Burning Man Festival

Held in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, this is an annual neo-pagan festival recreating an ancient Pagan festival At the culmination of the festival a giant wooden man with outstretched arms is burned by the crowd.

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FESTIVALS: times for Pagan and Witch celebrations; high holidays and cross-quarter days.

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festival: A time of religious celebration and special observances. Festivals generally recur yearly, their dates varying slightly according to astrological calculations. They are characterized by acts of piety (elaborate pujas, penance, fasting, pilgrimage) and rejoicing (songs, dance, music, parades, storytelling and scriptural reading).

See: sound, teradi.

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SPRING EQUINOX FESTIVAL: Alban Elfed, Eostar Sabbat, Also see GWYL GWENWYNOL.

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Karam (Sanskrit). A great festival in honour of the Sun-Spirit with the Kolarian tribes.

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Dioscuri (Ancient Greek). The name of Castor and Pollux, the sons of Jupiter and Leda. Their festival, the Dioscuria, was celebrated with much rejoicing by the Lacedemonians.

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Anthesteria (Ancient Greek). The feast of Flowers (Floralia): during this festival the rite of Baptism or purification was performed in the Eleusinian Mysteries in the temple lakes, the Limnae, when the

Myste were made to pass through the "narrow gate" of Dionysus, to emerge therefrom as full Initiates.

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Agape (Ancient Greek). Love Feasts; the early Christians kept such festivals in token of sympathy, love and mutual benevolence. It became necessary to abolish them as an institution, because of great abuse ; Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians complains of misconduct at the feasts of the Christians. .

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Septerium (Latin) A great religious festival held in days of old every ninth year at Delphi, in honour of Helios, the Sun, or Apollo, to commemorate his triumph over darkness, or Python; Apollo-Python being the same as Osiris-Typhon in Egypt.

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Dionysia Festivals sacred to Dionysos, especially those held in Attica and Attic-Ionic settlements. The inferior Dionysia were celebrated in December in country places where the vine was grown; the greater, in Athens for six days at the spring equinox.

At this festival the new plays were performed for three consecutive days before immense number of citizens and strangers. The Lenaea (festival of vats) in February-March, the Oschophoria in October-November, and the Anthesteria for three days in February-March were also part of the Athenian cycle of Dionysia. The Dionysiac or Bacchic Mysteries became peculiarly liable to corruption in later times, owing to literal interpretation of the symbolism and the substitution of psychospiritual excitement for pure spiritual inspiration.

(See also: Dionysia, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Karneios (Greek) Carneus (Latin) Title of Apollo; like Krishna, who is also mystically an imbodiment of a solar spiritual force, this deity refers to mystical matters connected with the sun and its spiritual effluvia radiating throughout the solar system. Apollo Karneios was celebrated at Sparta in the great festival of the Karneia, held during nine days of the Attic month Metageitnion (August).

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Pancha Ganapati Utsava: (Sanskrit) "Five-fold Ganapati festival." A modern five-day festival observed from the 21st through 25th of December. Pancha (five) denotes Ganesha's five faces, each representing a specific power (shakti). One face is worshiped each day, creating

1)   harmony in the home,

2)   concord among relatives, neighbors and friends,

3)   good business and public relations,

4)   cultural upliftment and

5)    heartfelt charity and religiousness.

The festival, a favorite among children, was conceived in 1985 by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami along with elders of various Hindu sects. It is a time of sharing gifts, renewing ties of family and friendship while focusing inwardly on this great God of abundance.

See: Ganesha.

(See also: Pancha Ganapati Utsava, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Rasa (Sanskrit). The mystery-dance performed by Krishna and his Gopis, the shepherdesses, represented in a yearly festival to this day, especially in Rajastan. Astronomically it is Krishna - the Sun - around whom circle the planets and the signs of the Zodiac symbolised by the Gopis. The same as the "circle-dance" of the Amazons around the priapic image, and the dance of the daughters of Shiloh (Judges xxi.), and that of King David around the ark. (See Isis Unveiled, II., pp. 45, 331 and 332.)

