Category Archives: Practice & Learning

To Answer a Question: Distaff Day

Leave a reply

I write a little blog called The Spinner’s Cottage and I am researching a story on St. Distaff’s Day. It seems spinners have been celebrating something that they don’t even know the origins of. I knew it had to be something more than what spinners think it is and I am convinced that I am on the right track with Frigga. I have done pretty much all of my research but when I was at your site (great by the way), I saw that you celebrated Frigga on the 12th. Spinners are under the impression it has to be the 7th, but I personally think it can be done on what ever day you return to your spinning in January. So, what I am wondering is why you celebrated on the 12th? If you wouldn’t mind sharing.

Thank you for any help you can give me.

 

Hi there,

I pick the 12th mainly due to convenience. Yule and New Years is crazy and keep me busy. Imbolg is a big event in my house, often I wind up hosting more than one ritual, plus my personal stuff, plus putting away the decorations from Yule. So basically, I have a lot of planning to do. Brighid takes precedence over Frigga in my practice, to be honest. So I push celebrating Frigga’s Day/Distaff Day to the later date of the 12th. The middle of the month works for me. One nice thing about holidays with ambiguous dates is the option to choose which one works best for you.

Something important to keep in mind when choosing dates to celebrate holidays (read: holy days) is that back in the old days, most people did not have calendars hanging on their walls. Heck, most people didn’t even know exactly what day they were born, they just knew it was around the first week of May (for example). So while people knew what day was Sunday, for church going purposes, they didn’t always concern themselves with whether today was the 7th or the 8th. “Minor” holidays like Distaff Day would have been celebrated around the same time each year, but on different days in different homes. A housewife in olden times wasn’t going to panic if she couldn’t pick up her spinning again for a couple of days after the usual date. She might not have even known if she was a day or two off.

Cheers, Juni

Of Books both New and Old

1 Reply

Mine and Grey’s library has expanded of late. Books have been arriving at our door for weeks now. Our pre-existing libraries have also been raided. Grey’s big coffee has shelving below the table surface and this is now filled with books and notepads and pens.

All this is just part of the planning materials for the Witches’ Sabbat at Raven’s Knoll. To do lists, schedules, rough drafts of rituals, shopping lists, staff duties, dates for staff meetings and so much more.

It was also decided that we had better study and review our subject material, a winter and spring of boning up. Books on Witchcraft, spirit work, trance, ritual, the Horned Lord, history, the cunning folk and a variety of other subjects now have a place under the coffee table.

The Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa, the Roebuck in the Thicket, by Standing Stone and Elder Tree, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits … to name just a few. Earmarked, bookmarked, notes in margins.

A massive tree branch rests behind the couch. Slowly being sanded, its fork now trimmed to size.

So far we have bought a hatchet, sand paper, and books.

We have contacted every hunter and game farm we can find in search of the perfect skull.

Caribou hide to be shipped from Grey’s parents.

Antler tips, beads, red ochre and other accoutrements are being set aside.

Recipes are being discussed.

Letters to occult and herbal shops in search of wormwood and other materials are being drafted.

Friends pressed into work.

Nightly discussions about picnic tables, event insurance, registration forms, and cooking fires dominate our house. Stories of events and rituals we have lead, organized or volunteered at are being picked apart bit by bit.

Offerings are being made. Preemptive rituals to be held.

Planning. Plotting and planning. And so many books. It’s been a good winter so far.

In the Craft Room

1 Reply

I cleaned off the little stool and set it in front of my altars. She sat down and looked up at me expectantly. Gently, I took the little skull from the corner of the book shelf where it hangs. I whispered quietly to it for a moment and then held it out to her. Following my instructions she held out her hand high over the skull and slowly lowered it. I didn’t tell her what to expect, what to feel for. A few inches above the skull her hand froze.

“There’s like a ledge here.”

I encouraged her to feel around the skull, moving her hands back and forth, closer and further and on all sides. She felt something surrounding the skull, something that got stronger the closer her hand came to it. I explained that the spirit who uses this skull as a spirit house did not just fill it, but also the area around it. Not unlike the theory that our souls extend slightly beyond our bodies, auras and all that.

I put the skull back to its resting place and picked up another similar skull. I held it out for her and asked her to feel this one as well. She raised her hand and lowered it over the skull. She frowned and tried again.

“I don’t feel anything.”

“You’re not supposed to,” I laughed “This one hasn’t been made into a spirit house yet!”

“Oh.” She said.

“Now you know it’s not all in your head, you’re not just making it up.” I explained. “If it was all in your head, you would have thought there was something in the second skull.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“Now you know the difference.”

Understanding, she beamed up at me. I grinned at her and put the second skull back in its spot.

She lit an incense cone and placed it in the offering dish, then thanked the spirit for teaching her this small but important lesson.

We rejoined Grey sitting on the floor of the Craft room to talk shop and soak up the ambience. Witnessed by the spirits who reside there.