Folklore & the revival of nature
-title in progress-

B O O K S R E A D

- Walter Evans-Wentz - The fairy-faith in Celtic countries
An early 20th century account of the fairy faith in the Celtic regions (Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man and Brittany). A collection of tales retreived from the local population.

- Cois Geysen - De Oude Wijsheid
A collection of Dutch and Belgian folktales, traditions and pre-Christian holy locations per province.

- Collected Works - W.B. Yeats
All W.B. Yeat's poems.

- Russische Volksmärchen
A children's book with Russian fairytales.

- Several other books which contain myths, legends and folktales ranging from Ireland to Russia

How mythology has been used since the Industrial Revolution. (I lost track of all the sources to be honest)

Romantic Era
- Pre-raphaelite interest in mythology (especially Arthurian legends)
- New reverence for nature
- Nationalism (and regionalism)
- Visible through the arts:

Turn of the 20th Century
- WB Yeats & the Irish Literary Revival

Fascism
- Himmler's interest for mysticism & symbolism
- Use of old Germanic symbols & rituals in Nazi Germany (Neo-Pagan Doctrine)

Neo-Paganism in the Late 20th Century
- Satanic Panic
- Rise of Wicca and other modern pagan movements

NEO PAGAN MOVEMENTS

Early movements
Neo-druids celebrating at Stonehenge.

Pre-World War II neopagan or proto-neopagan groups, growing out of occultism and/or Romanticism (Mediterranean revival, Viking revival, Celtic revival, etc.).

Neo-druidism
Ancient Order of Druids (1781)
The Druid Order (1909)
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888)
Crowleyan Thelema (1904)
Germanic neopaganism/Armanism
Germanische Glaubens-Gemeinschaft (1907)
Guido von List Society (1908)
Church of the Universal Bond (1912)
Adonism (1925)

Witchcraft
Main articles: Wicca and Contemporary witchcraft
See also: Category: Wiccan traditions

Wicca originated in 1940s Britain and became the mainstream of Neopaganism in the United States in the 1970s. There are two core traditions of Wicca which originated in Britain, Gardnerian and Alexandrian, which are sometimes referred to as British Traditional Wicca. From these two arose several other variant traditions. Wicca has also inspired a great number of other witchcraft traditions in Britain, Europe and the United States, most of which base their beliefs and practices on Wicca. Many movements are influenced by the Movement of the Goddess, and New Age and feminist worldviews.
Wicca
A Wiccan ritual altar.

British Traditional Wicca
Gardnerian Wicca (1954)
Alexandrian Wicca (1967)
Central Valley Wicca (1969)
Algard Wicca (1972)
Chthonioi Alexandrian Wicca (1974)
Blue Star Wicca (1975)
Eclectic Wicca and Inclusive Wicca
Celtic Wicca
Saxon Wicca
Dianic Wicca
McFarland Dianic Wicca
Faery Wicca
Georgian Wicca
Odyssean Wicca
Wiccan church
New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn (1968)
Church and School of Wicca (1968)
Circle Sanctuary (1974)
Covenant of the Goddess (1975)
Aquarian Tabernacle Church (1979)
Rowan Tree Church (1979)
Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (1985)
Coven of the Far Flung Net (1998)

Other

Stregheria (Italian tradition)
Hedge Witchcraft
Cochrane's Craft
Feri Tradition
Children of Artemis

New Age, eclectic or syncretic

Reclaiming
Feraferia
Church of All Worlds
Church of Aphrodite
Christian Wicca
Radical Faeries

Ethnic
Further information: Polytheistic reconstructionism

European Congress of Ethnic Religions

Germanic
Winternights sacrifice at Öskjuhlíð, in Reykjavík.
Main articles: Germanic neopaganism and Heathenry (new religious movement)
Further information: Forn Siðr and Ásatrú

Heathenism (also Heathenry, or Greater Heathenry), is a blanket term for the whole Germanic Neopagan movement. Various currents and denominations have arisen over the years within it.

