Yule cards

Nevyn

well It is THAT time of year again and I will be soon off to the shop to start the tradition of searching for Yule cards.

if any one comes across anyone in the next while please do let us know.

Evil Phil

Probably Christmas and not Yule but you could try the Amnesty shop on Fleet street. Its a good cause and they usually have some non-specific festive cards too.

silja

Past Times on Wicklow Street has some very nice cards, most say "Seasons Greetings" or are left blank, though most still have X-masy scenes on them.

Talliesin

House of Astrology had some Solstice cards a few years back, but alas they don't currently. They do have a few "happy holidays" etc.

JohnnyBravo

YULE CARDS?????

Talliesin

Originally posted by JohnnyBravo
YULE CARDS?????

Em, cards, em, for Yule, em, can you re-state the question?

JohnnyBravo

Whats Yule i had a Yule Phlane

Nevyn

Yule is the celebration of the return of the Sun. It is the time of the winter solstice, when the nights are at their longest. After the moment of the solstice, the days begin to grow in strength again, and the tide in the struggle between light and dark begins to turn. To Wiccans and Pagans of most traditions, the Sun represents the male aspect of Deity His death and rebirth on the Winter Solstice is viewed as the death of the old solar year and the birth of the new. This eternal struggle is symbolized in some traditions by the battle between the Oak King (God of the Waxing Year or the Divine Child) and the Holly King (God of the Waning Year or the Dark Lord). At Yule, the Oak King vanquishes the Holly King. At Litha, or summer solstice (when the days begin to grow shorter), the Holly King is victorious over the Oak King.

Yule symbols and themes have long been a part of our Pagan past which stretches far behind us, our parents, or even great grandparents. These traditions and others were carried over to America by the immigrants and settlers of the New World. Christmas (also known as Yule-day) is a good example of a purely Pagan festival, adopted by the Christian religion for its own purposes. History shows us that long before the fourth century, when many Christians began to observe Christmas on the 25th of December, the Pagans celebrated the birth of the son of the Babylonian Queen of Heaven.

Yuletide (Norse) lasts from December 20th through December 31st. It begins on "Mother Night" and ends twelve days later on "Yule Night"; hence the "Twelve Days of Christmas" tradition. The Norse word for Yule means "Wheel." In ancient Chaldee, the word yule meant "infant" or "little child." The concept of the Old Father Time and the Baby New Year have these same Pagan overtones as well. Each are views of the old being replaced by the new, the ever recurring cycle of life.

[from http://www.paganet.org/pnn/1998/Yule/Sabbat.html ]

or have a look at
http://www.tylwythteg.com/Yule.html

JohnnyBravo

and here i was thinking that pagans believed in nothing how uncultured am i

Nevyn

Pagan does not mean that you believe in nothing.
far from it there are two meaning those of old country rural beliefs or those with many Gods.

funny how people in this country mix up pagan , heathen and athiest.

Pagan : One who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, especially a worshiper of a polytheistic religion.

Heathen : # Such persons considered as a group; the unconverted. One who is regarded as irreligious, uncivilized, or unenlightened.

Atheist : One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.

Pagan is oft used a an umberlla term for those of Earth based spiritualily from druid to shamans to witches and wiccans.

JohnnyBravo

and you are a wiccan???

rcunning03

Heathen : # Such persons considered as a group; the unconverted. One who is regarded as irreligious, uncivilized, or unenlightened.

are you sure about that check this site out


http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/paganism/subdivisions/heathen.shtml

Talliesin

Originally posted by rcunning03
are you sure about that check this site out


http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/paganism/subdivisions/heathen.shtml

There is a big debate about whether "Heathen" is synonymous with "Pagan" or not. It's one of those big debates that are a lot bigger than they should be really. For some reason it seems to have cropped up again just about everywhere in the last month.

Personally I tend to think that since the group who fit the narrower definition seem to prefer it to be used in that sense (see <www.wyrdwords.vispa.com/heathenry/callusheathen.html>) and the group who fit the wider definition generally don't mind not being called Heathens one might as well go with the narrower definition. It's also quite useful to have a term that describes the Germanic traditions but is not as narrow as Ásatrú or Odinism which arguably don't describe all of the Germanic traditions.

Of course as many of the threads on the English Language board show, words are tricky things.

rcunning03

until a few days ago, i thought heathen was a David Bowie cd

Talliesin you seem to know your stuff, i have just started researching paganism and had a quick look at shintoism, is shinto a pagan religion its seems to be very old and the beliefs in deities and everything having a spirit seem pretty similar and Japan is definately a country where if it doesnt hurt anyone, they dont see a problem with it

Talliesin

Originally posted by rcunning03
is shinto a pagan religion

There's a running hacker joke where you abuse the term "values of" like "π = 3, for large values of 3".

Anyway, Shinto is a Pagan religion, for large values of "Paganism". It meets some people's definitions of the term, but not others, which tend to focus more on those paths of European origin.

With some religions you could even argue that some practitioners where Pagan and some weren't. Hinduism would be a case in point, where members of some sects within Hinduism would be right at home with a bunch of Witches and Druids, members of some other sects would differ very strongly from the groups that can be easily identified as Pagan (The asceticism, denial of the importance of this "plane" and the focus on Samadhi as an end in itself of the Krsna Consciousness sect would be very much at odds with most Pagan paths).

It's this difficulty in fixing an exact definition on Paganism that is the reason for the 3rd rule in the charter for this board:

A loose working-definition of what is or is not Paganism will be used. We would rather read an interesting post about Voodoo than a boring to-and-fro about whether it was on-topic or not.

rcunning03

cheers

Yoda

In Saxon England, they used to go out, cut down a very big tree, trim it down, and drag the log around before setting it on fire. That's the Yule Log.

In Germany, they used to go out, cut down a fir tree, bring it indoors, and put candles on it. That's the Christmas Tree.

In Lithuania, they used to go out and set a tree on fire. Now ain't that pagan?

All this is to wake the Year God and get him to, ah, inspire the Mother to help bring back the world out of Winter.

Or so Marija Gimbutas taught me.

That's why I love those coloured lights.

Talliesin

Originally posted by Yoda
All this is to wake the Year God and get him to, ah, inspire the Mother to help bring back the world out of Winter.

Yep, but of course I doubt that the attitude that was best described by Butthead as "Fire! Fire! hehehehe Fire! Cool! hehehehe Fire! Fire!" was absent when these traditions began.

Yoda

You think that, apart from technology, we've really changed all that much since the Ice Age, do you?

Yoda

I soooo want a Venus of Willendorf for the top of my tree.

Actually that reminds me I suppose I can show you some of my goddesses. That's Willie above, drawn for me from a photo by archaeological illustrator Maeve Maher for a talk I gave "Sexual Imagery in Palaeolithic Art". To the left is "Momma", made for me by an ex who wasn't an ex at the time; centre is a vessel I was given at a Neolithic studies conference in Budapest in 1990; right was given to me in Sofia in 2002.

rcunning03

You think that, apart from technology, we've really changed all that much since the Ice Age, do you?

went to new grange yesterday and i have to say there clothing looks so much warmer than ours and i'd really love to sleep under animal skin insteatd of a duvet our clothes just dont look like they keep the cold out nearly as well

Talliesin

Originally posted by Yoda
In Lithuania, they used to go out and set a tree on fire. Now ain't that pagan?

Well we got our tree and our log on Saturday, but we decided not to add this Lithuanian tradition to our customs and risk starting a forest fire