I did not know this. Good information.

The Yule circle I participated in last year did a reenactment of the Holly King and Oak King thing.

I celebrate Yule and Christmas. I mainly celebrate Christmas for my kids, but I think I would go to Midnight Mass on Christmas even if I didn't have them. Does this make me a Catholic witch?

A Catholic Witch. I dont normally celebrate holidays but this year I might get myself involved in some Yule stuff.

I think it's always difficult to completely purge oneself from previous relationships with what they view as a connection with their creator.

I was born and raised in a Christian home with relatives who were all Christians. I accepted the religion. Why shouldn't I? I was being taught that his is the correct picture of God.

You don't just walk alway from something like that without feeling some sort of attachment to it on some level. After all, it was part of your subconsious experience. And that makes it real on some level.

I think the religion had some potential, but the absolute focus on salvation was just more than I could handle. I needed something more productive. I just couldn't beleive in a God that focused on such negativity.

I just view it now as a shamanism that basically got off the track. It's a trainwrecked religion IMHO.

I mean, it seems to me that you either need to accept that God sent a sacarificial lamb to pay for the sins of man, or you don't.

It truly revolves entirely around that single concept. There's no question about it. That's the focal point of it.

Once I realized that I could not accept that concept on any level, that freed me to move on.

However, for a long time I simply didn't have a need for spirituality.

Or maybe to put that another way, I was completely satified with the spirituality of "Just Being".

But now I need energy.

I think that's truly my motivation above all else. My health is failing and I see spiritual power as the only solution. It will either work or it won't. If it works, I'll start feeling better. If it doesn't work I haven't lost anything because there were no other options.

So it's a no-lose situation for me.

And as far as the Christian thing goes I've already accepted Christ as my savior. That's a done deal. That's water over the damn.

You only need to do it once and I did it. Period. There's nothing more to do with that religion. It's not a self-help system. It's nothing more than a plea for redemption. Once that plea is made, there isn't anything more to do. It's a done deal.

Besides, I prayed to that God for decades with no results. So my only conclusion there would have to be that the answer is always no.

What's the point in praying to a God who always says no?

I like the idea that these holidays are centered on real events. It's the Winter Soltice! It's a real event. The sun will begin to rise in the sky from day day foward.

In a very real sense it's truest mark of the 'New Year'. The calendar year is arbitary. So Yule is truly "New Year's Day".

It the real cosmic New Year. And that's certainly how I'll be viewing it.

The rebirth of the God is a rebirth of me.

The entire new year will then be lived based on the cycles of the moon and sun (and therefore on the seasons).

This is the way things should be.

In fact, if we were smart we would have created calendars that actually matched the actual year. How the calendar got off the mark by a half a month is beyond me, but I'm sure history has an explanation.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that the moon cycles plays a major role in that.

The moon's orbit around the earth is not in sync with the earth's orbit around the sun.

And that's what causes problems for calendar makers who want to include the lunar cycles.

I think you might be right. The first calendars were lunar. Then at some point the Pope decided to switch from the Julian Calendar over to the Gregorian. There was an error or something wrong with the Julian calendar. It was out of sync with the equinoxes and solstices by one additional day. I guess it would have become a hassle to deal with later and it was gradually building up.

All of the Catholic countries were fine with this but the Protestant dominated countries refused to observe the Gregorian calendar for nearly 200 year because the Pope had switched it over.

I think we should go by the Aztec calendar so we are always in synch with the lunar and solar cycle.

At the time of the settling of New England in America, the New Year began on the 25th of march. Thus, March 24th was in 1599 and March 25th in 1600.

Later, a new form of designating the New Year was adopted and the first time it was used was in the General Court of Connecticut as "this 20th day of March, 1649-50, or 1650 by our present system of reckoning. This style prevailed for almost 100 years. Due to an error in the calendar, the dates in all months between 1600 and 1700 should be carried forward ten (10) days. Thus, July10 was realy July 20, according to our present system.

The British Parliament changed the calendar from the old style to the new, the one used today, and changed the date of September 3rd, 1752 (old calendar) to September 14, 1752 (new calendar) thus dropping eleven days.

