#cuups

[lokavisi]

I have a great story I completely forgot to share.

This past Sunday was my kindred's public blot to Odin. Our gothar asked if someone else would be willing to lead the ritual, as they had another event they wanted to go to in order to support a friend. Since I led the blot for Loki back in July, given their oath, it only seemed appropriate that I lead the blot for Odin, so I volunteered.

As we're waiting to folks to arrive, a couple comes with their 4-5 year-old daughter. Generally we don't see kids in attendance, but we're not going to turn them away, either. She recognized me from the CUUPS kids group, so she asked to sit next to me. I said yes, and she sat to my left. Her parents brought things so she could color and her mom raided the RE (religious education) cabinet the UU congregation has (we meet at the church) that's filled with fidget toys, so she was very much occupied.

So I give the opening spiel about blots to the newcomers, talk a bit about Odin (and explain that we have a little offering bowl for Loki per their oath of drink sharing), and we set sacred space. As everyone goes up to fill their drinks, the girl asks her mom what everyone's doing. Mom explained how we're getting drinks to toast Odin and that when we're done we're "going to share some of our drinks with Odin and Loki." This child, in the cutest and most earnest way, says: "I don't wanna share my drink with them." Something about them being absolutely rejected by a small child was so funny to me. 🤣

As the "leader" of the ritual, I gave the first toast. We go around the circle clockwise, so I asked this girl if she wanted to say, "Hail Odin," but she didn't so we moved right along to mom and dad. After a few more people, she started saying, "Hail!" when everyone else did after each toast. So when we made it all the way around the circle, before closing it out I asked her again if she wanted to say, "Hail Odin." This girl sits up, says, "Hi everybody," like she's about to give a speech, says a few things I couldn't understand because fast child speak, but then she said something about, "because he's an old man." Like the fact that Odin is an old man is why we're toasting him lol. Mom got her to say, "hail Odin," before she rambled too much, but her being so ready speak was so precious. Like she got into it the more she saw.

After we finished up she was walking around the room and talking to folks, and then she comes up to me and says, "Look what I found!" It was a small evil eye bead. She found an eye. At an Odin blot. 😆 And one for protection, at that. I think it was Odin saying he sees her and is looking out for her, that he appreciated her presence there.

It was such a delight to have this little ball of energy present. It made me think about writing a shorter kid-friendly liturgy for a blot. If enough folks wanted to bring their kids and it became too much to have them all there, I would love to take the kids to another space and do a kids sumbel. (Admittedly I'd kind of prefer we let everyone stay in the same space, but I still think writing a kids liturgy would be fun, regardless. Wouldn't hurt to have it in our back pocket!)

Anyway, it was just a joyful experience in Heathenry that I wanted to share.

Edit: I just learned from her mother that she leaves things for Odin on their altar at home. She talks to him all the time and calls him Uncle Odin. <3

[coyote-sings]

Recently my husband and I have joined a Unitarian Universalist church, and it's been extremely welcoming. They're in the beginning stages of forming a Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans for anyone in the congregation who wants to participate, and being able to help in that is so exciting! We're putting together a Winter Solstice gathering for the 20th, and I've volunteered to bring cookies and a savory dish. Two members are leading a druidic ritual for us, and a few others are going to lead crafting like pomadors, garlands and stuff to put on an altar.

[unseeliej]

Beltane with Frederick CUUPs

This past Saturday, my Handsome Assistant and I went to celebrate the first of the fire festivals with the Congregation of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. It was a bit rainy, so outdoor bonfires were out, but they managed to make even an indoor-only Beltane a ton of fun! There was lots of food, drumming, dancing, and a maypole. When we arrived, we were asked to write a message on two pieces of…

[lokavisi]