English-speaking world
Heathenry in the United States
Asatru Free Assembly (Stephen McNallen, 1974–1986)
Ásatrú Alliance (1987)
Ring of Troth (1987)
Asatru Folk Assembly (1996)
Odinism
Odinist Fellowship (United States) (Else Christensen, 1971–2005)
Odinic Rite (1973)
Odinist Fellowship (United Kingdom) (1988)
International Asatru-Odinic Alliance (1997–2002)
Theodism (American tribalist movements)
Scandinavia
Íslenska Ásatrúarfélagið (1972)
Foreningen Forn Sed (1999)
Samfälligheten för Nordisk Sed (1999)
Swedish Asatru Assembly (1994)
Åsatrufellesskapet Bifrost (1996)
German-speaking Europe
Eldaring (2000)
Latin-speaking Europe
Odinist Community of Spain – Ásatrú (1981)
Russian-speaking world/Russia
Dark Ashtree community
Скидбладнир
Germanic mysticism (Armanism or Irminism/Irminenschaft/Ariosophy and Nordic racial paganism
Heidnische Gemeinschaft (1985)
Artgemeinschaft (1951)
Deutsche Heidnische Front (1998)
New Armanen-Orden
Odin Brotherhood
Wotansvolk

Celtic
The Druid Order Ceremony at Tower Hill, London on the Spring Equinox of 2010
Main article: Celtic neopaganism

Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism (1980s)
Neo-druidism or Neodruidry, or druidism or druidry
Dynion Mwyn (1950s/60s)
Reformed Druids of North America (1963)
Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (1964)
Monastic Order of Avallon (1970)
Ár nDraíocht Féin (1983)

Italic

Italo-Roman neopaganism or Religio Romana
Nova Roma
Roman Traditional Movement

Slavic
The community of the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities celebrating Mokosh, Russia.
Main article: Slavic Native Faith

Rodnovery (Native Faith) (1934 or 1921)
Native Ukrainian National Faith, RUNVira (1964)
Union of the Veneds (1986)
Native Polish Church (1995)
Rodzima Wiara (1996)
Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities (1997)
Native Faith Association of Ukraine (1998)
Rodnover Confederation (2015)

Other European
Ritual at the Temple of Garni, in Armenia.
Members of the Lithuanian Romuva perform a ceremony in front of the Monument of Gediminas, in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Abkhaz neopaganism
Council of Priests of Abkhazia (2012)
Adyghe Habze
Armenian Native Faith (Hetanism)
Baltic neopaganism
Latvian neopaganism (Dievturi; 1925)
Lithuanian neopaganism (Romuva)
Old Prussian neopaganism (Druwi)
Hellenism
Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes (1997)
Hellenion (2002)
Uralic neopaganism
Estonian neopaganism (Taaraism and Maausk)
Maavalla Koda
Finnish neopaganism (Suomenism)
Hungarian neopaganism
Mari native religion
Mordvin native religion
Udmurt Vos
Zalmoxianism

Turkic-Mongolic
Tengrist temple of the Sülde Tngri in the town of Uxin Banner in Inner Mongolia, China.

Tengrism
Vattisen Yaly
Burkhanism

Canarian

Church of the Guanche People

Semitic

Semitic neopaganism

Kemetic

Kemetism
Ausar Auset
Kemetic Orthodoxy

Mesopotamian

Temple of Sumer[1]
Gateways to Babylon[2]

Mesoamerican

Mexicayotl

How can this be used in a way that benefits nature?

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S P E C U L A T I O N S

Creating some new movement? A revival of the Romantic movement?
Neo-neo-romanticism?
If that would be the case, some considerations:

SCALE?
How large should this movement be? Especially if it draws from local, regional or national folklore. Each area has its own stories.

HOW SHOULD IT SPREAD?
If it is to be a regional movement, but with the aim to reach several "unenchanted" parts of the world, how should it spread? Should it rather be a phenomenon than a movement?

THE DANGERS
How do we avoid the abuse of myth and folklore as happened in the Nazi movement? How do we keep it from becoming a match for superiority?

SEMANTICS
What existing terms should be used? Should new words be invented to describe the notions of this movement?

