events

New August Event – Svarog the Cosmic Blacksmith

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Plans for a small event have been made! In efforts to maintain a safe environment with Coronavirus on the loose, we’re keeping this a closed event, with only the participants holding the location address. But hopefully, by the time the planned date crops up, the entire pandemic situation will be a lot calmer. (If only we had a nickel for every time someone’s said that one!)

The following event has been added to the calendar of festivals and events:

Ritual Honoring Svarog the Cosmic Blacksmith

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Saturday and Sunday, August 21st and 22nd

A Full Moon Weekend

–Upstate New York–

Svarog is an Ancient Slavic Deity of Blacksmithing, Primordial Fire, and Creation. He is said to have crafted the world in a massive storm with his hammer and anvil. In other mythology, it is said he is perpetually asleep and dreams the universe into being in real time.

His son, Svarozich, who carries a similar name, is the personification of flame and fire itself. Svarog is the one who molds the world out of, and with the help of, his son, fire.

Regardless, Svarog is the only Slavic deity who was confirmed to have existed in nearly all regions of Eastern Europe.

The chosen weekend also happens to be around the time the Ancient Roman festival of Vulcanalia, which is usually celebrated around August 23rd. The Roman Vulcan, or the Greek Haphaestus, was also a deity of beneficial fire and the forge, but also of volcanoes. Vulkan can in many ways be seen as a parallel to Svarog, but he isn’t as associated with creation and creativity as much as Svarog.

Those who follow and honor Svarog, generally understand him to be very “put your head down and work” type of god, who loves to make beautiful and, very importantly, useful things, and has no time for nonsense, as he is also known for having a fiery temper. After all, his name is the originator of the old Slavic word “Svarka”, which in some languages means “blacksmithing”, but also “argument”, even though etymologically, Svarog’s name did originate from the words meaning “heavens” and “skies” of Proto-Indo-European languages.

We hope to document the experience enough for everyone to share later on for all of your viewing pleasures.

There will also be an option to separately honor Hecate, as the chosen date also falls on one of her festivals, but the main itinerary has been planned around honoring Svarog.

Have a good one everyone!

Events and Celebrations Calendar Update!

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As the title very says, this is the Events and Celebrations Calendar Update!

I’m personally very, very excited for this update as it’s one of those ideas that’s been floating around my mind since the very first version of the site. On the front page of the first ever iteration of this site, we made this little announcement on our first holiday season officially together as “Rune.Academy”:

Magical Fae Yule Update Goals~


As the wondrous holiday season approaches, we here at Rune.Academy are doing our best to turn the dream of everything this website can become a reality. For the holiday season, we’re planning on releasing a reworking of the website mainframe and stability. New beta testing of the behind the scenes features will also begin. In the new year, one of the first new features will be a comprehensive, accessible, and fully functional calendar of magical holidays celebrated all around the globe.

-Rune.Academy (Holiday Season, 2017)

Oh, how naive, green, and full of hope were we to think that we’d be done with that entire checklist by the end of that holiday season. We had absolutely no idea what this dear endeavor had in store for us and just how much it would test our resolve to believe in it… Rune.Academy took us on an absolute roller coaster ride.

We were learning on our feet mastering disciplines we never before thought we’d need. (I personally had rebuild the entire site from almost scratch twice now.) It’s been annoying and insane… but completely and absolutely necessary. As if the powers that be wanted us to get real smart real fast! (Or as smart as we could get in the time allotted to us anyway.)

And now that almost all of the priority items on that list are well on being out of the way, this Events and Celebrations Calendar Update is one of the first non-priority updates that I was completely ecstatic to jump on.

I found an interesting calendar base that looked correct enough but was still missing a vast majority of the holidays we personally practice. I knew I could easily double check, correct, and then continue to heavily add to it and flesh it out. I’m currently in the process of still adding holidays, and likely will be for a long time, but it’ll also be a good place to keep track of group activities and events we’re planning on attending. Now I’m happy to be able to provide you all with a calendar that you all can follow along with at home… view it here!!