Candlemas: When You’re Just Not that into Bridget

I don’t have any problems with Bridget.  She seems like a perfectly lovely goddess, but it was made clear to me long ago that she’s not mine. While I can appreciate the beauty of Celtic culture, I’ve never clicked with its mythology or its gods. Because I don’t work with Celtic gods my Candlemases (plural form of Candlemas?) are pretty much void of Bridget dolls, Bridget crosses and ewes. Recently I learned that Candlemas isn’t just a Christianized version of Imbolc, but a holiday with it’s own pre-Christian history.  So I no longer have to feel guilty or weird about not being able to get into the Bridget spirit on Feb 2nd.

I know I can’t be the only one who goes, “Bridget?” (shrugs) when everyone else is cheering “It’s Imbolc, Yay Bridget!” If you’re on the same boat and are looking for ideas on celebrating Candlemas/Imbolc that don’t have much to do with Celtic deities or ewes, here are my suggestions. Note: When I was a newbie pagan an acquaintance of mine mentioned that she focused on family and the hearth on Imbolc. This stuck with me. To me this sabbat is about Family, the Domestic realm and Purification, so my list reflects this.

• Cook an Imbolc/Candlemas inspired menu.

• Skip the public rituals and instead spend the holiday with family and close friends at home.

• Deep clean, de-clutter, cleanse, bless and ward your house.

• If you have the skill, make household repairs.

• Celebrate deities and/or spirits of the domestic realm, and ask that they bless your home.

• Celebrate fire goddesses.

• If you have brought something into the new year that no longer serves you, dump it on Candlemas while the year is still young.

• If you have already dropped your new year resolution use this Sabbat as a chance to give it another go.

• Take a cleansing bath.

• Make candles, perfumed oils and magical/ritual waters.

• Plan this year’s garden (if you have one).

B is for Ba’al

Last week’s topic at the Pagan Experience was on deity/the Divine and our experiences with Them/It. I was planning on writing a post about Ba’al, but every time I tried, only a jumbled mess came out. So I thought, maybe Ba’al didn’t want me writing anything about him after all. But then this week’s prompt is any topic that starts with the letter A or B. So, I’ll take that as a hint, and try this again.

I want to take a moment to make it clear that I am not an expert on Canaanite religion or culture. I am only a follower of the Iluma, and a new follower at that.

Ba’al is the Hebrew word for lord. There were many gods in the ancient middle east called Ba’al so it isn’t wise to assume all Ba’al’s are the same god. But more often than not, when people are talking about Ba’al they are referring to one god in particular, Ba’al Hadad. Hadad translates to Thunderer, so his name literally means Lord Thunderer. And as his name suggests Ba’al is a storm god. In addition to being a storm god, Ba’al is also a warrior and a dying and rising god.

According to this website, Hadad originated from the Sumerian/Akkadian god Ishkur/Adad. In this form he was associated with both the benevolent and destructive aspects of storms. When he became the Ugaritic Hadad he took on a more benevolent nature, and became the protector and champion of humanity. He also moved up in rank and became one of the more important, if not the most important god in the pantheon.

Ba’al is the son of Dagon, the grain god, although sometimes he’s referred as the son of the chief god El. There’s a lot of confusion over this matter because mythology contradicts itself. Another point of confusion is whether Ba’al is married, and if so, to whom. Some have made the mistake of stating that Anat (the goddess of war) is his wife. Mythology mentions that Anat is a virgin. This doesn’t necessarily mean that she isn’t sexual (although there is no evidence that she is), but it does mean she’s not married. Sometimes sources will say that Astarte is Ba’al’s wife. Astarte plays a minor roll in Ugaritic mythology, and no where does it say that she is married to Ba’al. According the the Bible, Asherah and Hadad are an item. And the Assyrian Adad is married to Shala, a goddess of the grain, emotion and compassion. Confusing right? Sometimes a pagan just has to accept that pagan mythology isn’t like the scripture of book religions. Depending on the location the same god can have different myths, different family members and sometimes even a different personality.

In Ugarit Ba’al Hadad has three women, Tallay (dewy), Pidray (light), and Arsay (earthy). They are often seen as his daughters, and sometimes as his wives. I go with the daughter explanation because in the myth of the marriage of Yarihu (moon god) and Nikkal (orchard goddess), Nikkal’s father suggests that Yarihu marry one of Ba’al’s women. This suggestion wouldn’t make sense if these women were his wives. Ba’al also has two servants Gapnu (vine) and Ugar (field). Thunder is said to be Ba’al’s voice and I imagine that his two weapons Yagarish (Driver), and Ayamari (driver) represent lightening. One of Ba’al titles is the “Rider on the clouds.” I tend to see Ba’al as traveling with his daughters and servants in rock-star-esque type entourage when he brings rain to the earth. (My UPG, but it just seems right.)

