W sekcji Blog/Varia publikujemy akualności dotyczące projektu, takie jak informacje dotyczące konferencji, warsztatów, informacje o naszych publikacjach i organizowanych przez nas wydarzeniach, ciekawostki. Jest to także miejsce, w którym pojawiają się krótkie notki przygotowywane przez współpracujących z nami studentów.  

For summer solstice on 20 June, two of us from the RUM team joined a small local pagan (according to their own description) group to observe their Kupała ritual. According to the group members, who all seemed to be in their twenties or early thirties, the group was a relatively new one, and for some of them, it was the first time to celebrate Kupała together. They were very open to our questions and invited us to participate in everything they did, from the ritual preparations to the ritual itself and the socializing afterwards. Luckily for me, some members were ready to speak English to me and explain their actions, such as the making of arrows with arrowheads made out of beeswax that would later be burned in the fire. One person told me that this group made an effort to distinguish themselves from other pagan groups that employ nationalist imagery and thought, and that they were specifically LGBT+ friendly and had a non-binary member.

 

Before the ritual, a gendered division of labor took place, as the women collected flowers to make head wreaths for themselves, and the men collected twigs and soft branches to make an anthropomorphic figure that should later represent a deity, and that would be equipped with a phallus made of flowers which every participant would have to touch at one specific point during the ritual. When I asked about non-binary people, I was told that they could choose which of the two activity to participate in. In fact, the group was very friendly and inclusive towards us outsiders. At one point, for example, a drinking horn with mead and a kind of baked good were passed around in the circle of ritual participants that were standing around a fire. The ritual leader gave them first to my RUM colleague, which contributed further to the welcoming atmosphere.

 

Generally, it was my impression that there was an implicit tension between the attempt to form a new group with up-to-date ideas  on one hand, and preexisting notions of how religion and tradition works. The discrepancy between being open to gender diversity and implementing strict gender division as well as gendered aesthetics might be the most impressive example. Another one could be the relation between the ritual specialist(s) and the ritual participants: We felt very welcome and there was no pressure to participate, nor a ban for non-pagans, so that both the ritual and the group itself felt very accessible. Yet, the ritual leader had a great authority about what was being done, and from what I believe I could tell after a few hours, there seemed to be a hierarchy among the group according to who was more experienced in practicing paganism.

 

author: Sophie Stolberg