JIVE TALK - I have been banned from Facebook

Pagan Calendar by Survive the Jive

 

In 2018 I commissioned this "pagan calendar" as a guideline for those new to paganism, to help them understand the holy parts of the year. It was not accompanied by a thorough explanation and so has understandably been misunderstood. So now, three years later, I am posting this clarification to help people understand what this is:

• This is NOT an accurate historical representation of a Germanic, Roman. Celtic or Slavic pagan calendar. It merely demonstrates how those different Indo-European folk-ways each had corresponding annual celebrations which closely resemble each other and are often held at similar, but not identical, times of year.
  
• The purpose was to give practicing pagans a jumping off point to so they can make informed decisions about when to celebrate holy days in their own calendars - this was not me telling people exactly when to celebrate holy days, but gives them an idea of the right time of year to do things and the associated gods and rites.
• This calendar is dated according to the modern Gregorian calendar which none of the pagans ever used. Therefore all the dates are historically wrong. I have mentioned in videos and blogs that the Germanic people, for example, used a lunar-solar calendar, which means we cannot have accurate fixed dates for holy days on a Gregorian calendar. This calendar approximates dates of ancient festivals onto a modern Gregorian calendar for the convenience of modern people.
• The use of a "wheel of the year" calendar is not really attested reliably in historical sources and many have correctly pointed out that this is an invention of Wiccans. The stylistic choice of representing the year with a solar wheel was based on the fact that this symbol is prominent in the artwork of several Indo-European cultures. I was not influenced by Wicca and their calendar.
• Prior knowledge was assumed, so the writing style is laconic and no explanation is given for the meaning or purpose of the ritual behaviours. This was because I assumed that only people who watch my videos would use the calendar, and that they would therefore understand it based on my talks. 
• "Casual sex permissible" requires clarification for those who had not seen the May Day video which was published a couple of weeks before the calendar and explained what this means and why I wrote it (the video and calendar were supposed to compliment each other).
• The May day/ Easter customs I describe are mostly derived from folkloric accounts from recent times and not ancient pagan customs. The fact that customs in Ireland, Britain, Poland, Sweden, Romania, Lithuania, Spain etc pertaining usually to Spring festivals but sometimes to Midsummer ones, are so similar is, I argue, evidence for their ancient origin. 
• All of these customs however are only recorded among Christians and by Christians and many continue to this day, not merely in neopagan forms, but as living folk traditions among peasants. 
• In several places the evening before May day is associated with female sexuality, and certain Protestant accounts in England and Catholic accounts in Ireland lament the fact that young teenagers were prone to having sex on May eve outside of wedlock. For centuries after Christianisation however, it seems young people were able to have casual sex (sex outside of marriage) without suffering the normal social consequences, providing they did it on May eve. 
• Many such couplings would result in marriages, however it was considered unlucky for a man to marry a woman on May day as she would then have more power over him. I suspect the marriages were often the necessary consequence of unexpected pregnancies. 
• "Casual sex" applies to young unmarried heterosexual people. None of the sources I looked at mentions any kind of infidelity being socially acceptable. Indeed, the sources are disapproving of the young people having sex at all, since they come from the learned and moralising literate elite who did not participate in such folk customs, which have only been preserved by (mainly illiterate) peasants who probably didn't realise what they were doing had anything to do with "paganism" - they simply did what had always been done. 
• My inclusion of this statement regarding "casual sex" was not a command that pagans ought to go and have sex on this night, nor even a suggestion. I simply recorded what has occurred throughout Christendom, throughout the entire history of Christian Europe because I believe the custom to be pagan in origin. I wanted to draw attention to the association of sex and fertility with the Spring festival so that pagans could understand it properly. 

What did Yamnaya look like?

 

NEW YAMNAYA FACIAL RECONSTRUCTION: 

About 46% of the world’s population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language, and the majority of humans on earth can speak at least one Indo-European language such as English, Spanish or Hindi. These languages all come from Proto-Indo-European speakers of the Yamnaya culture. The Yamnaya people were indigenous to the Eastern European steppe during the eneolithic and early Bronze age.

Using their skulls, the latest genetic data about their phenotype, and the latest facial reconstruction techniques, the 3D artist Robert Molyneaux was able to create realistic reconstructions of Yamnaya people for a forthcoming Survive the Jive video. We are pleased to reveal the first one in the form of this infographic which shows us what a male from Bykovo cemetery on the Volga looked like.

 His features are notably robust, particularly his chin and brow but his skull is quite long, which is typical of the dolichocephalic eastern Yamnaya. We have reconstructed him with brown eyes, which is statistically likely for his people, although we don’t have his personal DNA to check what colour hair he specifically had. His skin tone is at the darker end of the European spectrum and was based on that of modern Georgian people from the North Caucasus who have a similar range of complexions as the Yamnaya.

You can see more of him and learn all about the Yamnaya when the STJ documentary is finished later this summer! In the meantime, please share this infographic all around.