Beginning in 45 B.C., many parts of the world used the Julian calendar to mark the passage of time. By the Julian calendar, March 25 was the first day of the year and each year was 365 days and 6 hours long. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII determined that the Julian calendar was incorrect: each day was just a little bit too long and the human calendar wasn't keeping up with nature's calendar. To solve the problem, Pope Gregory XIII created what is known as the Gregorian calendar. This new calendar changed the first day of the year to January 1 and also jumped ahead by 10 days to make up for the lost time.

More info:

http://usgenweb.org/research/calendar.shtml

Then the Catholics and the Protestants would complain and pretty soon no one would be observing any calendar and how would we know when our appointments were? Let me just check out my Aztec to lunar conversion chart and my solar Gregorian substitution model

From Wikipedia>

A lunar calendar is a calendar that is based on cycles of the moon phase. The only widely used purely lunar calendar is the Islamic calendar or Hijri calendar, whose year always consists of 12 lunar months. A feature of a purely lunar year, on the Islamic calendar model, is that the calendar ceases to be linked to the seasons, and drifts each year by 11 days (or 12 days in case of leap year), and comes back to the position it had in relation to the solar year approximately every 33 Islamic years. It is used predominantly for religious purposes. In Saudi Arabia it is also used for commercial purposes.

Most lunar calendars, except the Hijri, are in fact lunisolar calendars. That is, months are kept on a lunar cycle, but then intercalary months are added to bring the lunar cycles into synchronisation with the solar year.

Because there are about twelve lunations (synodic months) in a solar year, this period (354.37 days) is sometimes referred to as a lunar year.

I was not raised Catholic. I was raised Protestant and my father was a Protestant minister. And, yet I have absolutely no attachment to non-Catholic Christianity at all.

My attachment is specifically to Catholicism. And, I don't think it has anything to do with the idea of a savior. I don't believe Christ is/was "the savior". I think my primary attachment to it is probably in the BVM. She was my first contact with the goddess and when I think of the "mothering" side of the goddess, I think of her. I am also very attached to some of the saints. Many of them spent their whole lives dedicated to the pursuit of connection with the Divine......much like Buddhist monks. I think there is definitely something to the notion of "sacrifice for the sake of others". It may very well be the key to enlightenment and evolution.

On doing the five rites:

I have a suggestion that might help you in doing rite number one (spinning) where I don't get nauseated.

I just start spinning slowly. I go around about five times, eyes open, and when I stop I close my eyes and hold onto the wall (or my low ceiling). I am breathing deeply and my heart is pounding. Don't open your eyes until your breathing and heartbeat return more normal.

I usually don't get nauseated when I do it that way.

Thanks, JB. I'll try this today. I have a question for you about tarot. When I do readings for people and the answer they are getting is not always positive I HATE telling them. I think this is just my personality and probably something I have to get over. It makes me not want to do readings for people at all. How do you handle telling people "not so good" or even bad news?

Yes, I forgot about that. Catholics do tend to worship the BVM as a goddess in her own right whilst protestants almost dismiss her completely as nothing more than just a mortal woman who was used to bring Jesus into the world.

And like you say, the Catholics are much more into saints was well. Protestants tend to focus almost entirely on Jesus and view everyone else in the bible as merely supporting characters to that story.

Still though, surely Catholics don't view the BVM as the mother of creation? Where would they come up with that?

They don't and I am in no way insinuating that they do. Nor am I saying that I am Catholic or that I agree with any or all of the teachings. I was joking about the Catholic Witch thing.

My attachment to it lies in the beautiful rituals and the fact that it was what led me to paganism. One thing you have to realize James is that I am not like you. I'm a Cancer and my reasons for doing things are based more in my emotions than in my intellect. Not to say that I don't think things through and think about the reasons for things, but that's not the "final reason" for me. I work very much on intuition which is perhaps why I am a pretty good tarot card reader. So, if I get a feeling that something is good or bad for me, I go with it and don't try to rationalize it.

