Well I haven't done much on this blog due to the fact that I got plenty of other stuff to occupy my existance. But I've been challenged by my buddy MOD to put something up daily, so I've decided to post my daily Pagan Calendar, which I do every day for my YaHoo! group, The Occidental Tribe. Maybe this will get some readership and help the pagan movement in some way. I need to acknowledge that the information contained in this daily post is not completely my own writings, but comes from numerous websites and is only compiled by me. I do however at times put in my own research, in my own words, among that of what I find. Enjoy!
Modern Date : July 26th
Ante Diem VII Kalendas August
Seventh Day to the Kalends of August
This day is for special religious observance.
On this day in 64 AD the Great Fire of Rome finally burned itself out after raging for nine days.
July was named in honor of Julius Caesar, and was formerly called Quinctilis, or the fifth month (after March).
Festival of Sleipner
The Asatru festival of Sleipner, Odin's eight-legged mount, honors the creature's ability to travel between worlds. Sleipner is a hamanic steed that can be used to travel to other levels of consciousness. According to Norse mythology, the wall that enclosed Asgard was destroyed during a war between the Vanir and the Aesir, leaving the gods vulnerable to an attack by the giants.
One day, an itinerant stonemason named Blast came to Asgard and offered to rebuild the wall if the goddess Freya would consent to be his wife. He asked for the sun and the moon as well. The gods wanted the wall rebuilt but the terms stated by the mason were outrageous. However, the god Loki proposed a way of outwitting the mason and getting at least part of the wall rebuilt for nothing. The gods agreed to the payment asked by the mason, but only if the work was completed within six months. The mason insisted that he be allowed to use his stallion, Svadilfari, in rebuilding the wall.
The work proceeded much more rapidly than the gods had anticipated and they began to worry that the mason might have to be paid after all. The god Odin threatened to kill Loki if the wall was completed within the allotted time. Loki saw that the mason's horse was doing the heavy hauling and he devised a plan to deprive the mason of the help of his horse. Taking the form of a young mare, Loki lured the stallion into a thicket and made sure that he remained there until the next day. When Svadilfari returned to his master it was too late to complete the work. The mason became so angry that he revealed his true form, that of a rock giant. The god Thor dispatched the giant with a mighty blow of his hammer, Mjollnir.
Months later, Loki returned to Asgard. He brought with him a gray colt with eight legs, the foal of Loki the mare and Svadilfari the stallion. He gave it to Odin, saying that its name was Sleipnir. The colt could travel over land and sea and through the air.
Heliacal Rising of Sirius
Among the ancient Egyptians, this is the most important day of the year because it begins with the Heliacal Rising of Sirius (Sothis) -- that is, the rising of the Sirius above the eastern horizon just before dawn -- and is therefore the day that normally began the annual Nile flood. Curiously, the Egyptians know that the flood will begin with three days of rust-red water, as the river washes away the red dust of the dry season, then flows blue-green as the riverbed clears and is ready for new teeming life. Thus it happens every year, not only at the time when Pharaoh suffers the seven plagues heralded by Moses, that the river runs red as blood for a few days.
Carl Gustav Jung
Carl Gustav Jung, seminal psychologist and master mythographer, was born on this day in 1875. Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, and founder of analytical psychology. Jung met Sigmund Frued in 1907, and became the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association when it was formed. He broke with Freud in 1912, when Jung published his revolutionary Psychology of the Unconscious, which postulated two dimensions of the unconscious -- the personal (repressed or forgotten content of an individual's mental and material life), and what he termed the collective unconscious (those acts and mental patterns shared either by members of a culture or universally by all human beings). Under certain conditions these manifest themselves as archetypes -- images, patterns, and symbols that are often seen in dreams or fantasies and that appear as themes in mythology, religion, and fairy tales. In Psychological Types (1921) Jung elucidated extroversion and introversion. He held the most significant task for any person to be the achievement of harmony between the conscious and the unconscious. The definitive edition of his collected works in English translation was published between 1951 and 1979.
St Anne
The mother of Mary, and thus the matron of housewives. She is one of the oldest saints and her image is probably derived from the great mother goddesses, like Anu. Her flower is the camomile. I've tried to find a simple article on St Anne to post here but she is not a simple figure to put down. Seems that she was also visted by an angel and then gave birth to Mary. This seems to be a generational thing running through the maternal line of Joshua ben Joseph (Jesus). One thing is stated is that Mary was given over to the temple at age 3. Mary Magdalen was also a high priestess of the Temple of Ishtar at Magdala, and as such she would have been the keeper of the doves. Furthermore, she was a Benjamite, the tribe which was ostracized
because they were of the line of Cain. So too was Hiram Abiff, architect of the Temple of Solomon and this fits with the alternate view of Christanity, the view that was supressed during the Council of Nicaea in 324 AD, that the Priest-Kings of Israel (anointed kings of the line of David), would marry the priestess of the Jewish Mother- Goddess cult. YAHWE, the "god" of the bible at this time was one of many "gods" worshiped in Judea. It's interresting to know the history of the religions that have caused so much trouble and distruction in the world.
