Today’s songs
Magic – 2:05 - Jessica Radcliffe
Boža Zvezda - 2:34 – Balkan Babes
Kalado (Latvian Carol) - 1:56 – His Majestie’s Clerkes
Magic was written and is performed here by poet Jessica Radcliffe. It is from the album Beautiful Darkness that she recorded in 2000 with Lisa Ekström and her then-husband Martin Simpson. I could find no information about whether she also wrote the melody, or if it was developed in collaboration with her colleagues.
The album was inspired by, and was intended to complement, a now-out-of-print book called The Winter Solstice - The Sacred Traditions of Christmas. Despite the prominence of “Christmas” in the title, the book is primarily about the variety of ways that the winter solstice season has been celebrated over the past 3000 years or so, with particular attention paid to the pagan roots of the season. The book suggests ways that people can celebrate these alternative dimensions of the holiday season.
The Winter Solstice had been published two years earlier by her then- son-in-law John Matthews and his wife Caitlín. Here is a favourable review of that book from Witches and Pagans website. John and Caitlín are Pagan druids and shamans, and are past Presiders over the Order of Druids, as well as prolific authors about paganism,. That would seem to make them experts in this field, but more about that below in the essay.
The Bulgarian Macedonian folksong Boža Zvezda is performed by Pam Campbell, Rebekkah Patriarche (who is a friend of mine) and Kelly Sherwin, members of a Victoria-based vocal ensemble, the Balkan Babes. The song is from their 2019 album Zajedno. Here is how they describe their group in the liner notes:
Operating as a collective, without a director, the Victoria-based Balkan Babes showcase a capella music of Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, Croatia, Dalmatia, Georgia, Macedonia, Serbia, and Ukraine. In doing so, they enchant audiences with the penetrating harmonies and asymmetrical rhythms that characterize the rich and ancient musical traditions of the region.
The Balkan Babes was founded in 1999. But the Covid epidemic arrived soon after the release of this album and ever since then the group has been in a state of flux. Four of their nine members have stepped back. The remaining five still get together when they can but still haven’t “found their feet” with the remaining configuration, but they do expect to become active again in the future.
As with so many other groups which Covid has impacted, their website has been dormant while the wait for the situation for performers to regain some sense of normalcy. For people in or near Victoria, Zajedno (and all their other CDs) can be purchased at the Spiral Café in Vic West. Folks who live further afield can email balkanbabesvictoria@gmail.com to make arrangements to purchase their CDs.
The Balkan Babes learned the song Boža Zvezda from the Kitka Wintersongs Songbook, a collection of Balkan and Eastern European winter, Christmas, and New Year songs published by the California-based Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble as a companion to their 2003 CD by that name. They, in turn, had learned the song from folklorist Daniel Spassov in Kovachevtsi, Bulgaria. The English translation of the lyrics is:
What star, O mother, shines the earliest?
Hey, it is the Star of Heaven!
It shined, O mother, high and low.
Hey, it shined over the whole Earth below.
There where it shined, o mother, a tree grew up.
Hey, all the way up to the blue sky.
I asked Rebekkah if she had any special memories from when they chose, rehearsed or recorded it. Here is her reply:
We basically selected it because the three of us were often hanging around at the end of rehearsal when everyone else had gone home, just messing around like “oh, I always loved this one” and “well why not learn it?” haha.
But a special memory is of rehearsing in the forest near our campsite at the Islands Folk Festival in the summer of 2019, where we about to perform it for the first time. We were gazing out across a valley of ferns and deadfall, surrounded by tall cedar and fir that “reached all the way up to the blue sky.” All three of us agreed that in that moment we felt deeply connected to one another and to the music - a connection we were fortunate to extend to our audience a short while later.
Kalkadō is sung by the Chicago-based choral ensemble His Majestie’s Clerkes, now known as Bella Voce. The group has been in existence under those two names since 1982. This seasonal Latvian folk song is from their 1993 album News of Great Joy.