👆👆👆👆👆

In the West, we're super aware of shitty Christians because it's the dominant religion, and they're super loud. People like myself left the Church and migrated to paganism because of that, so it's very easy to deflect like that. But y'all... every group has problems. Because people suck. This isn't limited to any one religious group, and we need to start acting like it. Heathenry is rife with white supremacy. It's why when I started feeling drawn to this pantheon, my BIPOC friend told me to watch out for certain groups lest I fall victim to their pipeline. And we are *all* susceptible to that no matter how non-racist we think we are. My kindred is always vocal that we are inclusive, put rainbows all over our shit (we are a majority queer group), and very openly hail Loki so that no white supremacist that may try to infiltrate our public rituals feels welcome. (In fact, Loki is one of the gods we always evoke at the beginning of all of our rituals.) I can't speak as much to other branches of paganism. I know my local CUUPS chapter has had to deal with microaggressions of all kinds, and UU is known for having a very liberal religion. (Though at least this church generally recognizes the distinct overabundance of white folks in the congregation and is trying to be more mindful of messaging and appropriation.)

The point is, we all have to own up to the truth and actually do the work to be better. I know I may not be perfect and have made mistakes, but that isn't going to stop me from trying. We have no excuses not to, especially us white people.

Frankly, it's starting to occur to me that, every time when a "white supremacy is a big problem among modern pagan communities" post is met with "oh but the horrible Christians though", the fact that y'all only pretend to care about BIPOC when it suits you is showing.

[unes23]

Edita Vilkeviciute for Cuup SS23

[editavilkeviciute]

EDITA VILKEVICIUTE FOR DANCE PARTY BY CUUP.

[archivesrowe]

[puffycloud2]

less play futbol

[trubilee]

alternating between fabulous new bra and panty sprees, recommended new foundation sprees, ludicrously priced facial cream review reads and rereads and rereads, and watching minimalist budget living videos.

[101now]

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[ukfrislandembassy]

Ok like nobody seems to have noticed but Juliette Blevins has recently put out a case that Great Andamanese might actually have been Austroasiatic all along (to complement Jarawan possibly being an Austronesian relative). There's some stuff that's certainly suggestive, but it'll be a bit more work needed before I'm ready to accept these 32 proposed correspondences as anything more than chance, particularly after the Indo-Vasconic debacle. Still, below the cut I'm going to try and give this a fair review.

All of this is from 'Linguistic clues to Andamanese pre-history: Understanding the North-South divide', in The Language of Hunter Gatherers, edited by Tom Güldemann, Patrick McConvell and Richard Rhodes and published in 2020 (a free version of the chapter can be found on Google Scholar).

Looking through the data, it actually seems relatively rigorous as a set of comparisons; she's done a shallow reconstruction of a Proto-Great-Andamanese from wordlists (seemingly a relatively trivial exercise, though with caveats noted below) and is seemingly comparing these to reconstructions from the Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary.

Many of the correspondences are basically identical between the two reconstructions with at most minimal semantic differences, e.g. (in the order PGA~PAA respectively) *buə 'clay' ~ *buəh 'ash, powdery dust'; *muən 'pus, dirt' ~ *muən 'pimple'; *cuər 'current, flow' ~ *cuər 'flow, pour'; *cuəp 'fasten, adjoin' ~ *bcuup/bcuəp 'adjoin, adhere'. However, I wonder if the Proto-GA reconstructions here have been massaged a bit to fit the Austroasiatic correspondence more closely; in Aka-Kede for example, each of these words shows a different vowel; pua, mine, cor(ie), cup. It's not fatal by any means (in fact if the correspondences could be shown to be more complex than simple identity that would actually help the argument), but definitely annoying.

There's a couple of PGA items which are presented as having a straightforward sound correpondence in PAA where the semantics is close but doesn't quite match, but also alongside a semantic match that differs slightly in sound, e.g. by a slightly different initial consonant, e.g. *raic 'bale out' ~ *raac 'sprinkle' /*saac 'bale out'; *pila 'tusk, tooth' ~ *plaaʔ 'blade'/*mlaʔ 'tusk, ivory'; *luk 'channel' ~ *ru(u)ŋ 'channel'/*lu(u)k 'have a hole'. I think there's possibly a plausible development here, with perhaps one form taking on the other's semantics because of taboo, or maybe due to an actual semantic shift (she notes that the Andamanese use boar tusks as scrapers, which could explain a 'blade'~'tusk' correspondence in itself).

