Winter Nights & the Disir October 2008
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
10
sentences flagged
Summary
Winter Nights is a Celtic festival celebrating the goddess Freya, goddess of beauty and fertility, and the female ancestors of our ancestors. In honor of them, we honor them with a special poem written in honor of the goddess and writer Ray Bradbury.
Transcript
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Hi, I'm Steve McNallan, and if you've been watching any of our other videos, you know by now that
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I had an organization called the Asatru Folk Assembly. Now, Asatru is a native European religion.
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It's what our ancestors were doing before the coming of Christianity. And to learn more about
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Ausatru, you could go to our website at www.runestone.org. Now, in Ausatru, we have many
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different seasonal festivals. One of these is called Winter Nights, and it comes in the middle
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of October. Winter Nights is all about the desir. You can think of the desir as being, well, our
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female ancestors, all those strong women of your family line, all those wonderful women running
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back through the centuries, those collectively we think of as the Deesir. Winter Nights is also
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about the goddess Freya. Freya, as you may already know, is our goddess of beauty, of love, of
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fertility, of joy, prosperity, all of these positive kinds of things.
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Well, you may well wonder why, in fact, anyone would want to honor their female ancestors
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or any other kind of ancestors for that matter.
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What's it got to do with here and now and the lives we lead and our problems and our
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in traditional religions like also true we believe that the ancestors are not
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really separate from us they're always with us they're invisible but they're
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still in many ways a part of our community death is not seen as a brick
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wall death is considered more of a thin gauzy curtain that can be parted it can
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be separated and through which messages of love and care and concern can still pass in both
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directions. The de-seer, and for that matter all of our ancestors, are still concerned with us,
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still involved with us. They're on the other side, concerned about what we're doing,
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sending messages of love, sending inspiration, sending guidance down across the ages and through
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to us. Our responsibility, in turn, is to remember them, to honor them, and to tell
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their stories, particularly to tell their stories to our children, our grandchildren,
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our great-grandchildren, and so forth, because, after all, some of those children, grandchildren,
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and great-grandchildren just might be some of those ancestors reborn into the family
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line. In many ways, winter nights is much like the Celtic festival of Samhain, which
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also comes in October, towards the end of October, which of course in America has become
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a not very serious holiday called Halloween. Both in Samhain and in winter nights, we have
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the concept that the gauze between the worlds is thinner somehow, that the other side is
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more accessible, that the ancestors can access us more easily, and we in turn can access them
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more easily. We don't see this at all as a scary thing or a threatening thing. Quite the contrary,
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there's nothing spooky about it. We think of it as something that is positive, something that is
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warm, something that is comforting, and in fact you might think of it as a sort of family reunion
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Some years ago, I wrote a poem in honor of Freya,
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and in honor of the Deesir, those female ancestors of ours,
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and, strangely enough, also in honor of an American writer named Ray Bradbury.
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Mr. Bradbury, as you may know, has written lots of short stories and books
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many of which have a theme that deals with October, with this particular time of year.
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And it seemed very fitting somehow to combine these three things together.
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What I would like to do in the next few minutes is to read you that point, which I have here,
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along with the introductory little paragraph that kind of runs into it.
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So, in that spirit, I give you October women, in honor of the Deeser.
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for the women ancestors who have left Midgard
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you know that he is the poet laureate of the October spirit.
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Here's my tribute to Freya, to the Deesir, and to their special bard, whose stories have meant so much to me.
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Green cloaks are for growing things and for tossing on the grass for a love bed.
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Brown cloaks, like fallen leaves and bare earth, are for covering and for concealing for October.
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Ray Bradbury knows about October, but he doesn't know about her,
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or it wouldn't be his thumbs that prickle when Frost circles the moon like her necklace.
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and it's too cold to make love on the stark ground.
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Maybe he hears the ones behind her and fears the deeser,
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creaking bones, dried up skin bags, wrinkles like old apples in the straw.
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But Bradbury's got October right, at least as far as he goes.
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summer's end no more long days to run in the sun and play in the fields like children
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it's adult time now indoors school books open turn pages turn inward and keep the fire lit
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all night falling leaves turn to falling snow but the ancient ladies ignore the chill
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Out in the paddock stand the burial mounds, stones all icy
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They cackle and call as though the air was warm
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They hail and halloo as though they never left the fireside
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And brew the fine beer that will keep you cheery
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It's not too cold to take off your clothes under the cover
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Mr. Bradbury should know Freya better than that