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Folklore of World Holidays
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Against All
Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror – What Really Happened
The Da Vinci
Code
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A Short
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Garden Witchery
The Twilight
of American Culture
Golden Bough
Folklore classic
Sabbat Entertaining
The Pagan Book of Days
Eight Sabbats for Witches
Celebrate the Earth
A Year of Holidays in the Pagan
Tradition
Wheel of the Year
The Trouble
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A Calendar of Festivals
The Five Biggest Lies Bush
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Lady Godiva
Lucifer Ascending: The
Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture
Dogs That Know When Their
Owners Are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals
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The Book of Spells
Spellcraft
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The Encyclopedia of Saints
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When Corporations Rule the World
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|
 Feast day of
Britannia (or Prytania)
She is the goddess of Britain, or Albion, whose
image is seen on many old British coins. She is a version of Hekate
(Hecate),
Queen of the Night.
"As Prytania, Invincible Queen of the Dead, Hekate
became a wardress and conveyor of souls through the underworld.
As Goddess of Magic and enchantments, she sent prophetic or
demonic dreams to humankind. Her presence was felt at tombs and
scenes of murders where she presided over purifications and
expiations. Like her namesake Kali, in India, Hekate, as a
funerary priestess, conducted her rites in charnel or burial
grounds, assisting in liberating the souls of the newly dead." Source
Akitu Festival,
Sumeria (c. Mar
20 - 31)
Festival of Hilaria, in
honour of Cybele
the Mother of Gods, ancient Rome (Mar 15 - 27)
 Feast of
Priapus
"A phallic festival in the Kingdom in the city of Trani in Naples where an ancient wooden statue of St Priapus, with a phallus reaching his chin, was carried in procession. The festival was abolished in the early 18th century."
Source
From
Wikipedia:
In Greek
mythology, Priapus was a minor rustic fertility god of purely
phallic character, protector of
livestock,
fruit plants, gardens and male
genitalia.
(Roman
equivalent: Mutinus Mutunus.) He was a son of
Aphrodite,
with Dionysus,
or with
Adonis
(according to a
scholiast
on Lycophron,
noted by Kerenyi 1951). At
Helicon
in Boeotia,
the travel-writer
Pausanias
pointed out a statue of Priapus that was "worth seeing".
Kazimiras Diena,
ancient Latvia
Commemorated the return of the larks.
Komoeditsi, ancient Slavic festival
A very ancient pagan holiday honouring the great bear god, Meveshii
Bog. Sacrifices were made to the Great God of Honey.
Source
Slavic Myth and
Religion
Feast day of St Aldemar the
Wise
Feast day of St Catherine
of Sweden
Traditional feast day of the Archangel Gabriel
A day of orderliness. It was
commemorated for centuries on this day, the day before the
Annunciation (which remembers the day Mary conceived
Jesus), but has
been transferred by the Catholic Church to September 29,
which Gabriel now shares with fellow archangel, St Michael.
Archangel Gabriel is the patron saint of communications (chiefly
because of the messages he delivered for God – the word
'angel' means 'messenger'), and the Internet you are now
using.
An official
Roman Catholic site explains:
"'Fortitudo Dei', one of the three
archangels mentioned in the Bible. Only four appearances of
Gabriel are recorded:
"In Dan., viii, he explains the vision of the
horned ram as portending the destruction of the Persian Empire by
the Macedonian Alexander the Great, after whose death the kingdom
will be divided up among his generals, from one of whom will
spring Antiochus Epiphanes.
"In chapter ix, after Daniel had prayed for
Israel, we read that 'the man Gabriel . . . . flying swiftly
touched me' and he communicated to him the mysterious prophecy
of the 'seventy weeks' of years which should elapse before the
coming of Christ. In chapter x, it is not clear whether the angel
is Gabriel or not, but at any rate we may apply to him the
marvellous description in verses 5 and 6.
"In N.T. he foretells to Zachary the birth of
the Precursor, and to Mary that of
the Saviour." Source
Gabriel, or Jibril, is an important
angel in the Muslim, as well as the Jewish and Christian faiths.
"We are reminded of that modest Jewish girl Mariam
(Mary), whose life was completely changed by the message which
the Angel Gabriel, did bring to her, being that she would give
birth to a son who would be called Essa (Jesus)."
Angels
and Jinns, Celestial Beings (Muslim article)
More
Feast day of St Hildelith
Feast day of St Irenaeus of
Sirmium, martyr
(Golden saxifrage, Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, is
today's plant, dedicated to this
saint.)
