by edward | Jul 31, 2023 | Deryni, Fantasy, Wicca
Deryni Lammas, observing the Sabbat in Kurtz’s world.
Celebrating Deryni Lammas
Happy Lammas! Happy Lughnasadh! The first harvest yields wheat and other early crops. Summer comes to a close by the First of August. Farmers focus on getting in the crops and putting them up for the winter. The heat hasn’t completely broken, even in the Northern Europe of Kurtz’s world, but seeing the products of the hard work of spring and summer ready to be collected is exciting.
Ritual for Deryni Lammas
While modern Wiccans and other pagans recognize the first harvest as one of the Sabbats, modern Christians seem to have forgotten much of the Wheel of the Year. The Catholic liturgical calendar recognizes Alphonsus Ligouri on 1-August. Ligouri, the founder of the Redemptorists, was a bishop and academic. Maybe he got out in the fields for the harvest, but it’s not high up on his resume.
Kurtz’s Christians were closer to the land. They understood the harvest, even the nobles in the story, “Healer’s Song.”
The story tells the tale of the naming and christening of Tieg Joram Thuryn, third child of Rhys Thuryn and Evaine MacRorie Thuryn. They’re joined by Evan’s brother, Father Joram MacRorie, priest and knight of St. Michael, and Jebediah d’Alcara, Grand Master of the Order of St. Michael, For all Jeb wasn’t a farmer, he knew to go to St. Neot’s Abbey and get some fresh-baked bread, to mark Lammas.
If you’ve been to a Catholic christening, you know the basics of the ceremony. Usually held after Mass, everyone gathers around the church’s baptismal font. These nobles gather in a ritual chamber in Rhys and Evaine’s manor home. Being Deryni, the Christian comes together with the magickal. The room is warded, and Jeb “calls the quarters” using an older form he learned from his father. Here’s the first of the four quarter calls:
All Honor to St. Raphael, Physician-Healer, Lord of Wind and Tempest, Prince of Air, Thou Eastern Warder! Here stand thy servants, Rhys and Evaine, to dedicate their son, a Healer-born!
The others continue the Call, following Jeb’s lead. It’s a joyous way to invite the Archangels into the ritual. While this ritual follows a Christian framework, it’s wouldn’t be hard to adapt it to a Wiccan/Pagan working. My first instinct is to convert some or all of the four Archangels to feminine forms, maybe Raphaella and Michaela?
So, the story is about Deryni Healers and bringing a new generation of magick-workers into a tense world. That Kurtz chose Lammas for the setting works. It’s a positive, happy time of year.
by edward | Jul 27, 2023 | Personal Log
Below is a sneak peek of this content!
Updates and things. Personal Log 20230726 Distractions! Well, partly. The other part is that I tend to use my Chromebook to write on this website, and other work had me working on the "real" laptop. Yeah, I know, that sounds lame, but hey, it's one of those things. So, the bag with the Chromebook sat as I used the Ubuntu laptop, and Personal Log 20230726 had to wait. Trivial Tacos One of the reasons this smaller laptop stayed in the bag was the romance novel, Trivial Tacos. My authoring software, Scrivener, requires Windows or MacOS. So, that means I have to run it in a virtual machine. That's not exactly something the Chromebook can handle. There are times when I...
by edward | Jul 5, 2023 | Personal Log
Below is a sneak peek of this content!
Stuff happening in Personal log for Wednesday, 5-July-2023. Personal Log 20230725 Can sum up things this week simply: things are happening, nothing overwhelming, but still, well, stuff I would rather not be happening. Family medical situations aren't going away. While these aren't my stories to tell, they still have an impact. The Crescent #20 just passed by here at the coffee shop. The trains provide continuity. Things keep rolling along. Distractions I blew up my Mastodon accounts on mstdn.party. They were sort of starter accounts, experimental. Now that I've sorted out what I want to do on Mastodon, I started my own instance. So far so good, but it takes patience. Since Mastodon is "federated," it takes time for other...
by edward | Jul 4, 2023 | Social Media
It’s time for restructuring Mastodon with new accounts.
Restructuring Mastodon
Back when Musk was forced to actually complete the Twitter sale, the kvetching over the future of the bird app was extreme. Lots of folks ran to various alternative platforms, such as Post and Mastodon. I chose Mastodon, and set up a couple of accounts as fall-back positions.
When it became clear that Da Twittah wasn’t immediately imploding, folks disengaged from the grand exodus. Da Twittah returned to its sort-of usual self. While there were some folks, particularly prolific political users, left for Mastodon, inertia kicked in. Count me in on that. Friends stayed, the teevee and other journalists stayed, and most importantly, the weather people stayed. (And in New Orleans, those weather people are important.)
Toot neglect
So, tooting (what one does on Mastodon, as opposed to tweeting) fizzled for me. I even investigated various mobile apps, in the hopes that a cool UI would bring me around. No luck. Some of this is on me, because I followed too many political types too quickly. There’s a lot of anger out there. While I may agree with most of what someone writes, negativity can be overwhelming. The other thing that became problematic was local folks who followed my history account. I followed them back, but many of them were all-politics-all-the-time.
Fixing the toots
I knew there had to be a way to make the elephants work properly. The best approach for me was to start over. This included starting my own Mastodon instance, nolabooks.social. I set up a basic hosting account and created a few users. They are (so far):
- @edwardbranley@nolabooks.social – no real activity yet. This will be the books/booksta/bookwyrm account
- @nolahistoryguy@nolabooks.social – Da History Stuff. my @nolahistoryguy on Da Twittah is a hot mess. I intend for this account to be more concise.
- @yatpundit@nolabooks.social – My @yatpundit account on the bird app was my first. I use it now for non-New Orleans political stuff and Arsenal FC banter. That continues with the toots.
Ongoing stuff
While I set nolabooks.social on a hosting site, I plan to set up an instance in my home office. I’ve got a spare PC and a Raspberry Pi 4 to play with. Weill keep you posted on that on the Linux blog.