Sources:

Anthony, D., ‘The Horse, the Wheel, and Language’, Princeton University Press (2007).
Haak, W., et al., ‘Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe’ (2015).
Hanel, A, Carlberg, C. Skin colour and vitamin D: An update. Exp Dermatol, (2020).
Heyd, V. Kossinna's smile. Antiquity, 91(356), 348-359, (2017).
Khokhlov, A. A., ‘Morphogenetic processes in the Volga-Urals in the early Holocene (based on craniological materials of the Mesolithic-Bronze Age)’ Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education Samara State Social and Pedagogical University (2017).
Klejn, L., et al. ‘Discussion: Are the Origins of Indo-European Languages Explained by the Migration of the Yamnaya Culture to the West?’ European Journal of Archaeology (2017).
Saag et al, ‘Genetic ancestry changes in Stone to Bronze Age transition in the East European plain’ (2021).

Holy holes: Passing through and looking through

 

Passing through rituals involving holes in stones and trees are widespread in Europe and beyond and are related to rituals that involve looking through a hole to see spirits. In this video we look at the passing through rituals associated with megalithic structures in Britain and Ireland, and the arboreal passing through rituals associated with oak and ash trees all over Europe, known as träddragning in Nordic countries. We also look at the related customs of looking through holes among the Sami and the Welsh, the Odinic ritual of looking through an arm akimbo as described in the Viking saga of King Hrólfr Kraki, and at the hagstone or adderstone tradition from Britain and the associated magical practices. 

Animations by Castor and Bollux animation: 

Will  

Eliot  

Efa 

Additional art by: 

Thomas Cormack - Elf blot 

 Christian Sloan Hall - Odin 

Graman Folcwald - Anglo-Saxon burial 

Christopher Steininger - Odin

Sources:

Camden, W., ‘Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland’ (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610) Copyright 2004 by Dana F. Sutton. 

Campbell, J. G., ‘Witchcraft & second sight in the Highlands & islands of Scotland’ (1902). Davies, J. C., ‘Folk-lore of West and mid-Wales’ (1911). 

Evans, George E., ‘The Pattern Under the Plough’ (1966). 

Guðmundsson, H., ‘Handan hafsins’ Háskólaútgáfan (2012). 

Hand, Wayland D. “‘Passing Through’: Folk Medical Magic and Symbolism.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 112, no. 6, 1968, pp. 379–402. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/985938. 

Kuusela, T., 'He met his own funeral procession': The Year walk-ritual in Swedish folk tradition. Chapter in: "Folk Belief and Traditions of the Supernatural". Edited by Tommy Kuusela & Giuseppe Maiello. Beewolf Press 2016. Pp. 58-91. 

Saxo Grammaticus. Gesta Danorum: the History of the Danes I, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen, and trans. Peter Fisher (Oxford, 2014), book 2, ch. 7, pp. 138–39. 

Marwick, E. (1975) The Stone of Odin. In Robertson, J. D. M. (1991) An Orkney Anthology: The Selected Works of Ernest Walker Marwick (Vol 1). Scottish Academic Press: Edinburgh. 

McDowall, Sue ‘PASSING THROUGH & UNDER: A RITUAL HEALING IN ENGLAND’ Folklore Thursday blog. 

National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin. https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5009137/4990205/5100637 https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5009301/5005811/5133480 https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922361/4874175 https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5009277/5003835/5131790 

Ryan, Derek ‘Hag Stones, are they an example of authentic Irish folklore or a neo-pagan import?’ The Tipperary antiquarian blog (2019) 

Rydving, Hakan. (2010). The 'Bear Ceremonial' and Bear Rituals among the Khanty and the Sami. Temenos. 46. 31-52. 10.33356/temenos.6940. 

Skott, F., ‘Passing Through as Healing and Crime’ (2014). 

Thoms, William J. “Divination by the Blade-Bone.” The Folk-Lore Record, vol. 1, 1878, pp. 176–179. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1252358.

JIVE TALK: Ancient DNA news: Greece and Italy

Sources

Florian Clemente et al, The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations, Cell (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.039 Saute et al, Ancient genomes reveal structural shifts after the arrival of Steppe-related ancestry in the Italian Peninsula (2021)

Map of affinities to ancient Greek samples in modern populations

Gothic DNA heat maps

The Afterlife and the secret Odin Brotherhood with Dr. Mark Mirabello

Mark Mirabello, Ph.D., is a professor of history at Shawnee State University in Ohio and a former visiting professor of history at Nizhny Novgorod University in Russia. He has appeared on Ancient Aliens and America’s Book of Secrets on the History Channel as well as in the documentary The Kingdom of Survival. He is the author of The Traveler's Guide to the Afterlife which Examines beliefs from many different cultures on the soul, heaven, hell, and reincarnation; and also The Odin Brotherhood, first published in 1992, in which Mirabello reveals some of the secrets of a mysterious society in Britain which values "knowledge, freedom and power" as part of their occult work which honours Odin and the other Norse gods. I asked him about these and other subjects pertaining to magic, the afterlife and pagan beliefs.

Learn more about him and his published works on www.markmirabello.com 

Pagan English folk music with Dan Capp of Wolcensmen

 

Dan Capp's Wolcensmen creates heathen hymns from the mists of England. He was originally known as a member of the Anglo-Saxon themed metal band Winterfylleth but his acoustic side project Wolcensmen is now the focus of his work. Dan’s music evokes the persistent paganism in the folk ways of the peasants of England, and breathes life into a natural expression of the English folk soul. In this interview we discuss a few of his songs and the meaning of the pagan themes in his lyrics. 

This podcast is also available on Apple podcasts, Spotify and the rest!

Wolcensmen website