A Druid’s Web Log – Signs of Spring at the Full Worm Moon 2021

Signs of Spring! Today as I write, it is the day of the Full Worm Moon, so named because it marks the appearance of the first earthworms. The worms appear just in time to feed the robins, reminding us that the universe has its own logic and things are unfolding exactly as they should, whether we humans can see it or not. The crocuses are putting on their full display in my neck of the forest; every year they seem more lush and magical than the year before. I can’t tell if that’s an illusion or reality, but the white and yellow and purple blooms are popping up everywhere – in the garden beds and in the lawn.

The Canada geese have returned to the lake down the road, as I drive by on my weekly round of chores I will soon be looking for the new batch of goslings. The Spring Peepers (frogs) have started their chorus behind the house and deep in the forest. Fat, round wood pigeons who have feasted at my birdfeeder all winter are plodding around looking for mates. I did have at least one visit from a bear. As usual the suet feeders were torn down and the bird feeder on a stand was knocked over. The Sanguinaria (Blood Root) is poking up and soon the flower beds will be covered with little white stars.

The festival season is cranking up too – invitations are coming in from many venues. Its frustrating that everything is still online but relaxing at the same time. There is no need to travel, and the Earth benefits from less cars on the roads and fewer airplanes in the sky. (You can see my schedule posted below).

Here are some excerpts from my newest herbal; “The Sacred Herbs of Spring – Magical Healing and Edible Plants to Celebrate Beltaine”. Buy the book here . The book features folklore, healing properties, magic and recipes for the plants that are emerging now.

Walpurgisnacht, Hexennacht

This is the German traditional name for Beltaine Eve, April 30, the night when Witches fly in from all over Germany on a goat, pitchfork or on a broomstick, to a summit in the Harz mountains, to dance around bonfires. The place where they convene is called the “Hexentanzplatz” (dancing place of the Witches) at Blocksberg Hill, a high peak that is often shrouded in clouds.

In pre-Christian times these spring rituals were joyful festivals. In later Christian times, they morphed into rites designed to scare away the evil Spirits and Witches and forces of cold weather, snow and darkness, that were trying to stop the Queen of Spring from entering the land. Loud noise was said to do the trick, so starting at twilight men and boys would bang away on pots and pans and shoot gunfire into the sky. Chanting loudly and banging boards against houses added to the cacophony. Huge Bonfires were lit to keep Witches away.

Other customs included leaping over flames because the belief was that the grain would grow as high as a farmer could jump. Offerings of bread, butter, and honey were left in the fields as offerings for phantom hounds. Cowbells were blessed and stable doors locked and hung with three crosses for extra protection. Billy goats and broomsticks had to be hidden so that Witches would not steal and ride them. Socks were left in a cross formation of children’s beds. Pentagrams were placed over entrances and salt was spread along thresholds. Rue and Saint John’s wort were burned to protect the house from sorcery.

Old brooms and household objects were burned in bonfires as were straw men, symbolic of bad luck, sickness and disease. Children gathered bunches of Juniper, Hawthorn, Ash and Elder to hang around the house and barn as protective charms. At dawn the women would bathe their faces in dew from a Hawthorn tree.

As with Halloween this is a “mischief night” when children and teenagers liked to play tricks.

Rain was considered a very good omen on May Eve and on the morning of May 1 a Fir tree with its lower branches removed was hung with ribbons, sausages, pretzels and wooden figures depicting various trades and the community’s hope for a prosperous spring.

Who was Saint Walpurga?

The Saxon, Christian woman whose name was grafted onto the Witches’ spring festival was born in Devonshire, England, in 770 CE. The niece of Saint Boniface, who missionized the Frankish empire and was named Archbishop of Mainz, she was sent to Mainz, Germany as a missionary and was later named abbess of a convent in Heidenheim.

She baptized converted Pagans in the Heidenheim Brunnen and when she died her tomb oozed a type of healing oil so she was canonized, supposedly on May 1. Her body was cut into pieces that were spread all over Germany and France as holy relics.

She is the Patroness of coughs, storms, rabies and sailors. Her symbols are the spindle (also a symbol for the Germanic Goddess Frau Holda), grain (for the luck of the harvest), and a dog (for rabies).

