Bear Feast 2010

The Bear Feast 2010 will take place at the Cranborne Ancient Technology Centre, East Dorset, from Friday 17th December to Sunday 19th December. Please put these dates in your diary!

We'll be putting tickets on sale around June. If you'd like to go on the mailing list to be contacted when tickets are available, please get in touch.

To see pictures of previous events, click on archive above.

Background to the Bear Feast

One of Mankind's oldest spiritual impulses is Arctolatry, The Worship of the Bear. When we first came to the northern forests Bear taught us to find food. When we starved in the depths of winter the flesh of the bear sustained us. Teacher and Saviour, his corpse alarmingly man-like when stripped of its warm fur, mystery and taboo surrounded the animal whose name must not be spoken. A child of the Sky God, lowered from on high on a golden chain, he is guest of honour at his own funeral feast. With thanks and messages for his Father his spirit is sent back to Heaven that he may return and feed us again in our need time.

This ancient pattern of myth and worship is found all across the North, from the Saami of Norway to the Ainu of Japan and the Inuit of Hudson's Bay. It has even left traces deep in our own mythology. Let us not forget that King Arthur (whose name means Bear) sleeps in a hollow hill to return when he is needed. That he stole from the Mound Fortress a sustaining cauldron, and that his wonder-working grail descended from Heaven upon a golden chain...

This was the mythos we drew upon for our Bear Feast, inspired also by Graham Harvey's recent work on Animism.