When I first started exploring the Canaanite pantheon and had little interest in Ba’al Hadad. I think my Southern Baptist upbringing had a little to do with it. Conservative Christians tend to see the name Ba’al as either as one of Satan’s many names, or at least the name of a very powerful demon. Even after I learned more about Ba’al, I still wasn’t very interested. I’m not a warrior type person, and I’m generally not attracted to the warrior archetype.

So what am I doing with this god? I felt like he chose me. One cloudy monsoon day Ba’al just showed up, and from that moment on I’ve understood why the ancient Israelites had such a hard time not worshiping him. And the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. I love rain. When I was a child, my sister and I use to run outside and play in the rain. I’ve also spent a decent portion of my life living in arid or semi arid climates, where it’s not too uncommon to go weeks without any sort of precipitation. Living in the desert really makes you appreciate, adore, and respect rain.

A Canaanite Altar Tour

A couple post ago, I included a picture of my altar.  Since I took that picture (about a year ago) there have been some changes to my altar.  Nothing drastic, but I wanted to do an altar tour anyway.  Some pagans like to show off their altars, and others like to look at pictures of altars (Altar Porn!).  Personally I like to do both.  IMO altar making is a type of art in it’s own right, and looking at the altars of others is a good way to come up with new ideas.

There are two altars in my house.  The one I will be sharing today is an altar I share with my husband.  My part of the altar is dedicated to my pantheon and it’s where I do my personal practices.  The other altar is a family altar, and after the Yule season it has gotten into a state of chaos.  After I get that together I’ll do an altar tour of that one as well.

Here’s the general overview of my part of the altar.  It’s still has the same set up as it did when I first took a picture of it, but I removed the 7 day candles and the cauldron and replaced them with this floral and faux food arrangement.  I’ll go more into detail about the arrangement later in this post.

The rectangle mirror thing is a candle plate that I use as an offering plate.  On the offering plate there is an feather shaped incense holder which replaced the generic Wiccan/Celtic one.  To the center left is a decorative bowl I use for water offerings.  Water here comes from an aquifer, so unfortunately the bowl has gotten coated with lime after some time, and I don’t know how to remove it without damaging the bowl in the process.  Next to that is my oil lamp.  At the bottom are two tea light candles that I received as a gift that were too pretty to burn, so I use them as decoration.  The offering plate sits on a mat that I crocheted to help catch wayward incense ash.  I chose a purple yarn because the Canaanites and later their descendants the Phoenicians were known for their purple dye.

Lets start with my Ba’al and then go left from there.  It’s difficult to find statues of the Canaanite gods, so most of the time one has to settle with pictures.  When I searched for images of Ba’al Hadad I couldn’t find any that I like enough to put on my altar so I made this image out of polymer clay and paint.  Next is an amulet to ward off the evil eye.  It just seemed like it need to be on the altar.  Then there is an image of Asherah that I found online, printed on photo paper and put in a picture frame. Next is a little figurine of Asherah that I created also from polymer clay.  It was inspired by the many goddess images archeologists have dug up in Israel.  To the left is a selenite spiral.  I’m not really into crystals, but this made me think both of Asherah poles and of the ziggurats of ancient Babylon, so I had to buy it and give it Asherah. Bellow that is a bottle of sand.  My family and I recently took a trip to San Diego.  When we visited the beach I made sure to take some sand with me. In mythology Asherah is often depicted as hanging out by the seashore doing domestic chores.  When I got home I put the beach sand in a bottle and put in on my altar in Her honor.  Lastly is a hand shaped trinket holder filled with variety of votive offerings.  There a silver colored stone (I have forgotten the name of this stone) to represent silver, a piece of pyrite to represent gold, a tiny piece of Lapis Lazuli, a little plastic cow to represent a cow offering.  I also placed a small dove pendant I’ve had since I was a child and a little pentacle and hamsa charm just because.  There is also a mini Hindu bull statue in front of the Ba’al plaque.  Ba’al is associated with bull, plus I just wanted a golden bull on my altar.

