The Power of Story & Creating a Calendar

[qos]

For all that I'm good at abstract thinking, I crave story. Among other things, I crave stories which provide context for understanding. I crave stories that give meaning to action, especially in the area of the spiritual.

For more than a year now, I've been thinking about creating a personal sacred calendar, establishing holidays that are meaningful to me, to provide points of emphasis and celebration in my personal spiritual life, to give me a way to share my beliefs with my daughter, and perhaps to provide opportunities for community. So far, none of this has happened. It's easy enough to write dates on a calendar, but unless I have an emotional connection to a why beyond "it's a good idea" it's not going to happen. I'm not a ritually-oriented person any more than I'm an extroverted social person. If I'm going to make the effort to do something, it has to motivated by more than "should" or "good idea."

One of the realizations I had in the week following the breakthrough mentioned in my previous post is that I always found the Jesus story compelling -- especially as I got older and began to study it as a graduate student and seminarian. I realized then that one of the problems I've had with the 'usual' Pagan holidays is that they are far too generic for me -- and I haven't ever connected the seasonal observances to a more personally compelling story, nor tried to take the stories which do move me and create observances from them in a deliberate manner.

The one exception to this would be the Hades-Perseophone story. That's an Equinox story I can feel and relate to in my blood and guts. And it's about sex and loss and transformation, which are major elements of my path.

If I'm going to create a sacred calendar and use it as the basis for ritual-making and celebration, it will have to be formed from stories which move me. And then I'm going to need to feel free to celebrate on my own terms, not according to an inherited sense of "how it's done."

One of my ideas is to have a minor feast honoring Enheduanna, a priestess of Inanna who is the first writer whose name we know. I want to hold a salon in her honor where people bring and share sacred poetry and literature.

I've spoken with Wolfling about creating a calendar, and need to engage her again. I want to be sure we have a household calendar which includes the powers with whom she works and the cycles which are important to her.

Comments

[erl-queen.livejournal.com]

You might want to take a look at, say, the ancient Athenian festival calendar, not in order to duplicate anything in particular, but to get a sense of why and how festivals were created in an ancient pagan society. Unlike modern neo-pagan seasonal festivals, ancient Greek festivals were usually dedicated to one deity (or a small group of them) in particular, and were often commemorating a past event, or a myth...and yes, sometimes a seasonal or agricultural transition or marker. While I do like the more general festivals as well, there's something different about doing a more focused celebration of a god - even of one specific aspect or myth of a god.

The ancient festivals also might give you ideas on exactly what to do on these festival days. They usually contained a formal sacrificial ritual, but also dancing, singing, contests (athletic, artistic, or otherwise), games, simpler offerings, special foods, reenacting of parts of a myth, etc.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestion!

Is there a particular resource for the Athenian calendar which you would recommend?

[erl-queen.livejournal.com]

Well, I have a run-down of the festivals on my site:
http://www.winterscapes.com/kharis/calendar.htm

If you want to go further than that, I'd recommend:

Parke. H.W. Festivals of the Athenians.
Simon, Erika. Festivals of Attica.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Many thanks!

[alfrecht.livejournal.com]

That has been the challenge of creating the Ekklesía Antínoou calendar for the past number of years: we do know a few dates that were important in the past, but we have also come up with many more, and aligned them to known "facts" (though they're often conjectural rather than literal facts) in Antinous' living (and dying) life, whether mythologized or not.

It's almost always all about the story for me...