{"id":8486,"date":"2010-05-10T17:50:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-10T21:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=8486"},"modified":"2010-05-10T17:50:06","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T21:50:06","slug":"the-police-festival-of-lactating-sheep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-police-festival-of-lactating-sheep\/","title":{"rendered":"The police festival of lactating sheep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pagan Police Group UK has a <a href=\"http:\/\/paganpolicegroupuk.moonfruit.com\/\">web site<\/a> that proudly proclaims 19,702 hits; not a lot, you may think, but considering you have to be a policeman, a pagan and over 18 to join, it\u2019s not bad. I myself applied for membership status in order to peruse the more interesting parts of the site. For pagan affiliation, I inserted \u201cAnglican\u201d; unfortunately, I fear my application may be refused because I am not actually a policeman.<\/p>\n<p>It seems that pagan policemen in the UK <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/faith\/article7121843.ece\">can now take holidays<\/a> in order to prance naked in abandoned bliss on the bacchanalia of their choice; such is the march of progress in an enlightened society:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Being serving police officers, they would no doubt leave their sun worshipping, mead drinking and naked dancing for their days off, not to mention the annual practice of leaving food out for the wandering dead.<\/p>\n<p>As of today, however, pagan police have the right to take their festivals as official holiday after their support group won formal recognition from the Home Office.<\/p>\n<p>The eight main festivals include:<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022 Samhain<\/strong> \u2014 On Hallow\u2019een (October 31), pagans celebrate the dark winter half of the year by leaving food outside for the wandering dead, dressing up as ghosts and casting spells<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022 Imbolc<\/strong> \u2014 the festival of the lactating sheep held on February 2. Pagans pile stones on top of each other and make \u201cpriapic wands\u201d to celebrate fertility<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022 Beltane<\/strong> \u2014 on April 30\/May 1, pagan and Wicca worshippers celebrate the Sun god. In Celtic times it was an opportunity for unabashed sexuality and promiscuity<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022 Lammas<\/strong> \u2014 On July 31, pagans celebrate harvest time and go on country walks<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <strong>Yule<\/strong> \u2014 On December 21 pagans go door-to-door singing and burn a yule log to honour Kriss Kringle, the Germanic god of yule.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022 Ostra<\/strong> \u2014 On March 21 pagans celebrate spring and heap praise on the Sun god<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022 Litha<\/strong> \u2014 or summer solstice. Members drink mead and dance naked to celebrate the harvest<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2022 Mabon<\/strong> \u2014 pagans celebrate the autumn equinox with an outdoor feast.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pagan Police Group UK has a web site that proudly proclaims 19,702 hits; not a lot, you may think, but considering you have to be a policeman, a pagan and over 18 to join, it\u2019s not bad. I myself &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-police-festival-of-lactating-sheep\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2219,2223],"class_list":["post-8486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paganism","tag-paganism","tag-police-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}