and on, into the midst of the bog.

     They saw nothing, but they heard a sighing and whispering round them and slimy hands touching them, but on they went, shaking and scared, till suddenly they stopped, for half in, and half out of the water they saw a long stone, for all the world like a coffin, and at the head of it stood a black snag stretching out two branches, like a gruesome cross, and on it flickered a tidy light. Then they all knelt down and they crossed themselves and said a Prayer, forward for the sake of the cross, and backward against the Bogles, but all silently, for they knew they must not speak. Then all together they heaved up the stone. For one minute they saw a strange beautiful face looking up at them and then they stepped back amazed with the light, and with a great shrieking wail from all the horrors, as they fled back to their holes, and the next moment the full moon shone down on them from the sky, so that they could see their path near as clear as by day.

     And ever since then the Moon has shone her best over the boglands, for she knows all the evil things that are hid there and she remembers how the Car men went out to look for her when she was dead and buried.

Retelling Traditional Tales

     Children love stories. Stories awaken the imagination and give young people a chance to envision a range of responses to the world. They teach values and shape expectations. They provide a way for even young children to enter into the complex transformational symbolism or our festivals and celebrations. We want our children to grow up with knowledge of the myths and tales that can serve as the ground of a rich inner landscape. But we are not a text-based tradition. The earliest Goddess cultures left no written records of their beliefs and rituals. The stores that have come down to us have been changed and altered with time. Much of the wisdom and values of the earliest Goddess traditions are still preserved in faery tales and folktales, but they are coated with the values and beliefs of the patriarchal cultures that followed. So to look at traditional tales requires us to decode them, to extract the symbols that are meaningful and transform the rest. 

     However, whenever we tamper with traditional stories, we run the risk of diminishing their power. If we simply eliminate the elements that seem counter to our politics or our philosophy, we may discard some of the encrypted information most vital to our inner being. For myths derive their transformative power from the very things that make us most uncomfortable - death, loss, jealousy, fear, sacrifice. If we try to pretty them up and make them nice, we end up with insipid, sugary tales that provide no real sustenance for the soul.

     On the other hand, if we tell the tales unchanged from the versions popularized by the Brothers Grimm or by Disney, we risk perpetuating the stereotypes that we have sound destructive in our own lives: the negative images of women, the association of light hair and skin with good and of dark with evil, the assumption that heterosexual marriage is the ultimate happiness ever after. 

     In Reclaiming's work of teaching ritual to adults, we often use faery tales and myths as a theme to take us on a transformative journey. We look for the symbols, colors, animals and characters that we can recognize as carrying historical or ritual references to the ancient Goddess traditions. For instance, in the story of Vasalisa (click on the link if you want to read the story), we find the significance in the red, white and black that she and her doll wear, which are the colors of the Goddess. They tell us that this story has something to do with the passage from Maiden to Mother to Crone, and help us interpret it as an initiation tale.

     The inner work each story represents is revealed to us through the challenges the characters face. For example, Vasalisa's challenge is to bring fire from the house of death. When we consider that challenge with all its resonances, we find that the tale takes us into the heart of mystery, where the life fire, the creative energy of the universe, can be found only by encountering death. 

     Many of the stories are initiation tales. They record a character's passage through a set of challenges that leads to an encounter with the great forces of life and death. Initiation often takes place through an encounter with the Otherworld.

     In the Goddess tradition, the world of form and substance, of day and night, is seen as only the visible part of a vast realm of energies and forces that suffuse ordinary reality. The Otherworld, the spirit counterpart of this one, is just on the other side of the mirror, down the well, at the back of the north wind, and has a geography and ecology of its own. Its lands have many names: Faery, Avalon, Annwn, Tir n'a Nog, the land of Sidhe, the land of the ancestors, the Land of Youth, the land of the dead, the realm of the unborn, House of Donn, land of promise. Only when this world and the Otherworld infuse and inform each other can life thrive. 

     Many stories are about those who journey to the Otherworld to face its dangers and recieves its gifts. They are stories about gathering personal power - the power that allows us to use our best abilities, to express the gifts that only we can bring. 