Feast day of St John del
Bastone
Feast day of St Simon, an infant, martyr at Trent
The hagiography of St Simon exemplifies Medieval European
anti-semitism.
Simon was supposedly murdered by Jews in 1472. In their preparations for Passover,
the Jewish people resolved to crucify a child on
Good Friday, and chose Simon.
Or, so it is said.
"Whenever an act of cruelty was to be perpetrated on the Jews,
fables like these were forged, and the brutal passions of the mob
let loose upon the life and wealth of fugitive Israelites." (William
Hone, The
Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, Vol., 1, William
Tegg and Co., London, 1878)
Feast day of St Timolaus
Feast day of St Timothy
Feast day of St William, martyr at Norwich (aged
11)
Another pretended martyr to Jewish
hatred.
"Weever states, that 'the Jews in the
principal cities of the kingdom, did use sometimes to steal
away, and crucify some neighbour's male child,' as if it were a
common practice. Since protestantism, no such barbarities have
been imputed to the Jews."
(Hone, William, The
Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, Vol., 1, William
Tegg and Co., London, 1878)
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Feast day of Heimdall, guardian of Heaven
(representation of Gabriel)
Pennick, Nigel, The
Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont,
USA, 1992, p. 53Week of Solidarity with the
Peoples Struggling Against Racism and Racial Discrimination (UN) (Mar 21 - 28)
World Tuberculosis Day
World Tuberculosis Day, falling on this day
each year, is designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis
today remains an epidemic
in much of the world, causing the deaths of several million people
each year, mostly in the third
world. March 24 commemorates the day in 1882
when Dr Robert
Koch astounded the scientific community by announcing that he
had discovered the cause of tuberculosis, the TB
bacillus. At the time of Koch's announcement in Berlin,
TB was raging through Europe
and the Americas,
causing the death of one out of every seven people. Koch's discovery
opened the way toward diagnosing and curing tuberculosis.
In 1982,
on the one-hundredth anniversary
of Dr Koch's presentation, the International Union Against
Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD) proposed that 24
March be proclaimed an official World TB Day. In 1996,
the World
Health Organization (WHO) joined with the IUATLD and a wide
range of other concerned organizations to increase the impact of
World TB Day.
1494 Georg Agricola,
scientist ('The Father of Mineralogy'; d. November 21,
1555).
His De
Re Metallica is considered a classic document of the dawn of
metallurgy, unsurpassed for two centuries. 1n 1912, the Mining
Magazine (London) published an English translation, made by an
American mining engineer, Herbert Hoover
(whose career including being a mining engineer in Australia, then President
of the United States), and his wife Lou Henry
Hoover.
1657 Arai Hakuseki (d. 1725),
Japanese Confucianist, poet, politician, and writer
 1834
William Morris
(d. October 3, 1896), English philosopher, artist, social reformer, poet,
medievalist,
utopian novelist (News from Nowhere).
With other pre-Raphaelite contemporaries he helped reform Victorian
tastes in colour and design, celebrating 'beauty for beauty's
sake'.
He was one of the principal founders of the British Arts
and Crafts Movement and is still highly regarded as a designer of wallpaper
and patterned fabrics, as well as a writer of poetry and fiction,
and an early founder of the socialist movement in Britain. He was a great
supporter of the Paris Commune
of 1871, writing:
The
revolution itself will raise those for whom the revolution must be
made. Their newborn hope translated into action will develop their
human and social qualities, and the new struggle itself will fit
them to receive the benefits of the new life which revolution will
make possible for them. It is for boldly seizing the opportunity
offered for thus elevating the mass of the workers into heroism that
we now celebrate the men of the Paris Commune. Source
He was also an
early translator
into English of the Icelandic myths.
From Wikipedia:
The artistic movement Morris and the others made famous was the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. They eschewed the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts
and architecture
and favoured a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising craftsmen
to the status of artists. For a time, one of Morris's businesses
partners was Dante
Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882), the English poet, painter and
translator.
In 1877, he founded the Society
for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. His preservation work
resulted indirectly in the founding of the National
Trust.
Morris and his daughter May were amongst
Britain's first socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx
and Friedrich Engels to
begin the socialist movement. In 1883, he joined the Social
Democratic Federation, and in 1884 he organised the Socialist
League. This side of Morris's work is well-discussed in the
biography (subtitled 'Romantic to Revolutionary') by EP Thompson.
