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Epona
Dec 15, 2015 15:52:27 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Dec 15, 2015 15:52:27 GMT -1
I said I would re-draft my Eponalia verses and have done so together with some context for their use. I'm going to start a new EPONALIA thread for this,and will also be publishing a possibly edited version on my blog.If the book has arrived by then it will be good to open it and read from it too.
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Epona
Dec 18, 2015 16:30:48 GMT -1
Post by Francis on Dec 18, 2015 16:30:48 GMT -1
I feel the seasonal context is vitally important to this, and would like to offer a different perspective - which is crucial to the sense of my own practice. Are we sure that Winter is best thought of as a time of withdrawal - even as a contrived schema? Does this approach offer us the best approach to understanding, perceiving or accessing the interaction of the gods and the land? I believe too much neo-pagan thought is over influenced by an arable perspective of the relationship between humans and domestic/farmed landscapes. John Barley Corn might be sleeping in Wessex but even there little else is, very few native animals hibernate - dramatically the now extinct Brown Bear did, but these days beyond a few hedgehogs and dormice everything else is fighting and working harder than ever to survive. It is no time of rest, withdrawal or introspection for any other than an effete urban elite (not suggesting anyone here fits that description!). Winter is a time of fight for survival and true gestation - in the sense of actual pregnancy not a metaphorical neo-pagan gestation of ideas. Most native female mammals are pregnant over winter- ready to give birth in the Spring. In terms of understanding the relationship of the minor gods and Spirits of Place in the pastoral (i.e. non-arable) land of the West of Britain, where I live, I can't begin to connect if the starting point of my winter psychodrama is one of withdrawal - or some lovely picturesque ideal of nature's winter slumber under a disneyesque fantastical sweet blanket of snow (not that you mentioned that particular imagery here, but it is a another common neo-pagan perception of the essence of winter - a beautiful ideal(reality = rain, wind and mud!) but one which works against the gaining of any true understanding, or relationship, with the actual Land outside one's front door in twenty first century Britain)- For me the setting and context of this time of year is about both survival, where the consequences of every decision or mouthful are the most immediate and least forgiving, and the gestation and growth of new life within. That is the stage and context within which my interaction with the gods and SoP has to take place at this time of year. This has been so over-edited to keep it more concise than my initial long waffle that it sounds a bit grumpy, critical and didactic - it's not meant to but I can't face editing it again!
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Epona
Dec 18, 2015 16:45:27 GMT -1
Post by Francis on Dec 18, 2015 16:45:27 GMT -1
In reply to Lorna - about dates for Eponalia and a celebration of Rhiannon. I would look also to the fertility traditions surrounding Plough Monday. Picking up on a point you made about sowing in to cold wet soil - Plough Monday kicked off the ploughing season but not the sowing. The land was ploughed, and then left for the freeze thaw action of winter frosts to break up the sod and make the soil more friable ready for sowing a few months later. Rotovators to do this are a new thing and the action of frost was vital in preparing the seed bed. The fertility aspect of the horses and land was in the charms that were attached to the horses that traversed every square foot of each field bringing fertility - arguably an echo of these is in the horse brasses once so popular. Before the tractor the horse was the key factor in birthing all fertility and goodness from the soil. Since the arrival of the tractor only a few generations ago so much has been lost. Even arable farms had meadows before tractors - to grow the hay needed for the horses over winter. The loss of these (96% or more since the 1940s) is a true tragedy for the land on so many levels. The horse truly was the midwife of everything we humans needed from the soil and defined once defined our relationship with the Land. Perhaps an echo of that sounds clear in the taboo to this day on eating horse meat in Britain. In my own relationship with Deity and horses there are also parallels with the Hindu Ganesh - as a remover of obstacles - and manifest in the massive Clydesdales and Shires.
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Epona
Dec 19, 2015 10:36:37 GMT -1
Post by lorna on Dec 19, 2015 10:36:37 GMT -1
Hello Francis,
It's good to hear from you. When were you last around? (Don't think we've 'met' before can tell you've been a member fora long time by your *****!)
Interestingly when I was meditating on Epona yesterday one of the things that came to me was that although she is absent as life-force in the grain and in her work as a psychopomp she is here in the physical reality of the horse. I worked with horses and was in tune with them being out in the fields in summer, baling the hay, stacking it in the barns, the horses being stabled in winter and eating the hay and these cycles apply for me too.
Something I hadn't considered was the use of the horse in ploughing and that part of the agricultural cycle. Of course I am familiar with mucking out and throwing the muck onto the midden and the breakdown of the muck into fertiliser and that being taken away.
What's really interesting is that the only Hindu deity I've felt a connection with is Ganesh and, perhaps because I was thinking of Epona in a similar sitting position amongst horses he popped into my head with thoughts about removing obstacles - clearing the horse-paths, making way for the new year. Bizareness!
I wonder if the charms you mention have anything to do with the lady riding to Banbury Cross with bells on?
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