Pagan Yule rituals are set for Monday (Merry Yule DUers)

[joefree1]

Pagan Yule rituals are set for Monday
Winter solstice a day to celebrate sun, God

Saturday December 20, 2003
By Douglas Todd
Religion News Service

VICTORIA, British Columbia -- The winter solstice, which marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, is a sacred day to Heather Botting, a pagan chaplain at the University of Victoria.
It is Yule: the festival to celebrate light, the sun and God.
On the winter solstice, which occurs on Monday this year, Botting will lead dozens of students and staff through a series of joyous Yule rituals involving cauldrons, knives, wine, dance, cakes, holly, ivy and stag antlers.
In the Anglo-Saxon and Norse pagan traditions, Yule is the New Year. "For many pagans it is truly the darkest day of the year," Botting says. "For that reason it's the celebration of the rebirth of the sun, and the sun is generally associated with God."
On Yule, the university's interfaith chapel typically churns with pagans marking the return of more daylight hours by swirling in a crack-the-whip-like dance, revering stag antlers because they signify the cycle of life, and dipping a ceremonial knife into a cast-iron cauldron of wine to symbolize the unity of male and female divinity.
more ...
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-0/107190344378470.xml

Merry Yule Everyone. Bright Blessings for 2004.
Joefree1

[aquart]

1. Okay.

But I'm not absolutely sure about revering the stag antlers.

[xchrom]

2. blessed be!

merry yule!

[oneighty]

3. Pan gonna be there?

I send lady friend.

180

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. <sigh>

Pagan ritual replaces Pan with phallic symbol , Stag antlers and knife . Pan , Pagan God of fornication faded away because no one believed in him any more


and oh yeah!!!! because he stank!!!!

[joefree1]

5. Pan comes from Hellenic religions not Celtic

The ritual described in the article is more Druid in origin. This is the religion that brought you the Yule log, "Christmas" tree, kissing under the mistletoe, etc.


http://www.newpagan.com