From right to left.  The white statue is an image of Mary Magdalene.  Recently the Magdalene has made a reappearance in my life, so it felt right to put her back on the altar.  The green bottle is shamnu moru (myrrh infused olive oil).  l use this for anointing.  And the square bottle is shamnu raqachi (spiced olive oil)  which I burn in my lamp. Behind both of those is a bottle of Florida Water, and a candle snuffer.  The red thing in the background is a sistrum I made from a embroidery hoop.  The blue altar cloth is a hijab I bought at the local Mosque’s open house, and the smaller black cloth is what I believe to be a belly dancing belt.

Please forgive the white cardboard, I used it to block the reflection of my bedroom and myself in the mirror. It makes for an ugly picture.

When I think of the Iluma, I think of them bringing fertility and life to an arid land, and this is what this arrangement represents. It also serves as a collection of votive offerings.  The “floral” arrangement is made of plastic flowers (I don’t know what type of flowers they are suppose to be, they were something I had around from another project), dried wheat stalks, and salt ceder twigs.  There is also an apple, pear and a white pumpkin I crocheted, and some plastic grapes and a faux pomegranate.  Those little white vase are currently holding Japanese incense, although sometimes I burn resin incense sticks (the awesomeness of loose incense without having to deal with charcoal discs).  In the past I visited a Buddhist temple, and I really like how the incense where located right on the altar just waiting for you to offer them, so I added this element to my altar.  It also prevents me from having to rummage through drawers looking for incense.

That is it, I hope you enjoyed the tour.

Snow!

Today is one of those few, but not extremely rare snow days here in Albuquerque. I’m sure this morning as many Burqueños prepared their morning coffee they happened to glance out the window and exclaimed to whoever was in the house, “OMG! OMG! Hey, do you see this?! There’s white stuff on the ground outside! It’s SSSSNNNNOOOOWWWW!!!” Okay, I’m exaggerating a little, but that’s very close to how people in ‘Burque react to snow. I should know, because I did something very similar to that this morning. Every time it snows we act like it’s something we’ve never seen before, even though it happens a number times nearly every year.

So naturally, I had to take out my daughter out to play in the snow today, because there is no guarantee it will be there tomorrow. Actually it’s almost certain that it’ll be mostly melted and evaporated away by tomorrow. So we took a walk along the arroyo near our house. I think people outside of New Mexico call this a “wash.”  *squeak* Snow!

As my daughter and I were leaving the house I saw more ravens hanging around than usual.  When we got the arroyo we saw these bird foot prints everywhere and I assumed they belonged to the ravens.

Eventually we found the birds leaving prints. Not ravens.

My Daily Personal Practice

This week’s prompt on the Pagan Experience peaked my interest. Although I’m not planning on committing to any writing projects this year, this week’s topic is something I wanted to write about anyways, so why not now? Anyways, there just aren’t many Canaanite inspired rituals floating around on the interwebs. So here’s one more. As with all of my rituals, feel free to personalize to your heart’s content.

This weeks prompt is: Share your favorite spiritual/magickal practices. What tools are incorporated into your daily practice? What feeds you and replenishes you?

My favorite spiritual practice is ritual. I love writing rituals, hosting rituals for friends, and I love doing ritual for only me and mine. I like simple contemplative rituals and I like fancy ritual with all the bells and whistle. I adore the scent of fragrant oils and incense drifting through the air. I enjoy the sight of a lit up altar. I especially love it when the gods show up and make their presence known. Ritual leaves me feeling connected and calm yet energized in ways that nothing else does.

I would love to tell you that I’m an ultra devote disciplined pagan, and that I faithfully do this ritual everyday, but I would be lying. Sometimes, I follow this ritual to the tee. Sometimes I just don’t have the time or energy to do a proper ritual and will do something simple like light incense or say a round of prayers on my prayer beads. And too often I forget my daily practice all together. Sticking to a daily routine is something I still struggle with. I have approved greatly in this area, but I still got a long way to go.

This ritual takes me anywhere from around 15 minutes to a half an hour to do, depending on what I want to do that day. Currently I’m a stay at home mother (and my daughter usually joins in), so I have the privilege to be able to dedicate this amount of time to my spiritual practice. I understand this is not something everyone can do. Don’t feel down if you can’t dedicate that kind of time. Spirituality should not be an all or nothing kind of a deal. If five minutes, 1 minute or a respectful nod to your altar is all you can give, than it’s all you can give, and that is much better than nothing.

