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When my phone rang one day early in 2004, it was an acquisitions editor
at RedWheel/Weiser. "We like the way you write," she said to me. "Would
you write a book for us?" "Sure thing," I replied. "What would you like
me to write?" "We want a daily calendar book," she said. "Call it
365 Pagan. And put lots of goddesses in it."
So I signed the contract and wrote the book. To meet their deadline, for six months I wrote every morning (which means I wrote thirty or thirty-one daily pages every two weeks), edited (so I could still pay the rent) every afternoon, and did research every evening.
What I found out when I sent them the completed manuscript, however, was that they'd wanted a frothy little gift book. What I'd sent them was a real book, with real scholarship, real history, real writing. It was too long. But when you're writing a calendar book, you can't just lop sixty pages off the end; you have to trim every single day. They wanted 300 words per page, max. I edited each page down to 301 words.
Here's part of the review from Publishers Weekly. I'm pleased by it and hope you'll be intrigued enough to buy the book.
Ardinger's latest contribution to pagan literature is a short-essay book of days jammed with facts about goddesses and saints, alongside an assortment of random pop culture references and personal musings. The author of several books including Finding New Goddesses, Ardinger is a regular encyclopedia of knowledge not only about paganism but more broadly about significant women figures and goddesses in history (think Julian of Norwich, Mother Teresa, and Isis, all of whom make appearances among the 365 days). … Chocolate lovers will surely delight to learn the story behind Lady Godiva (July 10) and those uninitiated into the history of Sophia (December 16) will be happy to learn of her illustrious past.
One thing I discovered in writing Pagan Every Day was that if you've studied enough metaphysics, then you can find a nice metaphysical meaning in nearly anything. As I did for Barbie, Miss Piggy (the Goddess of Everything), and Dirty Dancing. Following are four new days from the book (one for each season).
Leo, says Lilith the astrologer, wants everyone to know what he’s doing and how he’s feeling. Leo wants to be always the center of attention. Leo is filled to overflowing with the ever-blazing fires of inspiration, creativity, and passion. On the other hand, Leo can also be pompous and bossy. Leo is ruled by the sun.
Thirty years ago, I met an artist, every one of whose planets, I’m convinced, was in Leo. Reader, you know when you meet someone for the first time who you know you’ve known forever? It was like that with R’becca and me. We met at a consciousness-raising group in southern Illinois while I was still in graduate school and she had left her abusive husband and come to live with her parents. We were friends immediately. It was she who invited me to move to California.
If R’becca hadn’t died so young, you’d recognize her name and be seeing her work in museums and galleries. She worked in nearly every medium, from fiber art to bronze sculpture to pen and ink so fine it looked like an etching to paintings in oils or acrylic. I remember her telling me about her art lessons where she had to draw people at a party, but every person in the drawing was bones and muscles only. She knew how a hand worked, what a lower back really looked like, the details of the musculature of a face. I’m proud to own three of her works.
But she was also the world’s foremost drama queen and her life lurched from one melodrama to the next. It was impossible not to adore her, for she was generous and warm-hearted, but it was equally impossible to live with her (as both of her ex-husbands would also tell you). She became the sun of any room she entered and everyone else was a pale planet, glad to be bathed in her solar wind.
The Venerable Bede (673–735), a Christian scholar and historian of Anglo-Saxon England who lived 200 years before Beowulf was written, describes the heathen beliefs and customs of his time. Because his interest is in converting the pagans, however, he says that Haligmonath is called “holy month” because that’s when “the heathens pay tribute to their devil.” The real reason the month is holy probably lies in the harvest and the thanksgiving feasts celebrated in honor of the gods and goddesses of the earth. Harvest Home was celebrated in September.
The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came from northern Germany and the Baltic lands. The most famous leaders of the Jutes were Hengist and Horsa, whose names roughly translate as “horse” and “mare.” These Germanic tribes were settling in England about the time King Arthur (or whoever the tribal chief was who was amalgamated into the medieval legends of Arthur) might have lived. This was the fifth and sixth centuries, about the same time as the Merovingians (of Holy Blood Holy Grail fame) were ruling the Franks and St. Brigit was founding her abbey in Cill Dara.
