Triple Moon & Hare Mirror

I'd got a circular mirror, it's about 20 cm diameter, and decided to give engraving a on a mirror a go, which is ok apart from the problem of either looking at yourself while your doing the engraving or trying to look at it from the side and getting a sort of double image going on. Had the same problem with photographing it (and I thought taking photos of glasses was bad enough), unless your right over the top to take the photo, (and then of course you get the camera and everything in there as well) you get a double image showing so the photo looks blurred, have to try to work something out to solve this. Other than that was quite pleased with my first attempt. As you can see it is Pentacle Triple Moon with a spiral hare running beneath jumping over a grassy mound. On one side ivy is trailing down and on the other tall grass reaching up.

If you would like something similar please let me know either by leaving a comment on here or on my web contact page www.morningstarcraft.co.uk/contact-me while you're there you could also have a look round my other items;0)

Bakewell Day of Dance 2010

Had a lovely but nerve wracking time Saturday. It was Bakewell's Day of Dance, dance groups from all over gather together to experience different dance styles and show what they have learnt, and I had agreed to go too, not really good at performing in public I normally go on the back row in class! I was with Akhawaat Al Maryam, which Mary our teacher says means Mary's sisters as she had brought three of her groups together for the day. It was a gloriously sunny day and fun to watch the other dancers and do a bit of shopping around Bakewell. The Black Pigs, a sort of morris dance group but louder and more colourful were fun to watch and I already know some of the people involved in it but had never seen them perform before. There was another group of belly dancers there The 400 Roses (their costumes looked fab) but there form of belly dance was entirely different to ours, it was sort of mixed with morris dance, unique. I also went along to the Bollywood workshop and learnt an entire dance in an hour! Good teacher.

Hasfest 2010

Well the much anticipated Hasfest 2010 has come and gone (the Chesterfield Pagans summer event). The weather was lovely the people more so and the drumming went on well into the night. We even had belly dancers this year, I chickened out on the excuse that I had to mind the stall. The Burning Man went up really well and kept us warm all night, his counter part the Green Lady looked very voluptuous all kited out in fresh foliage and the labyrinth was decorated with yellow dandelion heads, it all made for a very pretty setting.

www.morningstarcraft.co.uk

Valentine's Day origins

Well I''ve not blogged for a while, erm well, since before Yule really. We had a lovely time, all together, and the snow was very festive but went on a bit long though! Imbolc has been celebrated, and although it is still very very cold there are signs of new life peeking through the soil and my Hazel tree has catkins on.

Anyway after missing blogging about all that I'd thought I would find out a bit more on the origins of Valentines Day as it's always seemed a bit of an odd celebration to me and I've wondered in past years why is a saint in charge of love and stuff, this is what I found:

There are a few different variations on how Valentine's Day began, but the most common one seems to be that the term St Valentine's Day originated in 5th Century Rome as a tribute to St. Valentine, a Catholic bishop who was beaten and beheaded around AD 270 by Emperor Claudius for secretly marrying couples and refusing to give up his Christian faith.

The date of his death (February 14th), funnily enough coincided with a holiday to honor Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses, she was also known as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia the Roman Spring festival, held in honor of the gods Pan and Juno. This was one of the most important festivals in the Roman calendar, a festival to the gods of fertility and a celebration of sensual pleasure, a time to meet and court a prospective mate and had been going on for around eight hundred years prior to the the establishment of St Valentines Day.

As Lupercalia began about the middle of February, the pastors of the early Christian church in Rome appear to have chosen Saint Valentine's Day for the celebration of this new feast.

The young Roman boys and girls at that time lived separate lives however, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of the girls were written on slips of paper and placed into a box. Each young man would draw a girl's name from the box and they would then be partners for the duration of the festival, sometimes the pairing of the couple lasted for the year.

Pope Gelasius tried to change this lottery to something deemed more morally suitable, instead of the names of young women being placed in the box, it would contain the names of saints. Men and women were allowed to draw from the box and then try to emulate the saint chosen for the rest of the year. Many of the young men were not keen on the change!

The pagan festival died out, but instead of the people trying to live the lives of saints they instead latched onto the more romantic aspect of Saint Valentine's life to replace the pagan deity Lupercus. While not immediately as popular as the more passionate pagan festival, eventually the concept of celebrating true love became known as Valentine's Day and eventually Valentine became the Patron Saint of Lovers.

Although the lottery for women had been banned by the church, the mid-February holiday in commemoration of St. Valentine was still used by Roman men to seek the affection of women. It became a tradition for the men to give the ones they admired handwritten messages of affection, containing Valentine's name.

As to why Valentine was executed: Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius believed that married men tended to be poor soldiers as they were reluctant to leave their loves and families. As a result, Claudius canceled all marriages and engagements in Rome in the hope of building up his army again, but Valentine would secretly marry young couples that came to him. Claudius had him put to death for defying him. During the days that Valentine was imprisoned, he fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. Before he was taken to his death, he signed a farewell message to her, "From your Valentine" a phrase that has lasted through the centuries.

Cupid, another symbol of the holiday, became associated with it because he was the son of Venus, the Roman god of love and beauty.

Chesterfield Pagans website

Chesterfield Pagans now have our very own shiny new website for events around our area and people are welcome to leave comments and ideas etc of anything they think may interest other pagans. www.chesterfieldpagans.org, check it out.

Derbyshire Pagans Yule Ball

It's the Derbyshire Pagans Yule Ball tonight in Derby, people get to see our production of the 300! Ooer, hope it goes well, it's slightly different from the film (well ok a lot different hehe), but then our play last year Beowulf the musical was a lot different too ;0) I've got a new drum to bash as well, a remo djembee, don't think it will make my drumming much better though. Still don't know what I'm going to wear, my plans for this week have gone a bit bottoms up as my youngest has been off school with a tummy bug, and I'm not that organised at the best of times, slight panic setting in as it gets closer to christmas day and his birthday on Sunday.

Samhain/Halloween

You know I thought to myself 'I haven't updated my blog in a while, must have a look at it' to find that the one I thought I posted just after Halloween was still there waiting for photos to be included, so it's a bit late but here is my Halloween rambling, still waiting for photo's (blush).

We've had a lovely Samhain/Halloween time. The festive branch has been dec'ed out with bats, witches, spooks and hell bunnies etc. My youngest son decided we should bake Halloween cookies and a cake; decorating them kept him busy for ages, I think this is the first time he's spent longer doing the baking than licking out the bowl (it's these sort of things that make you realise they are growing:0) The hole in the middle of the cake is because the things from the dungeon dimension are trying to escape from the centre of it;0)

One of our cats is called Boo, she arrived just before Halloween 3 years ago; I should have thought more about her name really as at this time of year she gets a little confused with people shouting her name.

Ritual night went well, drumming, fire, food; a very short sharp burst of rain made us dash inside but it soon stopped again. A friend sent off one of those Chinese Lanterns in memory of her dad, they are very pretty and look like little stars when they go up high.

The next night we spent at an American style Halloween Party, with loads and loads of decorations inside and out. Some of my husbands American relatives have come over for a visit, which is the first time we've seen them for about 5 years, and you could say we all looked different as we were all in full Halloween costume with bits of skin dropping off, wigs and the like.
Last night we went to a fireworks display, it was absolutely packed with people, I think the whole town must have been there. Tonight the school next to us (well about 7 houses down) is having its fireworks display so I'm going to send the kids out into the garden with bonfire night food to watch them, it was an impressive display last year.