New Month, New Look!

Posted by Byron Pendason on September 16, 2023 CE, in Heathenry, Tech, Updates

Wes hāl!1 Today begins the month of Haligmonað, and with the new month I’m happy to announce the new look for Mine Wyrtruman!

The month of Haligmonað roughly corresponds with September. It translates as holy month. We’re not sure what made this month holy to the ancient Anglo-Saxons, but it probably involved rites that had something to do with the upcoming harvest. The Ingwine Society celebrates Hærfestlíc Freólsung beginning the full moon of this month. To quote their website:

The Autumnal Festival, or in Old English, Hærfestlíc Freólsung, is a celebration of the final stages of bringing in or “ingathering” cereal and vegetable crops. By the time the next major holy tide of Winter-fylleþ had arrived, crops were considered subject to being “blasted” by a púca, which is to say, afflicted by frost and rendered inedible.2

Alaric Albertsson, in chapter 10 of his book Travels Through Middle Earth, recommends celebrating Harvest Home on or around the Autumn Equinox (September 23 this year, which is the 8th of Haligmonað). He recommends treating it similarly to the American Thanksgiving.3 My family celebrates Mabon (which is also on the autumn equinox) in much the same way! My sister in law likes to call it the witch’s Thanksgiving.

So, let’s shift gears and talk about the new website look. A few days ago, my friend Rose and I were talking about my calendar page and I mentioned how ugly my JavaScript code for that page is. You see, I’m a self taught programmer who programs as a hobby. I am ignorant when it comes to what makes for good looking code or best programming practices. She offered to help me refactor the code, to make it more efficient and make the code look prettier. I accepted, and in the process of doing that we got to talking about how dated my website looked (it really gave off Windows 98 vibes, didn’t it?) and so she offered to help me with that as well.

Long story short, this new look is the result. It’s almost entirely her doing (I did help a little!). She did the work pro bono, but if you enjoy the new look or the better functioning website, please consider heading over to her Amazon page and buying her books. Yes she’s a fantasy author as well! Also, feel free to go down to the comments and leave your thoughts on the new look!

Beo gesund!1

  1. Wes hāl and Beo gesund are Old English greetings and farewells that literally mean Be well/whole/healthy. The first seemed to be more common among the Anglian dialects and the second more common among the Saxon dialects. I prefer to use both though, the first as a greeting and the second as a farewell. ↩ ↩2

  2. Holman, R. (2023, September 13). The holy calendar. Ingwina Ferræden. https://ingwine.org/knowledge-base-2/the-holy-calendar/ ↩

  3. Albertsson, A. (2009). Holy Tides. In Travels through middle earth: The path of a saxon pagan (pp. 171–173). essay, Llewellyn Publications. ↩