There's an item which seems dubious on the PAA side, e.g. she proposes a correspondence *wət ~ *wət for 'bat, flying fox' but I can't find a *wət reconstructed anywhere in the MKCD with that meaning, not even in Bahnaric where she claims it comes from (there is a *wət reconstructed but with a meaning 'turn, bend'). Meanwhile, *kut 'fishing net' ~ *kuut 'tie, knot' seems wrong at first, as search for *kuut by itself only brings up a reconstruction *kuut 'scrape, scratch', however there is also a reconstruction *[c]kuut which does mean 'tie, knot'.

There's an interesting set of correspondences where PGA has a final schwa that's absent from the proposed PAA cognates, e.g. *lakə 'digging stick' ~ *lak 'hoe (v.)'; *ɲipə 'sandfly' ~ *jɔɔp 'horsefly'; *loŋə 'neck' ~ *tlu(u)ŋ 'throat'.

More generally, a substantial proportion of the proposed correspondences are nouns in Great Andamanese but verbs/adjective (stative verbs) in Austroasiatic, some of which are above, but also including e.g. *cuiɲ 'odour' ~ *ɟhuuɲ/ɟʔuuɲ 'smell, sniff'; *raic 'juice' ~ *raac 'sprinkle' (a separate correspondence to 'bale out' above); *mulə 'egg' ~ *muul 'round'; *ciəp 'belt, band' ~ *cuup/cuəp/ciəp 'wear, put on'. This also doesn't seem too much of an issue, given the general word-class flexibility in that part of the world, though there don't seem to be any correspondences going the other way, which could perhaps be a sign of loaning/relexification instead.

I mentioned that a lot of these seem to be exact matches, but of course what you really want to indicate relatedness are non-indentical but regular correspondences, and here is where I can see the issues probably starting to really arise. We've already noted some of the vowel issues, but we also have some messiness with some of the consonants, though at the very least the POA matches pretty much every time (including reasonable caveats like sibilants patterning with palatals and the like). However, that still leaves us with some messes.

The liquids and coronals especially are misaligned a fair bit in ways which could do with more correspondences to flesh out. Here's a list of the correspondences found in initial position in the examples given.

*l ~ *l: *lat ~ *[c]laat 'fear', *lakə 'digging stick' ~ *lak 'hoe'

*l ~ *r: *lap ~ *rap 'count' (*luk 'channel' ~ *ru(u)ŋ 'have a hole'/*lu(u)k 'channel' could be in either of these)

*r ~ *r: *raic 'juice' ~ *raac 'sprinkle'

*r ~ *ɗ: *rok ~ *ɗuk 'canoe'

*t ~ *ɗ: *tapə 'blind' ~ [ɟ]ɗaap 'pass hand along'

*t ~ *t: *ar-təm ~ *triəm 'old' (suggested that metathesis occurred, though to me there probably would need to be some reanalysis as well to make this work)

I invite any of my mutuals more experienced with the comparative method to have a look for yourselves and see what you make of the proposal as it currently stands. It would certainly be an interesting development if more actual correspondences could be set up, though I do have to wonder if more work would also be needed on Austroasiatic to double-check these reconstructions as well.

[lokavisi]

Saturday night was my local CUUPS (Covenant of UU Pagans) chapter's Bealtaine ritual and man, was it a doozy. I was so exhausted afterwards and so busy yesterday I forgot to share photos of my outift. (Three guesses who helped me out with this ensemble.) I'm still processing a lot of the stuff that came out of that ritual and the time since then, which I'll probably post about in the next few days, but I just really wanted to show off my outfit because we had some fun putting it all together. :)

[norvicensiandoran]

A progressive Pagan boomer I knew from my CUUPs group just sent me the most hilarious / memeable thing.

He's not on social media so I asked permission to share it with ya'll.

[kaedeichinose]

metaphor gfuel cuup huh. hrrrrm.

[unes23]

Edita Vilkeviciute for Cuup SS23

[editavilkeviciute]

EDITA VILKEVICIUTE FOR CUUP.