Black-Horned Moon: Old Gods & Burning Altars

The sacred oak is surrounded by a ring of long white banners. At its foot, in the centre of the circle, is a pile of stones forming an altar, aukuras in Lithuanian, and there’s a fire burning on it. Someone beats a shamanic drum and there is chanting. Herbs and grain are sprinkled on the fire. It’s very crowded, so it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on. But the fire will be tended and kept burning throughout the four days of this festival.

This is the opening of Mėnuo Juodaragis (MJR) or Black-Horned Moon, one of the biggest festivals in Lithuania – held for the past few years on a small island in a lake in the north of the country. It celebrates pagan culture and the fact that Lithuania was the last country in Europe to be Christianised in 1387, and then only because it was politically expedient for Grand Duke Jogaila to form an alliance with the Poles and marry Queen Jadwiga of Poland.

Much of Lithuania’s population still prefer to stick to their Baltic deities. In the centre of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, on a busy square, at the foot of a tree, there’s an aukuras to Ragutis, the pagan god of beer. Appropriately enough, it’s surrounded by cafes and bars, and since 2012 a flame has been kept permanently burning in front of it. In 1387, Vilnius Cathedral was founded on what’s believed to be the site of an old pagan temple to the thunder god, Perkūnas. In Lithuanian, perkūnas is still the word for thunder.

The Black-Horned Moon festival is the brainchild of Ugnius Liogė, who was beating a drum and sprinkling herbs on the fire at the opening. “It started like an underground event in 1995. The idea was to play some music in a dark pagan style,” Liogė explains. “This Baltic pre-Christian culture is very interesting to me. We had our own civilisation and understanding of the world before Christianity came. Those old beliefs are still very relevant, like respect for nature. Not like Christianity, which is outdating all the time.”

Liogė had a strong interest in metal bands – and for a couple of years in the 90s presented them on television. And so MJR is a meeting of heavy metal and folk – and several bands, like Latvia’s Skyforger, intriguingly combine both.

There’s been a lot of research into the Baltic deities and there are talks at the festival (in Lithuanian) on such matters. “These are our roots and it’s nice to know how it was in the past,” says Liogė. “But actually, it’s more important to think about now and create for the future.”

Lithuanian band Vėlių Namai (Home of Spirits) are described in the programme as a ‘soundtrack’ to Juodaragis. Their performance is ritualistic and they’re here for the fourth time. There’s an altar with candles, incense and animal skulls on stage and another right next to me in the audience at the front.

“From the beginning, it was a dark ambient project,” says leader Julius Mité. “The concepts were Lithuanian and Baltic, but the sound was not at all. There are so many good Lithuanian bands that do traditional music that I don’t have much to add, so I do my weird dark stuff.” This includes playing the nar-qobyz, a shamanic instrument from Kazakhstan, before unleashing a lot of trance-inducing techno music. “I’ve always seen paganism as a worldview rather than a religion. I like the respect for nature, devotion to ancestors and the serenity there is in parts of this island.”

Among the 60-odd artists performing, most are from Lithuania, a few from the other Baltic countries, Poland, a sprinkling of Viking rock from Norway and Iceland and Dakh Daughters from Ukraine performing their surreal cabaret on what happens to be Ukrainian Independence Day. The one British performer on the programme is Matt Howden, aka Sieben. He’s very mobile on stage, with a nervous energy, as he sings and plays violin, looping it live in many layers. His most recent album is Brand New Dark Age, which he says marks a transition from pastoral Howden to angry Howden. “The whole world is geared around ever-increasing mechanisms that nature can’t support, an ever-growing growth in an ever-shrinking natural world.” This is his third time at MJR and he finishes with a celebratory tribute to the festival, ‘Black Moon Rise Again’.

There are close to 7,000 people on this small island and the atmosphere is family friendly. Everyone camps, there are open grassy spaces, wooded areas – including the sacred tree – and places for swimming and sauna. There are two large stages and three smaller ones – some hidden away in the woodland areas. It’s here I stumble across Ketri, a group from Belarus, placating the water spirit with bowls of fire. A stunning moment of ritual theatre.

Lithuania’s most interesting folk songs are sutartinės, usually sung in the round by two or three women. I see long-established group Sen Svaja performing on stage and a young trio, Merkü, chanting around the altar, a magical place to hear them accompanied by the crackling of the fire. Some are accompanied by drum, flute or kanklės zither. The songs go in a strict canon creating a nice polyphony, but with each new entry coming halfway through the preceding line, only two are ever sung at the same time, though there are three voices. The melody is passed clockwise, which they say is to mirror the sun. They admit that they don’t know if that’s the archaic way to do it, but it’s become the common way in neo-pagan circles.

“When I learned Lithuanian history in school, I saw paganism as an anti-colonial thing, against this pressure to be like everyone else,” says Saulė Paulikaitė, one of the Merkü trio. “But now paganism sometimes goes hand-in-hand with radical nationalism, which I don’t support. But when it comes to the songs, they give me a sense of serenity and oneness with nature.”

If the audience’s T-shirts don’t carry heavy-metal gothic lettering, then it’s Norse-looking runic script. In fact, the festival logo sports three runes approximating M, J and R. Ugnius Liogė, the director: “They are mannaz, jera and raido [in the Elder Futhark alphabet] and these runes also have meanings which fit Juodaragis very well. Mannaz is the rune of mankind, jera is the rune of what happens every year, and raido is a journey. So, we are people that every year create a journey.”

What’s shocking many is they’ve announced this will be the last edition of MJF. This comes back to the runes. “There was this idea from quite early on that, because there are 24 runes, we should just do 24 editions of the festival,” Liogė explains. “I think the idea that we would have a final festival might have kept it going. I think it might have stopped earlier, but we said ‘okay let’s do 24 and go together to the end.’”

On the last night of the festival, there are bonfires lit at several places across the site sending embers into the sky like fireflies – brilliantly constructed so they just burn in on themselves without endangering the people massed around. And there’s a huge wooden structure ignited by fireworks as a spectacular fiery end, leaving a large community of neo-pagans wondering what comes next.

+ mjr.lt/en

This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today