Morris and Rossetti rented a country house,
Kelmscott Manor
near Lechlade, Gloucestershire,
as a summer retreat, but it soon became a retreat for Rossetti and
Jane Morris to have a long-lasting affair. To escape the discomfort,
Morris often travelled to Iceland, where he
researched Icelandic legends that later became the basis of poems
and novels.
Morris's book, The Wood Between the
Worlds, is considered to have heavily influenced CS Lewis's Narnia
series, while JRR
Tolkien was inspired by Morris's reconstructions of early
Germanic life in 'The House of the Wolfings' and 'The Roots of the
Mountains'.
After the death of Tennyson
in 1892,
Morris was offered the Poet Laureateship,
but declined.
Morris's last public meeting was in support of the Society for Checking Abuses of Public Advertising.
When Morris died in 1896, his doctor declared that the cause was "simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten
men".
"By 1865,
troubled by the affair between Jane and Rossetti, Morris grew
obsessed with taking a pilgrimage to Iceland. Their myths, steeped
with brotherhood and endurance, touched him deeply. He made two
pivotal trips there, eventually producing the first major
translations of the myths. The translations
were no doubt read later by D.H. Lawrence who had his own
'ice-queen' named Gudrun (Women in Love)."
Source
"The Kelmscott
Chaucer is widely regarded as the greatest fine press book
ever produced, particularly in its text-on-vellum incarnation. Among
all the works from the press, this monumental folio comes closest to
Morris's vision of the "ideal book," with its
illustrations, ornamentation, and type ..." Source
"After a
quick glance at the Kelmscott Chaucer, one might think the
book was printed in the 15th or 16th century, not long after the
printing of the Gutenberg Bible. In fact, it was printed in 1896.
Its intentions, however, were very much rooted in the early history
of the printed book. The publisher was the founder of the Kelmscott
Press, William Morris, who was not only a noted printer and
typographer, but also a famous commentator on a vast array of
subjects, from the design of textiles and furniture to politics and
social studies."
Source
Morris Internet
Archive
News from
Nowhere William Morris and His Circle
William Morris Society
William Morris Gallery
Works
online
Morris Art
Project Gutenberg e-texts of works by William Morris Overview
More
And
more
Frontispiece
to Living English Poets (1881),
caricature by Walter Crane depicting Morris, Swinburne, Browning,
and Tennyson
1834 John Wesley
Powell (d. 1902), explorer, environmentalist
1835 Jožef Stefan
(d. 1893),
Slovene
physicist,
mathematician
and poet
1853
Bland
Holt (Joseph Bland Holt; d. June
28, 1942), British
clown actor, comedian, producer and playwright who achieved popularity with
melodrama (particularly in Australia and New Zealand), using spectacular theatrical effects.
He was friendly with Australian writer Henry Lawson in
both of those countries, and Lawson wrote a play for him called The
Hero of Redclay, which Holt rejected (drama was not Lawson's
strong suit). Lawson turned it into
a short
story of the same name, also dealing for a long period of time
with George
Robertson of Angus & Robertson who expected him to make a novel out of it,
but Lawson could never deliver. Holt's melodrama, The Breaking of the
Drought, was made into a 1920 silent film of the same name, directed by
Franklyn Barrett (1874 -
July 16, 1964). It has been reconstructed by the
Australian National Film and Sound
Archive. Holt's theatrical company was in friendly competition
with that of JC
Williamson.
Holt's father, Clarence Holt, was a well-known tragedian in Australia during the
mid-19th century.
"[Bland Holt] was born at Norwich, England, on 24 March 1853, came to Australia with his father in 1857, and made his first appearance on the stage when he was six years old. He was educated at the Church of England grammar school, Brighton, Victoria, and at the Otago boys' high school, New Zealand. Returning to England when 14 years old he made acting his profession, and had experience in England, the United States, and New Zealand, before establishing himself in Australia about the year 1877. His first production was
New Babylon at the Victoria theatre, Sydney, and for 30 years he continued to produce the principal melodramas of the period. Most of the time of his companies was divided between the Lyceum theatre, Sydney, and the Theatre Royal, Melbourne. Nothing was too realistic to be attempted; in one play there was a hunting scene with horses dogs and a stag; in another several horses finished a race across the stage; in another a circus ring was realistically presented with the regular acts being done. Holt himself had been an excellent clown in pantomime, and he played comedy parts in melodrama with great ability. He was prudent and successful in management and retired in 1909, living at Kew, a Melbourne suburb, for part of the year, and in summer spending his time at his seaside home at Sorrento. There he would entertain every year a party of veteran members of the profession. He died at Kew on 28 June 1942 in his ninetieth year. He married in 1887 Florence, daughter of William Curling Anderson, who survived him. He had no children.