     Gathering power requires certain personal qualities, the traits rewarded over and over again in faery tales, what we might call traditional Pagan values. The stories tell us to be generous, be courteous, be helpful, be brave, persist when difficulties arise, take help where it is offered. Again and again we are warned against jealousy, spite, and envy. In a highly competitive culture, we get ahead by being better, brighter, richer, or more successful than someone else, But traditional cultures value much more highly the harmony of the community as a whole, and that value is reflected in faery tales. 

     We are sensitive to issues of culture appropriation, yet we do not believe that they should be resolved by limiting ourselves to European tales, thereby implying that Europe alone is the font of spiritual wisdom. Our community includes many different heritages and ancestries, and our children must live in a multicultural world of great diversity. Our young people need to know and respect many earth-based traditions. Somewhere between the pitfalls of ignorance and appropriation lies the path of cultural education. 

     In making our choices, we have looked for tales that illuminate the theme of each holiday, or that offer a perspective that expands the vision; for example, the Amaterasu story for Winter Solstice in which the sun is a Goddess. Ask for people in your community for stories that reflect their heritages. I strongly encourage families to delve deeper into the rich treasure of traditional myths and folktales from many lands.

     So let's try something new. Read some of the myths out there and pick one you think that would inspire the whole family. Remember that story by reading it over and over again. Once you feel you know it enough to repeat, at the dinner table or family talk time, tell the story in your own way. Give the characters your voice and hear what they have to say. The story may change in ways that surprise you which will offer new insights and revelations. And so may these old tales come alive again. 

     I want to hear your stories once you found the one you are going to tell. I love hearing stories!!! I will post a few of my favorite ones also in the next few weeks.

I wanted to share this letter that Ravenstone and Aisling had told me about at the Crone's Hollow. Its a letter that you can print off and give to the teachers/school/principal at your child's school.

You Have A Pagan Student In Your School

A Guide For Educators

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A student in your school practices a religion with which you may not be familiar. This leaflet is simply to give you information you may need to understand the different experiences this student may share with you, and answer any questions you might have.

What is a Pagan student likely to practice and believe?

Because Pagans generally follow a non-credal, non-dogmatic spirituality, there may be even more variants between Pagan religious beliefs than there are between denominations of Christianity. The most commonly practiced types of Paganism are Wicca, Asatru, Druidry, or simply Paganism, just as a Christian can be Catholic, Presbyterian, or simply Christian. All of these are somewhat different from each other. Because of this, the following statements may not be true for every Pagan you encounter. However, there are some practices that are generally common among Pagans; the student or his parents will tell you if their practices differ significantly from the following:

A Pagan student will celebrate a nature-based, polytheistic religion

• A Pagan student will honor Divinity as both God and Goddess, sometimes with a feminist emphasis on the Goddess. One effect of this is that the student is likely to treat gender equality as an assumption.
• A Pagan student will celebrate religious ceremonies with small groups on Full Moons and at the beginning and midpoint of each season, rather than with large congregations or at a set weekly schedule. These celebrations are often called 'rituals', 'circles', ‘blots’, or ‘sumbels’, and the congregations called 'covens', 'groves', 'hearths', or 'circles'. Some of the items commonly found on the altar in a Pagan ceremony are statues of the Goddess or God, candles, crystals, wands, the athame, a blunt-edged dagger used as a symbol and not as a tool with which to cut, cups, cauldrons, incense, and a five-pointed star called the pentagram or pentacle.
• A Pagan student may wear a symbol of his or her religion as an item of jewelry. The most common symbol is the pentacle, a five-pointed star in a circle. The misconception of the pentagram as a satanic symbol is based upon its inverted use by those groups, in the same manner in which devil-worshippers may use the Christian cross inverted. The meaning of the pentacle as worn by Pagans is rooted in the beliefs of the Greek Pythagoreans, for whom the pentagram embodied perfect balance and wisdom; inserting the star in the circle adds the symbol of eternity and unity. Other jewelry that may be worn includes Celtic knotwork, crosses, and triskelions; Thor’s hammer; the labrys, a double-headed axe used as a symbol by Greco-Roman worship of Cybele; Goddess figurines; crescent and/or full Moon symbols; the Yin-Yang symbol; or the eye of Horus or horns of Isis from Egyptian mythology.
• A Pagan student will view Divinity as immanent in Nature and humanity, and view all things as interconnected. This often leads to a concern with ecology and the environment, and a fascination with the cycle of life.
• A Pagan student will believe in magic, and may spell it 'magick' to differentiate it from stage illusions. This may include belief in personal energy fields like the Chinese concept of chi, and may also include the use of rituals and tools to dramatize and focus positive thinking and visualization techniques. It does not mean that the student is taught that he can wiggle his nose to clean his room, summon spirits or demons, or do anything else that breaks natural laws, though if young, like any child, a Pagan child may pretend these things. It also does not mean that the student is taught to hex or curse; in our ethical structure such actions are believed to rebound on the sender, and therefore are proscribed.