SEMIOTICS
Things have different meanings in different cultures. What colours and symbols should be used that create an association with the goal of the movement?

NOT GETTING LOST IN SPIRITUALISM, OCCULTISM & MYSTICISM

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WHAT WE KNOW

What is a nice movement without a manifesto? Though it is too early to write one because we have not thought of all the problems yet it is important to have a few fundamentalist notions or aims.

These are:
- Refinding reverence/awe/respect for nature through reenchantment.
- The tool of reenchantment being mythology and folklore.

Where do these ideas/words come from?

DISENCHANTMENT - WEBER

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DISENCHANTMENT, MISENCHANTMENT, REENCHANTMENT

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Cosmopolitics, anthropocene, Gaia

Isabelle Stengers - Thousand Names of Gaia

Donna Haraway, Noboru Ishikawa, Gilbert Scott, Kenneth Olwig, Anna L.Tsing & Nils Bubandt - Anthropologists Are Talking About the Anthropocene

Bruno Latour - We Have Never Been Modern

“'The only pure myth is the idea of a science devoid of all myth' . . . (Serres, 1974)”

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Inspiration for the
movement

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If we continue on the path of becoming a movement it is important to look at similar movements in the past, some of the movements mentioned earlier. What were their driving forces? How did their notions and ideas manifest in art & literature?

INSPIRATION

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Ode to a Nightingale
By John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

The Sick Rose
By William Blake

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

The Lady of Shalott (1832)
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Part I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
The yellow-leaved waterlily
The green-sheathed daffodilly
Tremble in the water chilly
Round about Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens shiver.
The sunbeam showers break and quiver
In the stream that runneth ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

Underneath the bearded barley,
The reaper, reaping late and early,
Hears her ever chanting cheerly,
Like an angel, singing clearly,
O'er the stream of Camelot.
Piling the sheaves in furrows airy,
Beneath the moon, the reaper weary
Listening whispers, ' 'Tis the fairy,
Lady of Shalott.'

The little isle is all inrail'd
With a rose-fence, and overtrail'd
With roses: by the marge unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken sail'd,
Skimming down to Camelot.
A pearl garland winds her head:
She leaneth on a velvet bed,
Full royally apparelled,
The Lady of Shalott.

Part II
No time hath she to sport and play:
A charmed web she weaves alway.
A curse is on her, if she stay
Her weaving, either night or day,
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be;
Therefore she weaveth steadily,
Therefore no other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

She lives with little joy or fear.
Over the water, running near,
The sheepbell tinkles in her ear.
Before her hangs a mirror clear,
Reflecting tower'd Camelot.
And as the mazy web she whirls,
She sees the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot:
And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, came from Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead
Came two young lovers lately wed;
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.

Part III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flam'd upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down from Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down from Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over green Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down from Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:'
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom
She made three paces thro' the room
She saw the water-flower bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Outside the isle a shallow boat
Beneath a willow lay afloat,
Below the carven stern she wrote,
The Lady of Shalott.

A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight,
All raimented in snowy white
That loosely flew (her zone in sight
Clasp'd with one blinding diamond bright)
Her wide eyes fix'd on Camelot,
Though the squally east-wind keenly
Blew, with folded arms serenely
By the water stood the queenly
Lady of Shalott.

With a steady stony glance—
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Beholding all his own mischance,
Mute, with a glassy countenance—
She look'd down to Camelot.
It was the closing of the day:
She loos'd the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

As when to sailors while they roam,
By creeks and outfalls far from home,
Rising and dropping with the foam,
From dying swans wild warblings come,
Blown shoreward; so to Camelot
Still as the boathead wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her chanting her deathsong,
The Lady of Shalott.

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy,
She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her eyes were darken'd wholly,
And her smooth face sharpen'd slowly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot:
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A pale, pale corpse she floated by,
Deadcold, between the houses high,
Dead into tower'd Camelot.
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
To the planked wharfage came:
Below the stern they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest,
Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.
There lay a parchment on her breast,
That puzzled more than all the rest,
The wellfed wits at Camelot.
'The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not,—this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.'