Customer Reviews

Stations of the Sun

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a great source for information about British customs and lore. Hutton is excited about his subject and holds it in deep regard all the wile telling us the way it really is. I learned a lot from this book and I consider it essential reading for everyone (especially neo-pagans) who has an interest in this subject.

As a neo-pagan I wouldn't want to have this vast subject explained to me in one sentence - I want examples as to why a certain custom or seasonal festival is important/necessary in the wheel of the year. Ialso want sources states because if someone were to just say to me "Everything you have read about British seasonal customs is wrong" I would say, "Prove it". Hutton indeed takes the time to prove his arguments.

Hutton isn't against neo-pagans, but he is _for_ scholarship.

This book is not for a casual reader. It is, instead, a compendium of primary source information for those curious about the calendar year in Britain. It's fascinating scholarship and absolutely authoratative in its research, but not for "just reading"! At some points, the paragraphs are so thick with citations and details that my eyes began to gloss. In general, though, the prose remains readable, even when detailing minutia.

I do want to address one criticism from an earlier reviewer, who said this about the book:

"Hutton debunks everything he presents; after a while it kind of got on my nerves. Virtually every description and explanation is followed by some sort of 'but this probably didn't happen' or 'this probably wasn't really the way it was' disclaimer. fter reading several chapters, my attitude morphed into 'why are you wasting my time telling me about stuff that didn't happen? Can't you tell me about anything that probably DID happen?'"

I'm not sure if this reviewer and I were reading the same book. Yes, Hutton debunks many myths surrounding these customs, but to say that he provides no information on what DID happen, or how it happened, is bunk. The book is thick with information, a real brick of scholarship. There are ten chapters alone on the evidence of various Christmas and New years traditions!

Those with a serious interest in the development of many Western calendar customs in Britain (many of which are also the ultimate root of our American traditions) should definitely add this boo to their collections.

A very scholarly work on the origins and customs surrounding the holidays in Britain. This book has been a bit of a "tough read" for me as I worked through the dry parts of interest to folklorists between the parts of interest to genealogists. As an American, I had to have Guy Fawkes Night explained to me. As a genealogist working with UK sources, it's nice to understand what Rogationtide and Candlemas are, for instance.

In general, the book attempts to overturn the classical folklorist mistakes in the sources and symbolism of holidays dating back to Sir James Frazer's Golden Bough. Not every custom and tradition is a direct descendant of Celtic religious rites. Humanity has been very adaptable to inventing new "old traditions" as the need arises and our earlier ancestors where just as good at fulfilling these needs as were the Victorians who invented our concept of an "old fashioned Christmas".

This is probably the most accurate and well-researched book on the history of the ritual year in Britain that you could hope to read. It is also well-written, fascinating, and full of source material for further thought and study. It examines the origins and development of major festivals, and dispels a few myths along the way. It has a wealth of detail without becoming bogged down in it, and the prose is often lyrical. Highly recommended.

This is far and away the best book on the subject! Meticulously researched, I give it my highest recommendation -- especially for Neo-Pagans. It's a wonderful antidote for the misinformation so common in pop histories.

It has become a widespread notion that most of our holiday traditions derive from pagan sources. Not so, Hutton demonstrates. Ironically, it may be that Christmas is far more of a "pagan" holiday than Halloween!

Hope this great book comes back into print here. It's wordy, but I always appreciate the detail and background he provides. It's out of print here, it's still in print in the UK, so I got it from there.

Professor Hutton is a well-spring of information about pagan history. I don't think there is anything he doesn't know! If you really want to learn more about how certain practices came about, you definitely need this book. He's also an excellent speaker!

As a dozen good reviews could not begin to provide a fair account of this book, I shall offer a few key points which caught my attention as introduction only.

At the outset I had hoped for a more 'traditionally' pagan account of the ancient seasonal festivals, their origins and meanings.
I was initially surprised and eventually delighted to find however that although this work is more of an Academic compote of facts and dates and included ongoing assessment of earlier authors often unfounded but sometimes inspirational conjecture than I had anticipated (of Sir Gordon Frazer et al) nevertheless this is a very enjoyable, remarkably researched and admirably objective book-collection of essays.

That much of this morass concerns the developments and impacts of constantly changing traditions due to Christian Reformation and Counter Reformation (certainly comedic at this distance in time), the ongoing process a seminal crucible (reminding me of both grail and cauldron) proved revealing, as the general view of folk traditions and their origins seems to usually favor the more arcane sources, this book by contrast documents only definite evidence, largely that of written records, of church, kirk and council across the land.