• A Pagan student may believe in reincarnation. It is the most common eschatological belief held among Pagans, but is not universal. However, a Pagan student is unlikely to believe in either Heaven or Hell; she may believe in the Celtic Summerland, a place of rest between incarnations, or Valhalla, a realm of honor in Norse religions.
• A Pagan student may call herself a Witch, a Wiccan, a Pagan or Neo-Pagan, a Goddess-worshipper, an Asatruer, a Druid, or a Heathen. He is unlikely to call himself a Warlock, as that is believed to come from the Scottish word for 'oathbreaker'. And while a Pagan student may or may not be offended by the stereotype, she is likely to quickly inform you that the green-skinned, warty-nosed caricature displayed at Halloween bears no relation to her religion.

A Pagan student will be taught ethics emphasizing both personal freedom and personal responsibility

Pagan ethics allow personal freedom within a framework of personal responsibility. The primary basis for Pagan ethics is the understanding that everything is interconnected, that nothing exists without affecting others, and that every action has a consequence. There is no concept of forgiveness for sin in the Pagan ethical system; the consequences of one's actions must be faced and reparations made as necessary against anyone whom you have harmed. There are no arbitrary rules about moral issues; instead, every action must be weighed against the awareness of what harm it could cause. Thus, for example, consensual homosexuality would be a null issue morally because it harms no one, but cheating would be wrong because it harms one's self, one's intellect, one's integrity, and takes unfair advantage of the person from whom you are cheating. The most common forms in which these ethics are stated are the Wiccan Rede, "An it harm none, do as thou wilt," and in the Threefold Law, "Whatsoever you do returns to you threefold."

A Pagan student will hold a paradigm that embraces plurality

Because Pagan religious systems hold that theirs is a way among many, not the only road to truth, and because Pagans explore a variety of Deities among their pantheons, both male and female, a Pagan student will be brought up in an atmosphere that discourages discrimination based on differences such as race or gender, and encourages individuality, self-discovery and independent thought. A Pagan student is also likely to be taught comparative religions; most Pagans are adamant about not forcing their beliefs on the child but rather teaching them many spiritual systems and letting the child decide when he is of age. However, a Pagan student is unlikely to have an emotional concept of Heaven, Hell, or salvation as taught by Christian religions, though he may know about them intellectually. And a Pagan student will be taught to respect the sacred texts of other religions, but is unlikely to believe them literally where they conflict with scientific theory or purport to be the only truth.

A Pagan student is likely to enjoy reading, science, and helping professions

Margot Adler, National Public Radio journalist, reported the results of a survey of Pagans in the 1989 edition of her book, Drawing Down the Moon. The results showed that the one thing Pagans hold in common despite their differences is a voracious appetite for reading and learning. Pagans also seem to be represented strongly in the computer and health-care fields, so the Pagan child is likely to be computer-literate from an early age.

Despite their sometimes misunderstood beliefs, earth-based religions have grown steadily throughout the past few decades, and provide a satisfying spirituality to their practitioners. With the current appreciation of diversity and tolerance, more people now understand that different cultural backgrounds bring perspectives that can be valued instead of feared. It is our hope that as an educator this will provide you with the information you need to be able to facilitate understanding.

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©1998 Cecylyna Dewr
Distribution is welcome.