While researching online for information about this song I came across a review on Latvians Online of a totally different album that contains authentic seasonal Latvian folk music. It describes how the midwinter is celebrated in that country:
… traditionally Latvians went ķekatās from the Mārtiņi celebration on Nov. 10 all the way to the Meteņi celebration on Feb. 10. One of the signatures of Latvian winter celebrations, ķekatās are people in costume going from house to house, barging in with loud dances and songs, demanding food, and basically making a lot of noise and a big ruckus, sometimes even causing trouble (think Halloween, Mardi Gras or English mummers). …
In a way, though, this is appropriate. Solstices and equinoxes in all cultures have been times of the year when everything is on edge. They are often socially acceptable times to “let loose.” The borders between worlds blur, and the earth stands still for a moment while the sun and earth figure out which direction to follow. One must be very careful for one’s self until things fall back into a normal cosmic rhythm.
[This album] definitely evokes this skittish and jittery feeling of unrest (in Latvian, nemiers). After all, one never knows what the ķekatās will do. Will they eat up all the food and leave us to starve? Will they steal something? Will they scare the children? Or will they be friendly? Who are they, anyway?!
This sounds like the wassailing and mumming customs in Britain. More esoterically, the name of the song sounds like Latvian midwinter customs might be related to the old Roman new year holiday Kalends (from which we get the word calendar.) These are not coincidences. The practices described above are similar to old Roman customs for celebrating Kalends.
Here is the English translation of the lyrics to Kalkadō from His Majestie’s Clerkes’ liner notes:
The winter holiday is upon us;
what good things will it bring?A spotted cow in the barn.
a grey horse in the stable.The holidays have come,
bringing a big pack of sausages.We won’t give any to the boys;
they didn’t help feed the pig.I went to visit the neighbor boys,
with a ram’s head in my bag.If they won’t give me some holiday treats,
At least I’ll have the ram’s head to nibble.
The winter holiday is upon us;
what good things will it bring.
Essay: Ancient Origins of paganism – sources of information
In this essay I will discuss two possible sources of information available to me about the development of world views and pagan religious beliefs during various time periods. I will also explain why, in a series of essays I call Ancient Origins I will primarily be using the latter of these two sources. Future essays in teh Ancient Origins series will continue to explore our current understanding, and my current speculations, of how peoples’ pagan world views have evolved from the times of earliest humans to the present day as they relate to midwinter and the winter solstice.
In the Ancient Origins series I am only exploring beliefs that is ancestral to me, by way of my Frankish and Gaulic, and earlier ancestors.. While some of the commentary here may also be helpful in understanding the evolution of African, Asian and North American indigenous paganism, and anthropological studies of those cultures sometimes have yielded insight to the beliefs of the very early ancestors that we share, I have not yet studied those cultures and types of paganism.
Among the people who are ancestral to me are the Neanderthals and my discussion in the next two chapters in this Ancient Origin series may apply to them. Since their capabilities were similar to homo sapiens, their beliefs may also have been similar.
Except for people from sub-Saharan Africa, simple and inexpensive ancestral DNA tests have shown that nearly everyone has 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. Recent studies seem to indicate that Neanderthals had the capability of speech. They certainly had the capability to produce art, and over 40,000 years ago at least one Neanderthal child was buried with funerary ritual.
The first major potential source of information about our ancient pagan ancestors is that which is is conveyed by modern Pagans to each other, whether through oral transmission or through publication in books, websites and other media. There are many books, articles and websites that are created by Pagans, and for Pagans and pagans.
[Digression on terminology: The capitalization and apparent redundancy in that last paragraph requires an explanation. The word pagan (not capitalized) is used very generically, referring to any cultures/peoples whose religions are not Christian, Jewish or Muslim, as well as to modern people who participate in modern practices but who do not necessarily consider it to be their religion.
The capitalized term Pagan is used to describe people who consider it to be their religion. Pagan and neo-Pagan are technically interchangeable, but use of neo- emphasizes the modern roots of the many current versions of paganism, while omitting it suggests that the current forms are directly descended from ancient roots. Because of these connotations, some current Pagans object to the prefix neo- because they cherish their religion’s ancient roots.
In general, I try to remember to use the capitalized Pagan when referring to current believers, and the un-capitalized word pagan when referring to the ancient peoples and as well to modern people who identify with paganism more as a social/spiritual experience than as a religion.]
An important point to remember is that, unlike for example the Catholic church that I was raised in, and early Judaism, early pagans never had any co-ordinating agencies that attempted to ensure consistency in their beliefs. Their world views were developed and disseminated among isolated groups, and were always in a gradual but constant state of evolution and change.