As with many other Pagan festivals, once the church took over and reconstituted the ancient observance, the people were able to simultaneously celebrate both the Christian and Pagan holy day without fear of persecution. They could dance the bonfires on the feast day of Saint Walpurga, just as their Pagan ancestors had always done.

British Witches at Beltane

In Celtic Britain it was believed that on May Eve Witches and Faeries would transform into hares and travel the countryside to steal milk and the health of the herds. It was said that the only way to stop a Witch in hare’s form was to shoot her with a silver bullet.

Many parts of the hare were used for medicine; the gall for the eyes, the blood for skin conditions and so on. According to the Welsh Physicians of Myddfai the brains of a hare mixed with powdered Rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis) flowers and roasted was a sovereign remedy for vertigo and migraine.

As we know Witches are healers and midwives, which is why they may have been associated with hares. And like hares, Witches like to dance under the Moon.

Witches wanting to do mischief on May Eve might hide secret objects under a cow’s tail or steal your cheese-making and churning implements so the household butter and cheese had to be made before dawn to divert the Faeries attention and dairying equipment had to be well hidden on May Eve.

Rose Geranium (Pelargonium graveolens)

Rose Geranium Cake

Finish off your meal with a classic yellow cake, decorated with edible flowers in honor of Flora, the Goddess of the season. Try making a fragrant Rose Geranium cake by laying four or five fresh Rose Geranium leaves in the bottom of each pan before you pour in the batter. Consider adding fresh Lemon juice and zest to the frosting or cake batter to add interest.

Sweet Woodruff, Master of the Forest, Master of the Woods, Our Lady’s Lace, Sweet Scented Bedstraw, Waldmeister
(Asperula odorata) (Galium odoratum)

Dried or wilted Sweet Woodruff is steeped in Rhine wine and drunk on May 1, in Germany. Here is yet another recipe;

May Wine

Ingredients
1/2 cup of dried or wilted, organic Sweet Woodruff leaves (Galium odoratum)
1 bottle of Riesling wine
1 bottle of Sekt (German sparkling wine); or champagne
3/4 cup organic Strawberries, chopped
Fresh Sweet Woodruff flowers for garnish

Method
Gather the herb just before it comes into full bloom and dry or wilt the leaves
Steep the dried or wilted Sweet Woodruff leaves in the Riesling wine for an hour or so. (The dry or wilted herb actually has more flavor and scent than the fresh herb)
Strain the herbs from the drink.
Pour the infused wine into a glass pitcher, slowly adding in the adding sparkling wine or champagne.
Add Strawberries and a big pinch of Sweet Woodruff flowers to the top, and stir gently.

Serve at your Beltaine rite or feast.

Excerpt from “The Sacred Herbs of Spring – Magical Healing and Edible Plants to Celebrate Beltaine”. Buy the book here.

BOOK NEWS

Book Review – A Legacy of Druids: Conversations with Druid Leaders of Britain, the USA and Canada, past and present by Ellen Evert Hopman, Winchester, UK: Moon Books

A Legacy of Druids is the third book I have reviewed of conversations collected by Ellen Hopman, the first, The Real Witches of New England, and then, Being a Pagan, and now, A Legacy of Druids. Each has offered me important direction in learning where I am on my journey into the future. The book offers many resources, exciting resources that I will continue to explore. I have already written for and have received the initial introduction materials for the course offered by the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. Over the years I have read much of the ancient Celtic stories and myths, but I need to ask Ellen for her recommendation on a book of the classical style of poetry that uses the poetry form mentioned by Steve Wilson (p. 279).

This book, as with the other two books, offer us important direction as we move into the New Age, the Age of Aquarius. We need to relearn how to again live in unison with the Earth, venerate the Goddess(es), listen to the spirits of our ancestors and of the Earth, and find peace and harmony in our diversity. Each of these changes in the way to live is the essence of what these Druid Leaders have to offer us. We are at an important turning point for our survival.

Throughout the last several thousand years we have been taught that we have dominion over the Earth, over all living creatures and all that is of the Earth. We have placed ourselves above all other life. We treat the Earth as if it is dead rather than a sentient living Earth with the interdependence of all that is of the Earth. Returning to being one with all that is of the Earth in our rightful place in evolution is central to the ways of Druidry. The central rituals and celebrations of the eight spokes of the Wheel of the Year and spending time celebrating in nature among the Oaks and all of Earth’s flora and fauna bring alive the world around us and express our respect for her. The Earth has been central to me for most of my life, beginning with a row of radishes I planted when in kindergarten and now at 81 years identifying medicinal herbs in our new neighborhood.