The Anglo-Saxon calendar is based on an agricultural year and the month names are as follows. Our information comes not only from Bede but also from Tacitus and from Norse and Germanic literature and customs. Here are the Anglo-Saxon names for the months:
Æfterra or Geola - January; Solmonath - February; Hrethmonath - March;
Eostremonath - April; Thrimilci - May; Ærra or Litha - June; Æfterra or
Litha - July; Weodmonath - August; Haligmonath - September; Winterfylleth
- October; Blotmonath - November; Ærra or Geola - December
There are numerous modern groups who call themselves Asatru and heathen
and follow the paths of the old Norse and Germanic pantheons. The Troth,
of Berkeley, California, publishes an “Old Heathen’s Almanac” with much
useful information.
They keep telling us that the sun has always belonged to gods, the moon,
to goddesses. That gold is masculine and silver is feminine, and everybody
knows that gold is worth lots more than silver. That yang is active and
yin is passive. Oh, yeah? You know what I think? I think this mythology
is based on the mechanics of sex—the thrusting, projective male on top
of the yielding, receptive female. Lighten up, big boy.
According to Greek Pelasgian myth, Sunday—the sun’s day—was originally
ruled by Theia, “the bright one” and mother of Helios, and her consort,
Hyperion, the first sun god. Theia and Hyperion were titans, pre-Olympic
deities who ruled the days of the week. Helios is older than Apollo, who
other sources say was originally Hittite, Lycian, or Arabian. Because he
visits the Hyperboreans in the winter, it is even possible that he was
born in Northern lands.
As the best known solar god, Apollo also became the god of fertility,
light, truth, medicine, music, poetry, and all fine arts. (One modern author
says that he “absorbed several formerly goddess functions.”) But this golden
paragon’s original name was Apollo Smintheus; he was the god of mice. Apollo’s
solar divinity, Patricia Monaghan writes, “came so late that not a single
monument shows him as the sun.” The solar connection may have arisen from
two early coins that show him tossing his hair in a solar aura. Apollo’s
name may mean “destroyer,” which is how he’s portrayed in the Iliad. In
the sixth century B.C.E., the Athenian dramatist Aeschylus mentioned that
there was an affinity between Apollo and the sun. Other Greek poets took
up the conceit, and a few centuries later the Orphics imagined a solar
realm with nothing female in it, only a crowd of gods.
Although his foliate head or leaf mask is a popular icon in our gardens,
I suspect that the Green Man isn’t quite as tame as we think he is. William
Anderson writes that he “signifies irrepressible life” and is “an image
from the depths of prehistory.” He’s the spirit of growth, the wilderness
lover, the consort or son of the Great Creatrix. If we could understand
the leafy words flowing out of his mouth, we’d learn the secrets of nature.
Like the Lorax, he’s saying, “Pay attention!”
As we learn from Anderson’s book and its splendid photographs, the face
of the Green Man appears on cathedrals all over Europe. We don’t see him
at first, but suddenly, among the saints or on top of a leafy column—there
he is. He’s looking down at us from spires, chancels, arches, tympanums,
bosses, corbels, crypts, and tombs. He appears to be expressing emotions
from serenity to rage; sometimes he looks like he’s in a trance.
The Green Man may be related to the Paleolithic ithyphallic shamans painted
on cave walls. Perhaps he’s the unfathered brother of our familiar vegetation
gods, Dionysus, Adonis, Osiris, and the rest. Foliate heads are found on
early temples, but what on earth is this pagan fellow doing in Christian
cathedrals? It’s likely that the masons and stone carvers were recording
a message about birth, death, and rebirth.
That message about rebirth is why, Anderson says, the Green Man is so
popular today. He’s come to symbolize the green movement. He’s a friend
of the earth who is whispering to us to wake up and grow up, to march and
dance with him in celebration of our relationship with nature. Reader,
what green thing can you do today? Donate money or your time to your city’s
tree planting program.
Do you want to know what happened in pagan history or in my imagination today? What I wrote about on your birthday? BUY THIS BOOK. You can buy a signed copy from me and you can find it at your local bookstore or on line. If it's not on the shelf in your bookstore, please ask them to order it.