It is also probably true that, just like today, long-ago individuals varied in their degree of personal belief in their extended families’ “theology”, and in their belief in the importance their rituals and customs had to ensuring favourable outcomes. Thus, everything we know and say about these people should be accepted as being broad generalities.
This is also true about modern paganism. While modern Paganism has many people and groups that are attempting to establish leadership and promote a collective “theology” for their respective branches of Paganism, it is not clear to what extent their teachings can be taken as representative of the people within their own branches, let alone broader neo-paganism. (Are you beginning to understand this capitalization thing?)
Another factor is that I can only read and speak English. I have no idea what other sources of information would open up to me if I did not have that limitation. Also, these essays will generally focus on pagan world views, not rites and symbols. With all that scene-setting said (nice alliteration, that), here goes:
Books, articles and online publications written by Pagans are usually journalistic in their writing style when they explain their understanding of the ancient roots of their beliefs, customs and rites. Such a writing style, and generous use of imagery (verbal and pictorial) make this kind of writing very accessible. The authors seek to educate both people who are already Believers about its ancient roots, as well as the general public who are just interested in learning more about ancient paganism.
But there is a problem with learning from such sources: The authors tend to want to promote their faiths. They emphasize descendance from their understanding of ancient paganism, and de-emphasize the extent that their modern rituals are the product of modern re-imagining of the past. Sometimes the writing verges into uncritical storytelling of myths and folklore, and sometimes their sources are primarily from each other’s writing.
It is not that these sources do not include good and and accurate information. Most of the historical information they have is truthful and could be useful. In effect, these writings are often like a modern version of folklore. As an amateur folklorist, I can deal with that and know how to glean information from questionable sources. But as an amateur historian, such sources make me uncomfortable and for the purposes of this Ancient Origins series I want my discussion to be based on verified facts. I’ll be adding plenty of speculation of my own, but hopefully clearly identifiable as such.
Academic historian Prof. Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol, who specializes in early Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and witchcraft, as well as contemporary Celtic paganism, describes one such author as falling “below the standards required of a professional historian. She makes no attempt to distinguish between the relative value of sources, so those from the seventh century and from the seventeenth are put together with no sense of context.”
This is not to say that I do not find useful information from such authors. Here, for example, is a thoughtful book review by a “reconstructionist Druid” of Prof. Hutton’s own first major work on British paganism written in 1991, called The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles.
As an amateur folklorist myself, as well as being something of a storyteller, I recognize that there are dangers in trying to separate truth from fiction working from songs, stories and other folklore that has been passed down orally from generation to generation. I believe in the usefulness of folkloric studies. But it must be done properly, and in this case, and with recognition that we are dealing with oral history of subject matter that for many centuries could have gotten you burnt at the stake as a witch.
Professor Hutton himself represents an example the latter category of sources; academic study that uses scientific methodologies and critical thinking, and tries to be objective about its focus of study. His own specialty is the 16th and 17th centuries’ British pagans and witches, ancient British pagans, and in the emergence of Pagans and Witches who seek to revive those ancient rites. Here is the Wikipedia entry about him.
Although he has written much on the subject of paganism and Paganism, Dr. Hutton insists that his own religious beliefs are a private matter. He has said that “to some extent history [itself] occupies the space in my life filled in that of others by religion or spirituality.”
[Important digression: I can personally relate to that perspective, and it guides this Ancient Origins series of essays about the ancient paganism. While I was raised as a Catholic I no longer consider myself to be a Christian. That is not say that I believe there is no God; there might be one or more of them. I don’t know. But I do believe that the all various religions of today evolved from early roots of human creation rather than having emerged from Divine revelation.]
As an academic historian, Ronald Hutton bases his analyses on primary source historical evidence, and to give those time periods context, he studies information from the field of archaeology and other people’s credible historical studies about paganism in other places and earlier time periods.
This has been a career-long deep dive for Dr. Hutton into several related subjects. He has written many peer-reviewed papers as well as books for the general public which collectively document both the evolving understanding we have about the past, and his own changing perspectives on it. I must admit that I haven’t read any of them. But I have seen him interviewed in many TV documentaries and I consider him and other academic historians, to be credible sources for my own current understanding of the ancient world-views of my ancestors. It is my own possibly-faulty second-hand understanding, based on only a brief skim of the literature, that I am sharing with you in these essays.
