Faining: Giving the Gods Theirs

The Tribal rite of Faining can range from a highly personal simple matter to a complex public event. Each household holds its own blessing to the Gods and Goddesses, Ancestors and Wights. As well, each Shire and Tribe, are expected to gather as a community to give thanks in common. The traditional tides for communal gathering were Walpurgis, Midsummer, and Hallows. Walpurgis celebrated the renewal of life and the joy of being in Midgard, Midsummer, the gifts of bounty given by the gods, and Hallows, the reminder of the struggle of being a community. Today, the feasts of Midsummer and Yule are the typical gathering times, as they are the highest holy-tides, and divide the year; thus affording Tribesmen an opportunity to meet and celebrate with each other, as if one physical community.

The moon and the sun fixed the ancient “calendar”, so to speak. The solar movement brings about the change in seasons and the moon phases determined certain events within a given season. A calendar can be thought of as a wheel with eight spokes.

Traditional names for the two major divisions of the year are the solstice: Yule and Midsummer. The solstices are the times when we have the shortest day, Yule, and the longest day, Midsummer. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition Yule is known as Giuli and Midsummer as Litha. The equinoxes, Spring and Fall are the times when the day and nights are equal in length. The Anglo-Saxon names are Eostre Emnight and Harvest Emnight. The solstices and equinoxes can be thought of as the central vertical and horizontal spokes of the wheel; dividing the year into four parts of about three months each.

Each of these three months season is then divided, by ancient observances, into two six week sections. Between Yule and Eostre we have February 2 known as Candlemas or Groundhog's Day. The Anglo-Saxon called it Ewemeoluc or ewe milk day. Between Eostre and Midsummer we have May Day, also known as Wealburges Day. Between Midsummer and Harvest we have August 2, known as Lammas Tide. Between Harvest and Yule we have October 31, known as Hallows or Hallowe'en.

Thus there are three Great Tides observed by Dansk-Norman thew, Winternights (also called Hallows and Winterfinding), which occurs the two weeks between October 14 and 31st; Yuletide, which occurs from Mothernight, the eve of the Winter Solstice, through 12th Night, which commences the new year; and Summermal (also called Summerfinding and Eoster), which occurs over the span of the two weeks before Walpurgisnacht through May Day, where it ends.

This division of the year into three major aetts and three minor "seasonal" events and two equinox celebrations- this constitutes the eight major holidays or holy days of the ancient Heathen traditions. Each holy day has significance to the well-being and balance of the community and the individual with the forces and conditions of living in "the state of nature".

In addition to the seasonal divisions, the calendar reflects the phrases of the moon. The waxing and waning of the moon produces forces of energy that enhances not only pragmatic considerations such as times for planting of crops but also for the heightening of supernatural considerations. Tacitus tells us in his "Germania" that the Germanic tribes met three days before the full moon, at its height of waxing and three days after the new moon, when it began it’s waxing.

Yule

Yule is the holiest and might-full of the Holytides. During the thirteen nights of Yule, all the worlds meet in the Middle Earth: the god and goddesses as well as the dead walk freely, trolls and alfs come into the homes of humans, and folk may be swept away and become riders with the Wild Hunt. Yule is also the time of great feasting and the whole clan, living and dead, gathers together as one- sure in the knowledge that even as the Sun rises every year from her greatest darkness, so there will ever be rebirth for us as well. It is not by chance that Yule has preserved the most Heathen customs of any feast: the promise of the Yule log and the ever-green tree also stood as the promise that our folk-ways should live through the long dark winter and rise bright again.

The traditional Yule season is thirteen nights long - called the Weihnachten, or wih-nights (holy nights), in Germany. These thirteen nights are the space between one year and another, the border where the worlds overlap. All that happens between the first sunset and the last dawn of Yule is mightier than at any other time of the year: these are the nights when Wyrd may be turned, when doom is set. The tide opens with Mothernight, the eve of the Equinox, and continues through Twelfth night, the 13th day of the Holytide. No sumbel is mightier than the one held at midnight on "Twelfth Night"; there is no gainsaying the words that are spoken then, for weal or woe.

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