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Lupercalia (Latin). Magnificent popular festivals celebrated in ancient Rome on February 15th in honour of the God Pan, during which the Luperci, the most ancient and respectable among the sacerdotal functionaries, sacrificed two goats and a dog, and two of the most illustrious youths were compelled to run about the city naked (except the loins) whipping all those whom they met. Pope Gelasius abolished the Lupercalia in 496, but substituted for them on the same day the procession of lighted candles.

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Priestesses. Every ancient religion had its priestesses in the temples. In Egypt they were called the Sa and served the altar of Isis and in the temples of other goddesses.

Canephorœ was the name given by the Greeks to those consecrated priestesses who bore the baskets of the gods during the public festivals of the Eleusinian Mysteries. There were female prophets in Israel as in Egypt, diviners of dreams and oracles; and Herodotus mentions the Hierodules, the virgins or nuns dedicated to the Theban Jove, who were generally the Pharaohs’ daughters and other Princesses of the Royal House. Orientalists speak of the wife of Cephrenes, the builder of the so-called second Pyramid, who was a priestess of Thoth.

(See "Nuns".)

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Jagan-Natha (Sanskrit). Lit., "Lord of the World", a title of Vishnu. The great image of Jagan-natha on its car, commonly pronounced and spelt Jagernath. The idol is that of Vishnu Krishna. Puri, near the town of Cuttack in Orissa, is the great seat of its worship; and twice a year an immense number of pilgrims attend the festivals of the Snana yatra and Ratha-atra During the first, the image is bathed, and during the second it is placed on a car, between the images of Balarama the brother, and Subhadra the sister of Krishna and the huge vehicle is drawn by the devotees, who deem it felicity to be crushed to death under it.

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Ullambana (Mongolian) [from Sanskrit ud up, completion + the verbal root labh to reach, attain]

Attainment or recovery of spiritual status; the festival of all souls, "held in China on the seventh moon annually, when both 'Buddhist and Tauist priests read masses, to release the souls of those who died on land or sea from purgatory, scatter rice to feed Pretas [thirty-six classes of demons ever hungry and thirsty], consecrate domestic ancestral shrines, . . . recite Tantras . . . accompanied by magic finger-play (mudra) to comfort the ancestral spirits of seven generations in Naraka' (a kind of purgatory or Kama Loka)" (TG 351).

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Regeneration [from Latin re again + generare to beget]

Renewal, regrowth, spiritual rebirth; as rebirth follows upon death, regeneration follows upon destruction, hence it implies immortality. It is one meaning of the serpent or dragon symbol. The Holy of Holies of the Hebrews, and the King's Chamber in the Egyptian pyramid of Cheops, were symbols of regeneration with the ancients, but in certain materializing interpretations became transformed into symbols of generation. Siva in the Hindu Trimurti, sometimes described as representing destruction, is better called the regenerator. The end of one cycle is the birth of another, as typified in the rebirth of the year, the festival of Easter, etc.

Regeneration is also often used in those cases where the lower through inner regeneration becomes transformed into the higher.

(See also: Regeneration, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Ark of Isis. At the great Egyptian annual ceremony, which took place in the month of Athyr, the boat of Isis was borne in procession by the priests, and Collyrian cakes or buns, marked with the sign of the cross (Tat), were eaten.

This was in commemoration of the weeping of Isis for the loss of Osiris, the Athyr festival being very impressive. "Plato refers to the melodies on the occasion as being very ancient," writes Mr. Bonwick (Eg. Belief and Mod. Thought). " The Miserere in Rome has been said to be similar to its melancholy cadence, and to be derived from it Weeping, veiled virgins followed the ark. The Nornes, or veiled virgins, wept also for the loss of our Saxon forefathers’ god, the ill-fated but good Baldur."

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Witches’ Sabbath. The supposed festival and gathering of witches in some lonely spot, where the witches were accused of conferring directly with the Devil. Every race and people believed in it, and some believe in it still. Thus the chief headquarters and place of meeting of all the witches in Russia is said to be the Bald Mountain (Lyssaya Gora), near Kief, and in Germany the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains. In old Boston, U.S.A., they met near the "Devil’s Pond ", in a large forest which has now disappeared. At Salem, they were put to death almost at the will of the Church Elders, and in South Carolina a witch was burnt as late as 1865. In Germany and England they were murdered by Church and State in thousands, being forced to lie and confess under torture their participation in the " Witches’ Sabbath ".

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