The same is true with information that comes from the academic fields of folkloric studies, physical and cultural anthropology, paleontology, archaeology, psychology, evolutionary biology, geography, linguistic archaeology, and more. I don’t read the source academic studies directly (except for some abstracts) and if I tried I probably wouldn’t understand them properly because they use academic vocabulary that is well beyond my comprehension.
I am not complaining about their use of academic vocabulary. Words are the building blocks for ideas. One word or a phrase can be a succinct way to express a complex idea. Using these words and phrases enables people to develop and communicate more complex ideas to othr people who know the vocabulary, and to undertake more complex analyses themselves using the concepts that the vocabulary capsulizes.
It is unfortunate that as a member of the general public I am not more literate in the vocabulary of academic disciplines. However, I am also not yet (and probably never will be) sufficiently motivated to expand my vocabulary sufficiently to become conversant in the academic language that scientists use to describe how they make state-of-the-art discoveries. For the most part, I rely on scientists and science reporters who can translate the frontiers of science into everyday English.
One of the most promising of the multi-disciplinary approaches to developing an understanding of the world-view and beliefs of our Paleolithic (i.e., stone age) ancestors is called linguistic archaeology. It traces the origins of languages and words. Since words represent concepts, the origin of a new word is the origin of a new concept. By looking for similarities in words and syntax scientists can find when they developed as well as which languages (and hence, which cultures and technology) are related to each other.
Linguistics - the scientific study of languages - has been an academic discipline since the late 18th century. One reason that it is making great strides now is because in its early years the relatively new discipline that was struggling to gain academic credibility drew too much public attention, sparked by Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species.
Then, as now, people claiming to be scientists published preliminary hypotheses based on dubious evidence; for example, the “science” of phrenology made racist claims about people’s about peoples’ capabilities based on head shapes. The situation got so bad in the field of linguistics that in 1866 the Linguistic Society of Paris banned any publication or debates on the subject that we now call linguistic archaeology. It was a prohibition that remained influential across much of the Western world until late in the twentieth century. Even in the 1960s, scholars like Noam Chomsky risked their reputations when they ventured into the topic.
Only recently have the floodgates opened, partly due to better empirical data being available in a variety of disciplines, and partly because the academic world has broken down the barriers between the various disciplines and welcomed inter-disciplinary approaches. Interdisciplinary studies are so new that the approach was not commonly being used when I was in graduate school only 50 years ago. But by incorporating methodologies from multiple disciplines scientists and other researchers develop understandings that can not be developed using any one discipline.
Below is an example of just the Abstract of one such multidisciplinary study. It was published and peer-reviewed in 2016, and has been cited in academic papers since that time. I include it here to illustrate both the difficulty in reading the language in modern academic literature when they describe their methods, and the amazing insights that recent research is able to gather about our ancient ancestors. I have broken the large block of text in the Abstract into separate paragraphs to make it easier on both your and my eyes, and have highlighted the conclusions most relevant for my upcoming essays on ancient paganism:
Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion
Hervey C. Peoples, Pavel Duda, and Frank W. MarloweAbstract
Recent studies of the evolution of religion have revealed the cognitive underpinnings of belief in supernatural agents, the role of ritual in promoting cooperation, and the contribution of morally punishing high gods to the growth and stabilization of human society.The universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past. However, specific traits of nascent religiosity, and the sequence in which they emerged, have remained unknown.
Here we reconstruct the evolution of religious beliefs and behaviors in early modern humans using a global sample of hunter-gatherers and seven traits describing hunter-gatherer religiosity: animism, belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, high gods, and worship of ancestors or high gods who are active in human affairs.
We reconstruct ancestral character states using a time-calibrated supertree based on published phylogenetic trees and linguistic classification and then test for correlated evolution between the characters and for the direction of cultural change.
Results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, present in the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism, in agreement with long-standing beliefs about the fundamental role of this trait.
Belief in an afterlife emerged, followed by shamanism and ancestor worship.
Ancestor spirits or high gods who are active in human affairs were absent in early humans, suggesting a deep history for the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies.
There is a significant positive relationship between most characters investigated, but the trait “high gods” stands apart, suggesting that belief in a single creator deity can emerge in a society regardless of other aspects of its religion.
[Note: The next chapter in this Ancient Origins sub-series will be on Thursday December 9.]
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