Alison Place here, with a few comments on a couple of Michael's latest postings:
Concerning Asrelia, she cannot be a benign goddess, considering the number of miners who die looking for her treasures every year (if you include the ores as also her treasures). I am sure that dwarves are not the only miners, merely the best ones. Those that don't have Malkioni learning will follow Asrelia in their propitiations to the Earth goddesses.
In answer to your problems with spirit equivalences, in the British Isles, the hustomte is the brownie (the Welsh Bwca, Highland Bodach and Manx Fenodoree), who is fed with a plate of milk every morning, and sometimes a very good bannock, or even an item of clothing. If the brownie is rewarded any more directly, it will be offended, and leave the farm or act like a hobgoblin. Our younger Girl Guides are called Brownies for this spirit. The field spirit is usually the same brownie, sometimes called a Gruagach or Grogan, which means "the hairy one", but mostly just brownie.
Here are my comments on the Plow ritual:
The spiral path is the Air Rune of Orlanth - a perfectly good rune for an Orlanthi farmer to use in a ritual, and one of the easiest to make with a plow.
Could you enlighten me about John Hughes' calendar? The choice of Dark or Storm Seasons confuses me because I would have thought that many would find a day in Sacred Time or Sea Season to be a better Plow Day. I'm used to playing in Sartar or Prax, and we have been using Aldrya's Day as a good time to start serious plowing and work on the land. I guess the problem is that in central Canada, Storm Season equals roughly February/March, and any farmer around here would giggle insanely at the thought of plowing then. The very first things that I really see in the spring are the early snowdrops, bulbous iris and early crocus (Crocus ancyrensis, and teeny species like that, not the big C. vernus). Even these never bloom until the last week in March even in my south-facing garden, when there is still usually a foot of snow on the ground in many places.
Also, if the weather in Sartar permits, how about holding Plow Day in Earth Season (an appropriate Runic association), after the harvest is in? Then you can put in winter wheat or any other winter crop, and be set for the spring. If the winter frost heaves are bad, it might be a good idea to check the boundaries again in spring, when you are repairing your fences and walls, but it's usually less mucky to tour them in the fall before the rains or snows come.
Another possibility is to hide various objects in the field to be plowed, and then predict the success of the coming year on which ones or how many are found. This would obviously be a type of Divination. (Actually, I suspect that it would be pretty hard to find anything smaller than a reasonably sized rock, but that would be up to the priestesses and priests to worry about.)
Concerning the Hearth Stone ritual, where does the Hearth Stone belong? Is it underlying the hearth, in front of it, or above it? I'm thinking that replacing the hearth stone in the middle of Dark Season is going to be a very nasty cold day's work in many places, with the hearth completely stonecold to permit the old stone to be dug out if it has to be put underneath the ashes. (I think my Canadian slant is showing again!) Could Midsummer's Day or the spring solstice be used instead? Am I confusing what you mean by Ash Day with Hearth Day?
Very nice stuff, though, and I look forward to more. Alison.
Powered by hypermail