My “Daily” Devotional Practice.

Many people who work with the Canaanite pantheon cover their head during ritual. This head covering can be anything from a scarf, to a hat, or even a thick head band. I often forget to do this, but if my hair is especially tore up that day (which happens often enough when you have super curly hair) I’ll make sure to cover my head. Ancient Near and Middle Eastern cultures were really into cleanliness, so I wash my hands before I start ritual. If I’m feeling kinda ugh for any reason I’ll do a quick cleanse with Florida Water. Usually before I start I’ll take a moment to be silent and take seven deep breaths to help ground and center me. My usual offerings to the gods are water, incense, perfumed oil and fire. Honestly, the most stressful aspect of food offerings for me is the disposal, so tend to save food offering for Holy Days. After I light the incense and my oil lamp I’ll bow to my gods seven time. Sometimes if I feel like going that extra mile I’ll prostrate myself seven times. This is something that is so foreign to the general American culture that I often feel awkward doing this, but I have found that prostrating can be very centering.

Next I pick up (or make a gesture of giving at) each offering one by one and say:

“I offer incense to the Gracious Deities
Perfumed smoke for the Gods of the Earth and of the Stars
I give back a little of what I have been given
In the spirit of gratitude I return a small portion of what I have received
I give honor, Shalam

I offer water to the Gracious Deities
Fresh and cooling water for the Gods of the Earth and of the Stars
I give back a little of what I have been given
In the spirit of gratitude I return a small portion of what I have received
I give honor, Shalam

I offer fire to the Gracious Deities
Fragrant oil for the Gods of the Earth and of the Stars
I give back a little of what I have been given
In the spirit of gratitude I return a small portion of what I have received
I give honor Shalam”

This next part I borrowed and adapted from Shifting Spectrums’ daily practice.  I grab my bottle of myrrh oil and anoint each body part as I ask for it to be blessed. The following prayer was adapted from Shifting Spectrums’ adaption of a prayer by Tess Dawson.

“Ancient Deities of the Canaanites,
Divine Assembly of Mount Lalu,
Sons and Daughters of El and Asherah,
Bless my mind that I may sense you,
Bless my eyes that I may see you,
Bless my ears that I may hear you,
Bless my nose that I may smell you,
Bless my throat that I may speak with you,
Bless my senses that I my feel you,
(I usually do a sign of the pentacle here. I once heard that the pentacle has it’s origins in Babylon, as a symbol of royalty. So I thought it was fitting.)
Bless my heart so that I may know you.

I give honor.
Shalam.

After this, my ritual gets a little more free form. Whenever I come across a prayer to a Canaanite god I copy, paste, print and add it to my binder o’ prayers, so I have a healthy selection of prayers to chose from. Most of the time I recite a prayer to Asherah, or Hadad, or both. Sometimes I’ll offer a prayer to another deity. On occasion I’ll sing, which is tricky since the Canaanite pantheon is a rather obscure and there aren’t many chants or songs dedicated to them. A year ago I came across this chant (it’s in Hebrew), and found that the translation fits well enough with the flow of the song that it can be sung in English. Sometimes I reach into the bag of Neopagan chants I’ve learned over the years from various drum circles and festivals, and find one that make at least some sort of sense in this context. One of my favorite chants to sing to the Canaanite gods is “The River She is Flowing.”  Although the Canaanite deity of both rivers and the sea is a god called Yam, this chant still makes me think of Asherah.  And if you want to see a room of young children grow silent and still, sing this chant to them.  I have personally witness this. Another chant I like to use is “Slowly Blooms the Rose Within.” That last chants is actually a Contemplative Christian chant but it works for me. Asherah is sometime associated with the rose (this is a modern association but that’s fine with me), so it makes sense.  Sometimes I’ll skip all of this and op for a quick silence mediation or a Phoenician “rune” reading instead.

I end my ritual with a moment of silent contemplation (doesn’t always work, as I have a 4 year old daughter), and then by bowing one more time and saying something like, “I give honor, Shalam.” I usually leave the lamp burning until the incense goes out. Then I put out the flame with a candle snuffer. I don’t have any taboos about blowing out candles like some Wiccanesque pagans do. I do this for purely practical reasons, to prevent incense ash from going everywhere all over my altar. That is all, it is done.

If you’re interested in the ritual without all my commentary click over there (psst… it’s a PDF) —–> A Devotional Ritual to the Iluma