Thorrablot 1/14/21
Thorrablot was a sacrificial midwinter festival offered to the gods in pagan Iceland of the past. It was abolished during the Christianization of Iceland, but resurrected in the 19th century as a midwinter celebration that continues to be celebrated to this day. The timing for the festival coincides with the month of Thorri, according to the old Icelandic calendar, which begins on the first Friday after January 19th (the 13th week of winter).
Origins of the name “Thorri” are unclear but it is most likely derived from Norwegian king Thorri Snærsson, or Thor the God of Thunder in the old Nordic religion.
On this occasion, locals come together to eat, drink and be merry. Customary, the menu consists of unusual culinary delicacies, known as traditional Icelandic food. These will include rotten shark’s meat (hákarl), boiled sheep’s head, (svið) and congealed sheep’s blood wrapped in a ram’s stomach (blóðmör)! This is traditionally washed down with some Brennivin – also known as Black Death – a potent schnapps made from potato and caraway.
After the Thorrablot dinner traditional songs, games and story telling are accompanied by dancing and in true Icelandic style continue until the early hours of the morning! If you fail to receive a personal invitation to a family feast, local restaurants will often add Thorrablot colour and taste to their menus.
Sementivae 1/24/21
The festival was celebrated by the approval of priests or local officials, who granted permission most years. When Sementivae was celebrated, it had two halves. The first portion, from 24th through 26th of Januarius saluted the Goddess, Tellus, the personification of Mother Earth and Ceres, the produce or cereal Goddess. The second half commemorated either Goddess, according to regional preferences. The second portion of Sementivae began on the 2nd of Februarius.
Both halves of Sementivae were festivals that celebrated the season for the sowing of croplands with seeds. Tellus is the Goddess of primary interest today at the start of the first half of Sementivae. Depending upon which area of the Roman territories, Tellus was also known by other names. She was often equated with Cybele.
1/30/21-2/2/21 Februalia
Because of the association with fire as a method of purification, at some point the celebration of Februalia became associated with Vesta, a hearth goddess much like the Celtic Brighid. Not only that, February 2 is also considered the day of Juno Februa, the mother of war god Mars. There is a reference to this purification holiday in Ovid’s Fasti, in which he says,
“In short, anything used to cleanse our bodies went by that name [of februa] in the time of our unshorn forefathers. The month is called after these things, because the Luperci purify the whole ground with strips of hide, which are their instruments of cleansing…”
Cicero wrote that the name Vesta comes from the Greeks, who called her Hestia. Because her power extended over altars and hearths, all prayers and all sacrifices ended with Vesta.
Februalia was a month-long period of sacrifice and atonement, involving offerings to the gods, prayer, and sacrifices. If you were a wealthy Roman who didn’t have to go out and work, you could literally spend the entire month of February in prayer and meditation, atoning for your misdeeds during the other eleven months of the year.
If you’re a modern Pagan who would like to observe Februalia as part of your spiritual journey, there are a number of ways you can do so. Consider this a time of purging and cleansing–do a thorough pre-Spring cleaning, where you get rid of all of the things that no longer bring you joy and happiness. Take an “out with the old, in with the new” approach, and eliminate the excess stuff that’s cluttering your life, both physically and emotionally.
If you’re someone who has a hard time letting go of things, rather than just throwing stuff out, rehome it to friends who will show it some love. This is a good way to eliminate clothes that no longer fit, books you don’t plan to read again, or household goods that don’t do anything but gather dust.
You can also take some time to honor the goddess Vesta in her role as a deity of home, hearth, and domestic life as a way of celebrating Februalia. Make offerings of wine, honey, milk, olive oil, or fresh fruit as you begin rituals. Light a fire in Vesta’s honor, and as you sit before it, offer her a prayer, chant, or song that you wrote yourself. If you can’t light a fire, it’s okay to keep a candle burning to celebrate Vesta–just be sure to extinguish it when you’re finished. Spend some time on domestic crafts, such as cooking and baking, weaving, needle arts, or woodworking.
1/31/21- Up Helly Aa
The main celebration of Up Helly Aa takes place in Lerwick but there are 12 smaller local versions too all over the Shetland Isles.
The first official Up Helly Aa took place in Lerwick, Shetland’s main town, in 1881.
Up Helly Aa (meaning Up Holy Day) is a huge spectacle, a celebration of Shetland history, and a demonstration of islanders’ skills. It harks back to Shetland’s Viking heritage. As well as the main event there is a junior version, just for kids, which takes place on the same day.
