Who is the real Santa?

It seems that pagan is just a word that encompasses many of the earth religions such as wicca, celtic pagan, druids. There are more but I'm just learning.

In some pagan tales the oak king and the holly king fight for supremacy over the seasons. The Oak King rules the the Holly king represents the darkness of the old year where the Oak King represents the light of the new year. Each year they fight the battle to rule the seasons, but ofcourse the Oak King always wins!

Some say that the image of Santa Clause comes from the image of the green man.



I've always felt an affinity with the oak tree. For many years cezannes 'great oak' was my very favourite painting. After my mum died I would go for walks by ninewells and sit under the oak trees. It makes me feel so much better. Under any oak tree is my special place for consideration. It seems like the Oak king could be responsible for my wellbeing :) LINK TO ARTICLE


Druids and Wiccans speak of the horned god of the forest Cernunnos, the male partner of Earth Mother. Apparently he was such an important deity to celtic pagans that the christian church has adopted his horns and his status of guardian of the underworld as being the Christian devil.

"He is perhaps best known to us now in his Celtic aspects of the untamed Horned God of the Animals and the leaf-covered Green Man, Guardian of the Green World, but He is much older. Cernnunos worked his magic when the first humans were becoming. Our prehistoric ancestors knew him as a shape-shifting, shamanic god of the Hunt."

(http://druidry.org/obod/deities/cernunnos.html)


I found a nice page on Scottish (orkney) Yule traditions. Easy to read and cover quite a variety of stuff

http://www.orkneyjar.com/tradition/yule/index.html

geeking it up on a saturday night

I've recently taken an interest in Earth religions such as Celtic paganism and Wicca. I don't believe in any kind of god but I do be live in the wonder and power of nature.
It got me thinking about different things. I've heard before that menstrual cycles are controlled by lunar activity. The 28 day month was established by the phases of the moon, I think, so a logical link would be that it can't just be coincidence that that is the same for menstrual cycle.

I read a few articles and journals and was surprised to see that there seems to be a lot of doubt as to whether or not this phenomenon actually exists. I just took it for granted from my own experience that it does exist.

Craig gave me an interesting book that I'm going to be looking at over the holidays. Its about Celtic traditions and explains a lot of the pagan routes of our christian festivals.

I don't really like Christmas. Not being a christian , I kinda felt a bit of a fraud celebrating Christmas. I got it as a purely consumerist event, encouraging us to spend spend spend on more crap we don't really need.

However, looking into the routes of Christmas from a pagan perspective I'm beginning to get it a bit more. Mother Nature Rules OK.

More to come on my journey of discovery into the true meaning of Yule.