"Holt practically grew up in a theatre and knew exactly what suited his public. He personally supervised every detail of his productions, working early and late, and, if he considered that a play needed revision or bringing up to date, would write fresh dialogue for it himself. He was kind and generous, and had the respect and affection of both the members of his own profession and of the public."
Source
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
1855 Andrew Mellon (d. 1937),
financier
1855 Olive Schreiner (d. 1920),
writer
1874 Harry Houdini (Erich Weiss), American magician and escapologist, (d. October 31,
1926)
Houdini made
the first controlled powered flight in Australia
Did Houdini die
from a punch?
Houdini and
Conan Doyle: Story of a Strange Friendship
Houdini Tribute website
1886
Edward Weston
(d. 1958),
photographer1887
Roscoe
'Fatty' Arbuckle (d. 1933),
American silent film comedian (Good
Night Nurse!), ruined in 1921 when embroiled in a sex and
murder scandal
More
1891 John
Knittel (d. 1970), dramatist
1893 Walter Baade (d. 1960),
astronomer
1897 Wilhelm Reich (d. November
3, 1957),
Austrian-born psychotherapist and pseudo-scientist
who lived in New England, USA, and convinced thousands of his
ability to cure with quack remedies such as the 'Orgone
Accumulator'. Some
well-known people such as Norman Mailer and junkie writer William S Burroughs underwent
Reich's orgone therapy. An accumulator owned by Burroughs is
shown in this photograph.
He was hounded by the US government, which
had his books burned. Reich died of a heart attack in the Federal
Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa, USA.
Reich's FBI File
"He claimed
to see microscopic bions
develop from lifeless matter and organize themselves into living
cells. And he eventually came to believe he had discovered a
primordial energy essential for life, which he called orgone
energy, and which he was obsessed with for the rest of his
life. Along the way of making these various 'discoveries,'
his works were either ignored or heavily criticized by the
mainstream scientific community. Reich seemed to take
every criticism of his work as a personal attack. He was
convinced he had made the greatest discoveries in the history of
humanity, next to which the discovery of electricity or the law
of gravity or the wheel or fire were insignificant."
Source: A Skeptical
Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of Wilhelm Reich
"Viennese psychologist
who developed a system of psychoanalysis that concentrated on
overall character structure, rather than on individual neurotic
symptoms. His early work on psychoanalytic technique was
overshadowed by his involvement in the sexual-politics movement
and by 'orgonomy,'
a pseudoscientific system he developed. He also built a device
he called a cloud buster, with which he claimed he could
manipulate the weather by manipulating the orgone in the
atmosphere. Reich's claims aroused much controversy, and he was
taken to court for fraud by the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). The court ordered his books and research burned and his
equipment destroyed. Reich was given a prison sentence, and he
died in prison in 1957." Source
Response to Irrational
Critics and So-Called "Skeptics"
Wilhelm Reich Museum
1901 Ub
Iwerks (d. 1971),
Disney cartoonist.
The first few Mickey Mouse cartoons (and those starring
Mickey's progenitor, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit) were
animated almost entirely by Iwerks.
Animator Chuck
Jones (Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, etc), who worked for Iwerks' studio in his youth, said
'Iwerks is Screwy spelled backwards'." Source
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and
Mickey Mouse
"Ub's
personality made him a natural foil for confident Walt's
practical jokes. At Kansas City Film Ad Company, Walt would send
Ub postcards signed with girls' names, lock him in the washroom
so that he had to hammer on the door to get out, and smuggle
animals into his desk and locker. Ub never complained." Source
1902 Thomas Dewey (d. 1971),
politician
1903 Malcolm Muggeridge
(d. November 14,
1990), British journalist,
author
and media personality, late and enthusiastic convert to Christianity
1909
Clyde Barrow
(d. May 23,
1934), American
criminal who, with Bonnie Parker, terrorized mid-west USA in the 1930s
as 'Bonnie
and Clyde'
1911
Joseph Barbera,
cartoonist
 1919 Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, American
Beat
Generation poet, publisher and also an accomplished painter. Ferlinghetti is probably best known as the co-founder, in 1953, of the |
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Dionysus,
later known to ancient Romans as Bacchus, was the Greek god of wine and
ecstasy. His worshippers threw away inhibitions and went to excess,
holding long and intense dancing sessions to the point of exhaustion. Sex
and magic were involved and sometimes dancers tore apart wild beasts. 