I did a reading for a woman who wanted to know if a relationship she was getting involved in would work out. According to the current energy she was a very controlling and jealous person and all of the cards indicated that both people would be miserable.

She admitted she was a controlling personality, and she listened carefully. I told her it would not be a good relationship if she did not change. Then after the reading she asked me: "Well will it work out or not?"

DUH!

She was not listening. The answer was NO... if she did not make a change. I am sure she had no intention of changing.. so the relationship was doomed. But she knew how to change that. She was not willing to change herself. She is in control of her reality and her future. Most people don't take responsibility for that.

You can always put a positive spin on any reading. Better to be forewarned than to be caught by surprise. The tarot is only reading the current energy. The current energy can be changed by a change of attitude most of the time.

I never forecast a person's death in a reading. The cards do not see death, they only see permanent change.

I have never seen something like a death either and have never interpreted the death card to mean a physical death.

I guess what I'm hearing you say is that it's the same for you. I see things like people not meeting someone anytime in the near future (in love readings) but there is usually something indicated there that they need to be working on instead. They don't like to hear that. All they hear is "I'm not going to meet anyone". I guess I just need to grow a backbone when it comes to readings.

It seems to me that when people come for those Tarot readings they need to emotionally prepare themselves for hearing good and bad news correct? Sometimes you must hear the bad and focus on how to change that in your life. Is there always a way to change or sometimes you just tell people this is bad and there is nothing you can do about it? That might be frustrating for a person to hear. But sometimes, there is nothing you can do. Shrug. You can only control so much in your life and have to allow what is going to happen to take place. Its kind of like the "Serenity Prayer" in a way.

If the reading is about another person in their life (i.e. will my ex decide to come back to me?) then they don't have much control over that. If the cards say no, then generally I tell them they have to accept that. However, if the reading is about them then they do have the power to change the direction they are headed.

I had a co-worker that got in trouble at work for something. She was worried about getting fired. The cards stated there would be repercussions, but she would not be fired. I don't think there was anyway for her to change that situation to not having any consequences.

I can understand that. I actually work on intuition more than people realize. I need to feel good about something first, but then I go ahead and rationalize it to death after that.

Like with the Wicca thing. I'm drawn to many aspect of it intuitively. But I can also see that rational behind a lot of it. So I try to work it would to where it's both rational and intuitive.

This is why I like Scott's abstract aproach so much. He basically gives the green light to trust your intuition.

I think one thing that I believe above all else is that the spirit lives within us (or that we are ulimately the spirit). All vision and spiritual experiences ultimately come from within our own subconscious even if they appear to be external manifestations.

The other thing that has attracted me to Wicca is that many sites I've been to claim that Wicca embraces pantheism and animismtic views of nature.

I'm not sure whether pantheism is intuitive for me or rational. Probably a little bit of both. I think as a very young child it had to be intuitive because I wasn't educated enough for it to be rational at that time.

But as I've grown I've found many rationalizations for it. Even on the scientific level.

So it's difficult for me to view the Goddess and God as being like totally seperate entities from me. Clearly this is this all-in-one dichotomy.

Somehow we are both spirit and body simultaneously. So when we try to get in touch with what we call 'The Gods' what we are really attempting to do is get in touch with our own spiritual side.

This is why I have problems with deity type Gods. They represent too much seperation.

I'm taking the suggestion of many Wicca sites, that pantheism and animism is embraced, or at least recognized as valid views in Wicca.

I suppose you could say that this pantheistic view is my intuitive foundation, then I try to build rituals based upon that using reason (or pragmatism).

In some ways I can't help but do this because rituals, folklore, and mythology are all founded in pragmatism ultimately. They may be based on intuition and spirituality, but as soon as they become organized into a ritual, the can't hardly help but become pragmatic.

So it seems to me that spirituality is inevitably a mixture of both intuition and pragmatism.

In the case of attending a church because you are intuitively attracted to its rituals, all you are truly doing is leaving the practical matters of the ritual up to the church. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. I'm just suggesting that the pragmaticism or rationale is still there. It's just already been formalized by someone else.