The interviews reveal the diverse thinking of these Druid leaders. Some orders focus on the study of the ancient ways to uncover the ways the original Celts and Druids lived, while others are most concerned with developing new meaningful rituals and ways of magic to celebrate the Goddess(es) and the Earth with the eight spokes of the Wheel of the Year. Those who focus more on academic research sometimes considered those who focus on experiencing the magic of the Celtic rituals as being airy-fairy. But there is an important place for both in appreciating our diversity in the future. Many of the ways of the ancient Druids would not apply today, e.g. the magic seen in the different craft guilds of Druidry such as the magic of the iron making guild that extracts iron from rock to make swords and other iron implements, a skill that would not be considered magical today. We now live in a very different world, but the ancient myths and stories still have much to offer us in understanding our journey into the New Age.

Of personal interest to me is the return to a matrifocal society, leaving behind the controlling and oppressive ways of our current patriarchal religions and culture, leaving behind the belief that “Thou shall have no other Gods before me,” (Exodus 20:3). Another disagreement between various orders of Druidry is the belief that all Goddesses are one Goddess and all Gods are one God vs. the polytheistic belief that each Goddess and God has their own personality. Also, in Druidry I question if we are free to identify with a Goddess of another culture as seen in the Fellowship of Isis. In my own journey into the ancient ways, I find I resonate most with the Nordic Deities, particularly the Vanir Goddess Freyja. I sense that at least one of my past lives was Nordic. I also value most our Great Earth Mother, but I wonder which Goddess most reflects her. Freyja, a Goddess of fertility, seems connected to the Earth more than many others as she walks Earth helping women with pregnancy and childbirth, yet she is one of the Upper World deities and not of the Earth. I find a special calling from the Gnostic Goddess Sophia who plunged to Earth from the Pleroma at the center of the Milky Way to become part of the substance of the Earth in its formation. Then, in my visit to the west coast of Ireland in 2014 I saw the profile of the Celtic Goddess Danu as seen from Carrowmore reclining along the Ballygawley Mountain ridge over which the sun rises each morning. As the Wheel of the Year progresses the rising sun moves along her profile, thus portraying her as another powerful Earth centered Goddess. To experience her more deeply I sat in ecstatic trance. The Celtic deities differ from the deities of many other cultures in that most do reside upon the Earth.

Another belief from Genesis is the Eve story of eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil that began us on our journey into a world of separation, separation that has caused us so much grief. Most of our words of description have their opposite, e.g. hot vs. cold, beautiful vs. ugly, and hard vs. soft, or Yang vs. Yin. A very basic duality is me vs. other, or us vs. them, dualities that have led to many wars and death. This dualism is also proclaimed by God who has a chosen people, the descendants of Abraham vs. the unchosen. Some of the conversations of Hopman’s book examine similar divisive dualisms in the current orders of Druidry, e.g. academic vs. experiential, and polytheism vs. monotheism. As we go into the Age Aquarius I believe that the diversity of such dualities will be valued, and such diverse dualisms will only enrich our lives. With the amount of information available to us, no one person can know everything. We will depend upon each other to bring us what we need to know, so different from the lives of our ancestors when most everyone in a particular tribe did the same age-appropriate things. Then our current diversity was not experienced, but now there is beauty in this diversity.

The mention of the use of the rituals and poetry of Druidry that arose in some of the conversations of the book are of the magical ways of the ancient Celts. These rituals and the magical words used in creating spells are trance inducing, trance that takes us into the world of the Spirits, a world beyond our limiting rational thinking. These rituals, poetry and spells are still being uncovered in the academic research of Celtic history. The altered states of consciousness of dreams and trance will be important dimensions of life in the Aquarian Age as they were in ancient times before our current era of rationality. This journeying into the world of the spirits is most important in my practice and teaching of ecstatic trance as I have written about in my eight books, e.g. my second book, The Power of Ecstatic Trance. Dreams and trance experiences of listening to the Spirits is what gave direction in living to our ancestors including our Celtic ancestry.