With a nod to the Scandinavian Yuil, as well as the Roman Kalendae, we embark on an exploration of the traditions of Christmastide, the Twelve Days, the Rites of Celebration, Purification and of Charity which included the remarkable Clementing, Elementing and Souling, even Thomasing, Gooding, Mumping and Corning (as well as more)regional begging customs, by which means the poor would recant rhymes for contribution of food for a feast of their own.
Similar socially accepted appeals for reward included the Hocktide 'heaving' or 'lifting' at Easter, in which gangs of men assaulted women for favor and groups of women also pursue and caught men of their fancy for same, at its best a raising up on a lifted chair of a person as proxy 'Lord' to commemorate the Holy ascent of Easter, the chosen surrogate released upon a reward of money or a kiss, at its worst a mere grasping by hands and throwing upwards as an occasion for assault and robbery.
The ongoing exposition of numerous social customs of this kind, both dazzle the mind with its quantity, as well as provides a clear insight into how poverty was communally accepted, dealt with by innovative appeals to the community at large and that these were often 'sanctioned' by inclusion of some short Christian phrase in the introductory verse or chant.

The author traces the development of such customs and portrays their eventual descent into more high spirited, reckless and even angry demands for assistance that could be met with threats and violence if not accepted.
Once national schools were established and later a more centralized protection for the poor was introduced, such earlier community traditions dissipated further, demonstrating the authors argument throughout this book of the movement from a community sharing seasonal rituals and traditions including those aspects of display that were geared to earn rewards, to the de-socialization of such community into a society characterized by its more insular and private approach to seasons and their festivals or traditions.

The Christianization of earlier traditions also has its place in this book, as for example the feast marking the end of winter and start of the summer months ahead at February 1st, Imbolc (the etymology of its name relating to ewes milk and thus new life) initially dedicated to the Irish goddess Brigid, but who was later morphed into the Christian St Bride, a Saint without a former basis in ecclesiastical history.
This is an important theme of both this book and of the mythological psycho-social developments of these Isles. Most surprisingly the often claimed genesis or inception of many Christian traditions in the pre Christian, infact seems to have increasingly worked in reverse. As religious conflicts in the land over changing orthodoxies developed, the Catholic tradition with its wealth of near magical rituals was vigorously being uprooted from the public and community sphere of practice by the ascent of the puritan Protestant, the ensuing personal spiritual void resulted in many cases in the earlier magical Catholic rituals being carried on privately at home and eventually (d)evolving into allegedly ancient 'survivalist' 'folk-traditions'. Conversely, some of the Christianized traditions do appear to have had earlier sources such as the Rogationtide and Pentecost processions, at which time the people marched en mass around the crop fields, singing hymns at chosen stop points as the church ministers blessed the crops.

The book does feature ancient tradition where evidence has supported this, such as for example the affirmation of the Beltane as an accepted fire festival in certain regions of Northern Europe and the outlaying regions of the British Isles (unlike the later Samhain, for which evidence of a major 'Celtic' fire festival is less apparent). With greater detail due to the weight of evidence available however, Hutton explores the cultural progress towards our more modern current perspectives, for example plotting the development of the 'May' (which unsurprisingly did have ancient antecedents in the delight of Spring returned) as people initially adorned self and home with garlands and greenery, which in time became a tradition of young women selling garlands, later children took over this role, and in their turn both to manage the unruly and the revenue these were eventually taken over by schools and local institutions. By contrast, the Mummers Plays with their essentially Christian derived themes of battle, death and resurrection, were more officially sanctioned groups from the outset and their development into grand organized processions had less to do with earlier pre Christian traditions.

Despite growing religious and institutional involvement in previously communal activities and traditions, the populace applied themselves with great enthusiasm to any occasion of social bonding, often at some cost to the societies they lived in (other than merely of money or means) such as the many community Maypoles stolen by rival villages and towns resulting in pitched battles between the two, the anarchic Saturnalia of Misrule as witnessed at the Shrovetide street 'foot-ball' games played across whole towns which could involve thousands of people and provided an occasion for licensed misrule resulting in damage to property and individual (although less violent than the serious riot and rebellion which was reserved for the Summer games as a time more suited for battle on the streets or field). The Church Ales or festivals also developed their Abbots of Unreason and a myriad practices of inversion and nonsense (Samuel Butler now we know where your inspiration came from).
Charting how an apparently arcane 'folk tradition' once also considered a surviving pagan fertility rite had originated in high social circles of the Royal Courts and devolved into the rural communities, Hutton's' research into the Morris dancers is fascinating for its explanation of how we may manufacture new ancient traditions out of nowhere.

