The Blue Booby | Weeknotes 3/17
Springtime saints, waking the bear, cunningfolk, PGM, sourdough bread, and the secrets of the Hagia Sophia.
Comrades—
Happy anticipation of the Spring Equinox! There are snowdrops and crocuses are blooming for B, and New England mud season is officially on its way for J. But life is peeking from behind the curtain.
We also have two saints to celebrate this week: St. Patrick today and St. Joseph on the 19th.
While the later stories of Patrick have framed him as some sort of Christian super hero smashing pagans, the truth seems to be rather far from that image. Here we celebrate a saint that stood against slavery, even to the point of criticizing the British church for its participation, and maintained lifelong friendships with pagans in his Irish community. Ireland is the one place in Europe where Christianity was introduced without Imperial power, and the beautiful syncretic faith that emerged under the tutelage of Bridget of Kildare starts with a man who, having been enslaved as a child, went to bring a message of love and freedom to the people who held him in bondage.
Patron of fathers, workers, and the holy death, St. Joseph offers a path of dedication to craft and gentle teaching and of protective and devoted love. Like his earlier namesake, he is a dreamer who speaks to angels, and more importantly, changes the world through listening to them. Joseph means “God will add” but in the sense of a gathering of the harvest. May he bring a good harvest to your homes!
Whatever Spring rush of energy is here, it has J crafting like mad – sewing, mending, drawing, wood-working. She even took a 3D printing class, which is its own kind of witchcraft. B’s been busy with healing work for friends working with the Decan spirits, which is a real privilege. But it has also called to mind that the third Decan of Pisces rules the feet… and I’m telling you, folks, it looks like it’s serious this season. So I guess on a closing note, our advice (and our lives) is the same as ever: keep your hands busy and wear good shoes.
Until next time.
—Jessie & Brian.
Earth
It’s my second year celebrating with a modified (probably heretical) home version of the St. Joseph’s Table. Particularly in Sicily, St. Joseph’s feast day (March 19) is celebrated with traditional foods and sweets laid out on huge tables and all members of the community – especially the less fortunate – are welcomed to join in. What I learned this year is that this tradition is also huge in New Orleans, where there’s apparently a large Sicilian immigration history. This interview with New Orleans nonna and author Sandra Scalise Juneau lays out some of the history and symbolism of the St. Joseph’s altar, as well as some amazing baking advice. -J
I’ll also be celebrating komoeditsa – waking the bear – a Slavic pagan festival associated with the spring equinox (I like spring holidays, ok??). There’s not a ton of academic sources available in English, however, the basic gist is that pancakes (solar cakes) are baked and left for waking bears in spring as part of the renewal of the year. German 'Badger Day' and American Groundhog Day may have their roots in some of these traditions. -J
Gordon White recently made his talk on cunningfolk traditions publicly available. It's really good stuff. Gordon often has a lens for examining historical material that just helps click things into focus. For example, trying to figure out what cunningfolk were like exclusively from trial records: how often does your local reiki practitioner today go to jail? Also, 💯 on ‘uncrossing’ as the centerpiece that needs to be restored to the magician’s toolkit today. -J
Sea
It’s been a real slow foods couple weeks for me: sourdough bread (thank you Brenna), fermented sriracha, and I even made my own gravlax (lox) this week. It was amazingly easy and tasty – five minutes of prep and four days of waiting. This video was really helpful, though I used a different spice blend. -J
Loved this piece on Njord from Ocean Keltoi, as he delves into both how we can reconstruct practice, but also the advantages of wide ranging interpretation.- B
Sky
This week J put me onto Episode 74 of the Glitch Bottle podcast, which is a great conversation between Alexander and Jack Grayle regarding Hekate and the PGM. It’s an inspiring examination of what engaging with the Greco-Roman tradition can teach us about magic and the cosmos, and also includes some really good tricks for ritual purity. -B
And while we’re talking about sacred architecture, check out this fantastic chat between JoAnna Farrar and Peter Mark Adams. In particular, it’s a joy to hear JoAnna and Peter delve into the magic of acoustics and the secrets of the Hagia Sophia.-B
The Blue Booby
by James Tate
The blue booby lives
on the bare rocks
of Galápagos
and fears nothing.
It is a simple life:
they live on fish,
and there are few predators.
Also, the males do not
make fools of themselves
chasing after the young
ladies. Rather,
they gather the blue
objects of the world
and construct from them
a nest—an occasional
Gaulois package,
a string of beads,
a piece of cloth from
a sailor’s suit. This
replaces the need for
dazzling plumage;
in fact, in the past
fifty million years
the male has grown
considerably duller,
nor can he sing well.
The female, though,
asks little of him—
the blue satisfies her
completely, has
a magical effect
on her. When she returns
from her day of
gossip and shopping,
she sees he has found her
a new shred of blue foil:
for this she rewards him
with her dark body,
the stars turn slowly
in the blue foil beside them
like the eyes of a mild savior.
"Couple makes tea for illegal ravers" makes me want to move there. Except that raves are illegal.
I was born on the 18th so my paternal grandmother went around telling everyone my name was Patrick Joseph. This was not something my parents ever considered or spoke about lol, she just assumed that anyone born on that day HAD to be named that.