The events last all day and involve a series of marches and visits, ending in a torch-lit procession and the burning of a Viking longship. It’s an event most of the local community takes part in, with loads of volunteers spending hours each winter getting ready for the big event and building the huge Viking longship that is at the centre of the festival.
Much of the preparations are done in strictest secrecy. The biggest secret of all is what the head of the festival, the Guizer Jarl, will wear and which character from the Norse Sagas – or stories from Norse history – he’ll represent.
On the evening of Up Helly Aa almost 1,000 warriors or ‘guizers’, some in full Viking dress, parade in groups, known as ‘squads’, wearing helmets and carrying shields and swords. Each guizer carries a fencing post, covered with sacking material soaked in paraffin.
In Lerwick, at 7.30pm, a firework explodes over the town hall.
The torches are lit, the band strikes up and the blazing procession begins, snaking through the streets with the Guizer Jarl standing proudly at the helm of his replica longship, or ‘galley’.
It takes half an hour for the Jarl’s squad of Vikings to drag him to the burning site, through a crowd of 5,000 spectators or more.
The Jarl leaves his ship, to a crescendo of cheers. A bugle call sounds, and then the torches are hurled into the galley.
As the blaze destroys the shipbuilders’ work, the crowd sings the song The Norseman’s Home.
1/31/21-Disablot
The female spirits known as the Disir (pronounced “DEE-sir;” Old Norse dísir, Old Saxon idisi) are one of the most enigmatic and vexing groups of beings in the mythology and religion of the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples.
It’s impossible to cleanly separate the Disir from other kinds of spiritual beings recognized by the ancient Germanic peoples.
For example, the Valkyries, female helping-spirits of the god Odin, are referred to as “Odin’s Disir” (Herjans dísir) in one Old Norse poem. The Disir, like the Valkyries, are depicted as being at times warlike, and at other times nourishing and protective.
The Disir are often portrayed as being tutelary (guardian) spirits of a particular person, group, or location. Such portrayals never seek to distinguish them from other tutelary spirits such as the fylgjur, hamingjur, and especially the land spirits. The land spirits, known in Old Norse as landvættir, are sometimes, when female, even called Landdísir in certain literary sources and place-names in Iceland and Norway.[3] As that example indicates, even the names for these kinds of beings are often used interchangeably with one another.
The Disir are often depicted as the spirits of dead female ancestors, which suggests a considerable degree of overlap with the elves, who are often characterized likewise.
At some point in the winter – the exact timing differed widely across the Germanic lands – a festival was held in honor of the Disir. In Norway and Iceland, this festival was known as the dísablót, “sacrifice to the Disir,” and took place at the beginning of winter. It could be held in either a private house or a formal temple, depending on the availability of the latter. From the name of the festival, we can infer that a sacrifice was its principal ritual act, and literary sources add that a lavish banquet (which probably followed the sacrifice) was another central part of the event. In Sweden, the Disting or dísaþing (“Disir-Assembly”) was held at the beginning of February, and unfortunately the sources have even less to tell us about what transpired there than they do in the case of the dísablót.
The Anglo-Saxon counterpart to the dísablót and dísaþing seems to have been the modraniht (“Mother’s Night”), which took place around New Year’s and is probably connected to the continental Germanic and Celtic “matron” cult. The “matrons” are female spirits who are very much like the Disir and Valkyries and every bit as varied – fertility spirits, guardian spirits, warriors, etc.
In other instances in Old Norse literature, the word dís, the singular form of dísir, is used as a generic term for “goddess” or even simply “woman.”
What are we to gather from all of this apparent confusion? Who and what exactly are the Disir?
It must be borne in mind that the pre-Christian mythology and religion of the Norse and other Germanic peoples were never systematized or codified. There was never any established doctrine on what a dís – or anything else, for that matter – is. It should therefore come as no surprise that we find so much confusion and contradiction in the sources themselves, both between texts and within a single text – and, of course, instead of “confusion” and “contradiction,” we could just as aptly say “dynamism” and “vitality.” When the religion in question was a living tradition, it went through countless different permutations across time and space, as all living traditions do, and the Germanic peoples themselves apparently never felt any particular need to restrain that process the way that certain other religions have often done.
Who and what were the Disir? The answer depends on which text – or, in other words, which person, group, place, and/or time – you choose to consult. The only common element in the above portrayals is that the Disir are always female. They seem to have been thought of as some sort of nominally distinct group of spiritual beings – just distinct enough to have a festival in their honor, but still indistinct enough to be impossible to really differentiate from females of other types of spiritual beings. The rest was entirely up to interpretation.
Learning Wicca and the Tradition of the Craft 