Almanac - Resources - The White Goddess

Almanac

Almanac

The Almanac is a resource of significant pagan events and the birthdays of important people connected to paganism/wicca.

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Almanac for June

01/06 - 30/06 - Birthstones - Pearl

Historically, pearls have been used as an adornment for centuries. They were one of the favorite gem materials of the Roman Empire.

Intuition, Divination aid. Venus. Purity, chastity, emotional clarity. Promotes antibodies and fights infection. Stimulates your femininity and helps with self-acceptance. Give a pearl to a child to help him or her grow in beauty, especially a little girl. Stimulates feminine qualities, used to focus attention, helps pull together mental and spiritual forces, peace of mind. Represents purity, modesty, & gentleness.

01/06 - 30/06 - Birthstones - Alexandrite

A relatively modern gem, Alexandrite, was first discovered in Russia in 1831 during the reign of its namesake, Czar Alexander II, and is an extremely rare chrysoberyl with chameleon-like qualities. Its color is a lovely green in both daylight and fluorescent light; it changes color to a purplish red in incandescent light.

Stimulates sexual powers. Stimulates happiness, good fortune, sucess. Warm and loving stone.

01/06 - 30/06 - Birthstones - Moonstone

It was given its name by the Roman natural historian Pliny, who wrote that moonstone's appearance altered with the phases of the moon — a belief that held until well after the sixteenth century. A phenomenal gemstone, moonstones show a floating play of light (called adularescence) and sometimes show either a multirayed star or a cat's eye.

Divination, Dreams, Balances emotions. Moon. Sacred to the Goddess, moonstone may be used to enhance the feminine, strengthen psychic abilities, and increase sensitivity to natural cycles.

06/06 - Alex Sanders

Alex Sanders (6 June 1926 - 30 April, 1988), born Orrell Alexander Carter, was an English occultist and High Priest in the Neopagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca during the 1960s. He was a figure who often appeared in tabloid newspapers. Being raised in a working class family, he was introduced to esoteric ideas by his mother and grandmother from a young age, and as a young man began working as a medium in the local Spiritualist Churches before going on to study and practice ceremonial magic. In 1963, he was initiated into Gardnerian Wicca before founding his own coven, through which he merged many aspects of ceremonial magic into Gardnerianism, falsely then trying to pass off this tradition, Alexandrianism, as a hereditary tradition that had been handed down to him by his grandmother. Throughout the 1960s, he would court publicity in the press, appearing in a number of documentaries, marrying the far younger Maxine Sanders, and being declared to be the "King of the Witches" by his followers, something that led to other prominent Gardnerian Witches, such as Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, attacking him in the press. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he went on to work with a ceremonial magical group known as the Ordine Della Luna, prior to his death.

10/06 - Bridget Bishop

On 10th June 1692 Bridget Bishop was the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692.

13/06 - Gerald Brousseau Gardner

On June 13th 1884 the birth of Gerald Brousseau Gardner (died February 12, 1964), who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an English civil servant, amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist who published some of the definitive texts for the religion of Wicca, which he was instrumental in bringing to public attention through his 1954 book, Witchcraft Today.

21/06 - The White Goddess Website

On 21st June 2001, the first White Goddess website went online.

21/06 - Lithia - Summer Solstice

Lithia: Summer Solstice 21 June 2009, 05.45am.  Also known as Midsummer, Gathering Day, Summer Solstice, Alban Heffyn, and Feill-Sheathain. Midsummer or the Summer Solstice is the most powerful day of the year for the Sun God. Because this Sabbat glorifies the Sun God and the Sun, fire plays a very prominent role in this festival.

View more on Lithia »

24/06 - Janet Farrar

Janet Farrar (born Janet Owen on 24 June 1950) is a British teacher and author of books on Wicca and Neopaganism. Along with her two husbands, Stewart Farrar and Gavin Bone, Farrar has published "some of the most influential books on modern Witchcraft to date." According to George Knowles, "some seventy five percent of Wiccans both in the Republic and Northern Ireland can trace their roots back to the Farrar's."

Farrar has been one of the most public faces of Wicca, having appeared as a model for book covers and illustrations in several of the best-read books on the subject. Farrar is a frequent guest lecturer on the subjects of Wicca, Neopaganism and witchcraft in North America and Europe.

24/06 - Witchcraft Act of 1736

The Witchcraft Act of 1736 was a law passed by the government of the Kingdom of Great Britain, on the 24th June 1736, which made it a criminal offence to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practicing witchcraft. The maximum penalty set out by the Act was a year's imprisonment, and its implementation repealed the earlier statutes dealing with the issue which dated back to the Early Modern period, and which had prescribed far harsher penalties for those accused of practicing witchcraft.

26/06 - Scott Douglas Cunningham

Scott Douglas Cunningham (June 27, 1956 – March 28, 1993) was a U.S. writer. Cunningham is the author of several books on Wicca and various other alternative religious subjects.

His work Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, is one of the most successful books on Wicca ever published; he was a friend of notable occultists and Wiccans such as Raymond Buckland, and was a member of the Serpent Stone Family, and received his Third Degree Initiation as a member of that coven.

28/06 - Frank Stewart Farrar

Frank Stewart Farrar (28 June 1916 – 7 February 2000), who always went by the name of Stewart Farrar, was an English screenwriter, novelist and prominent figure in the Neopagan religion of Wicca, which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife, Janet Farrar, and then his friend Gavin Bone as well. A devout communist in early life, he worked as a reporter for such newspapers as the Soviet Weekly and the Daily Worker, and also served in the British army during the Second World War. He was responsible for writing episodes for such television series as Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Armchair Theatre and Crossroads, and for his work in writing radio scripts won a Writer's Guild Award. He also published a string of novels, written in such disparate genres as crime, romance and fantasy.

After being initiated into Alexandrian Wicca by Maxine Sanders in 1970, he subsequently published one of the earliest books to describe this newly burgeoning religion, What Witches Do (1971). Within only a few months of being initiated, he had risen to the position of High Priest and founded his own coven in south London, with Janet Farrar, whom he would later handfast and then legally marry, as his High Priestess. In 1976 the couple moved to Ireland, where they went about founding new covens and initiating new people into Wicca - according to George Knowles, "some seventy five percent of Wiccans both in the Republic and North of Ireland can trace their roots back to the Farrar's". With Janet, he also set about writing books about the subject, most notably Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981) and The Witches' Way (1984).

Because of his work in propagating the Craft, the historian Ronald Hutton compared him to Gerald Gardner and Alex Sanders as "the third and last of the great male figures who have formed Wicca".