Jean Gebser in describing past transitions between eras notes that there has always been violence between those hanging onto the old ways and those journeying into the new era. We are now experiencing this violence in the current transition, violence in which I find hope, hope because those who are trying to hang on to the old ways are feeling threatened.

Whether seen in the growth of witchcraft, paganism or Druidry, along with the growth of many other ways such as my practice and teaching of Ecstatic Trance, I believe that in the New Age we will again venerate the Goddess in a matrifocal world rather than patriarchy, live in oneness with the Earth rather than putting ourselves above all other life, find harmony and peace in our diversity, find great creativity in living in community with others, and find direction in living through listening to the Spirits as so valued by our ancestors. There will be more benefits that we have yet to discover, but this brief list is a beginning, a beginning that the leaders of Druidry have to offer us, past and present, and future. Ellen, Thank You for bringing these conversations together, conversations that open our thinking in giving us direction into the future. We all live in Story, and we are in the process of creating a new healthier Story to live by.

– Nicholas E. Brink, PhD., Author of Ecstatic Soul Retrieval (publisher – Inner Traditions / Bear & Co.), Power of Ecstatic Trance, Baldr’s Magic, and other volumes. Facebook Site: Nick Brink’s Books

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS AND CLASSES

Sunday, April 18
6 PM Eastern USA time
Transcending Roots Zoom Class
The Sacred Herbs of Beltane and Spring
May 7, 8 and 9, 2021
10th Anniversary
Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference (virtual this year)
Ellen will speak on tree medicine and lore and Celtic spirituality
June 5-6
Event by Moon Books on Facebook
Jun 5 at 5 AM EDT – Jun 6 at 4 PM EDT
Public · Anyone on or off Facebook
TWO DAYS of talks, panels & Q/A live sessions with a whole host of Moon Books authors.
FREE and open to everyone
June 18th-20th, 2021
Free Spirit Gathering
On Line Conference this year!
Ellen will speak Friday 7pm
Neo-Pagan Club of India
18 July 2021
Ellen Evert Hopman, Neopagan Author
DURATION : 90 minutes
TIME : 7 pm India 1: 30 pm England . 8:30 am USA . Conference will be on Zoom
whattsapp contact number is +917327965424
August 7, 2021
3:00-4:30 PM
Dragonfest (Colorado)
A talk on Druid magical techniques from history
October 26, 2021
Wild Ginger Herbal Center
6-8 PM Eastern
Ellen will speak on The Sacred Herbs of Samhain
A Zoom webinar

NEWS YOU CAN USE

How to get rid of mice using natural repellents

Below you will find the usual round up of Archaeology, Herb, Health, Climate, Nature, Celtic, Fairy, arts and Ethics news. Enjoy! And you can see past blogs and all my books and DVD’s on my website.

Study Druidism at Tribe of the Oak (on line from anywhere!)

ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS

More Archaeology News…

HERB NEWS

Please make sure you are using fragrant elderflowers for this, such as Sambucus nigra – native American varieties have no scent – Ellen

Elderflower Champagne

Basic traditional European recipe:

1/2 gallon water (use 2 liters)
250 to 300 gr (1 1/2 cup) white sugar
1-2 lemons zested and sliced
1 tablespoon vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar)
15 large flower heads from Mexican elder or 10 flower heads from regular elder
Champagne or wine yeast (optional – flowers have wild yeast)

Method:

Pick the elder flowers when they’re fresh and full of pollen. I remove the stems as much as possible. Place the flowers in a bowl outside for an hour to let the little bugs vacate.

Place water in a container, add the sugar and stir with a clean spoon to make sure it is dissolved.

Add lemon zest and lemon slices, the elderflower and vinegar to the container and stir briefly with a clean spoon. Some people add yeast at this stage.

Close the container but not so tight that fermentation gases can’t escape or place a clean towel on top.

Let it stand anywhere between 24 to 48 hrs. If you didn’t use yeast, you should see some bubbles indicating the fermentation from wild yeast is active. If this doesn’t occur, then add some yeast and let it ferment for another 3-4 days.

Personally, I like to strain it after 48 hrs then let the fermentation go for another 4 days.

Bottle in recycled soda bottles or swing-top glass bottles. Let it ferment for a week before enjoying. I like to check the pressure from time to time by unscrewing or opening slightly the bottle to make sure it’s not excessive. From Pascal Baudar “The Wildcrafting Brewer”.

More Herb News…