Perhaps my favorite exposition in this work is that of the origins and evolution of The Jack in the Green, identified as a 'survival' of an ancient pagan fertility rite by the Frazerite Lady Raglan of the Folklore society in 1939, established on her view linking the dancing Green-Man in May day processions with the foliage faces on church walls. This was a lineage unresolved till 1979 Roy Judges study revealed the true origins to be somewhat less arcane, and linked them to a more traditional social ritual evolved as so many traditional customs of display were, to celebrate the new season with a display deigned to garner reward. To explain, during the17thC, London milkmaids danced the streets on May Day with their pails covered in flowers which symbolized the Springs new growth and so presented the promise of new grass for the cattle thus promising fresh milk, cream and butter. These displays earned them money as reward and therefore can be seen to serve a double purpose, of advertising their wares, as well a gathering much needed financial support after a lengthy winter without much income. They later left the pails for lighter wooden frames similarly covered in flowers and greenery, and later still were imitated in their greenery attired frames and street dancing display by the London Chimney sweeps whose claim for sympathy at this time was based on the end of winter cold meaning no more fires or work for them till next fall.

Hutton surmises this work with a number of provocative and insightful observations, for example that the notion of a distinctive 'Celtic' ritual year with four festivals at the quarter days and an opening at Samhain, is a scholastic construction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which should now be considerably revised or even abandoned altogether.
Whilst the debt to a medieval, magical Catholicism seems to be growing apparent in my reading of serious studies of the origin of neo-pagan traditions, Hutton's final words over the changing Christian influence upon the traditional festivals of the year are revelatory.
He establishes that soon as the system of salvation through ritual was scrapped at the Reformation, the merry making began to be regarded as a liability by the social and religious elites....thus the ''evolution of a religious ideology ...(had) produced a society imbued with a general taste for ceremony and acted as a means to endorsement of secular festivity. In other words, Merry England was inspired by the fires of hell''
Finally that 'the rhythms of the British year are timeless and impose certain patterns on the calendar customs', to celebrate spring, to make merry in summer and draw close at fall, despite government and mass media atomization of community, seems a fair conclusion. Overall this book suggests to me that whilst certain traditions may not have an established ancient provenance, nevertheless because people are increasingly applying such meanings to the seasons cycles as an inherent pagan response to nature itself, we may now be seeing a further reversal of the community oriented neglect of seasonal festivals and a resurgence of a more nature based community oriented society at large.

Not a book for the exclusively poetic or methodologically minded, but if read in the objective manner with which it is presented, this book provides a wealth of insight and understanding into the seasonal festivities as they have evolved in these British Isles and the influence they bear on modern pagan perspectives, Recommended.

The title of this book is very ambitious... and hints at a point of view, or style, maybe that the author doesn't really have.

Hutton's intent is to show how good a scholar he is. And because of that, my disappointment with this book is that there isn't any pre-Christian history in it, and most of the history documented here is since the printing press. Hutton WILL NOT vouch for ANY information that has not been written down, preferably in official records. For such a "careful historian," if a (pagan) culture had no written record, then it can not be said to have existed.

He ignores every glyph, every mural, every mound. He is careful to emphasize that he uses documented, historical records. ("There is simply no evidence to support that the Maypole was a fertility symbol.") His facts are taken from official government documents, church documents, folk songs, and correspondence of the literary and well-to-do.

He dishes up hundreds of so-documented facts, but somehow the forest is lost, for the trees. There is no description of rituals from the pre-Christian era, just blankness and silence, because there was nothing "officially documented." He will tell you for example what the Morris dancer costumes were like in the sixteen hundreds, because they were written down; but he does not hazard to say what the significance of their adornments were, and nothing about what people wore before then. By the 1600s Christianity had well spread and some of these old rituals were already adaptations or even satires of what they were. So by picking it up later he misses a lot.

A quote from Chapter 22: "Thus far in the present book two themes must be uncomfortably obvious. One is the almost total absence of concrete evidence concerning pre-Christian seasonal rituals in the British Isles." Notice he says "evidence." If you want pagan history described, even an attempt at description, read a different book.

There are mentioned in passing many interesting leads and terms one can follow up further in other books or online. So I ended up finding things in here I researched elsewhere. I couldn't finish the book.