A MIDSUMMER Reflection
by Mike Nichols (a.k.a. Gwydion)In totaling to the four silent festivals of the Pagan Celtic time, put on are four
insignificant holidays as well: the two solstices, and the two equinoxes. In folklore,
these are referred to as the four 'quarter-days' of the time, and modern Witches
want them the four insignificant Sabbats', or the four too quiet Holidays'. The Summer
Solstice is one of them.
Scientifically, a solstice is an soprano sense and, due to the precession to
the equinox, the generation may adjustment by a few days depending on the time. The summer
solstice occurs what the sun reaches the Tropic of Bane, and we background the
LP day and the turn night of the time. Astrologers know this as the
generation on which the sun enters the sign of Bane.
Quiet, since ceiling European peasants were not well-behaved at reading an
ephemeris or did not cabin fixed amply to Salisbury Commonplace to shake more to
Stonehenge and watch down it's chief duct, they highly praised the improvement on a get hard
calendar generation, June 24th. The well upright support confusion of the traditional
generation is the influence of without number calendrical changes down give directions the ages.
It is like to the winter solstice celebration, which is astronomically on
or about December 21st, but is highly praised on the traditional generation of December
25th, Yule, innovative adopted by the Christians.
Another time, it requirement be remembered that the Celts reckoned their days from end of the day to
end of the day, so the June 24th celebrations actually begin on the formerly end of the day
(our June 23rd). This was Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Eve. Which brings up
fresh point: our modern calendars are significantly wild in suggesting that
'summer begins' on the solstice. According to the old folk calendar, summer
BEGINS on May Day and ends on Lammas (Imperial 1st), with the summer solstice,
in-between amid the two, marking MID-summer. This makes improved logical ache than
suggesting that summer begins on the day what the sun's power begins to fade and
the days bloom shorter.
Although our Pagan individuals I assume most wanted June 24th (and extremely ceiling
European folk festivals today use this generation), the sensibility of modern Witches
seems to make happy the actual solstice sense, beginning the celebration at dusk.
Another time, it gives modern Pagans a sort of dates to subtract from with, hopefully, a
weekend fixed in it. (And this time, the moon is waxing out of.)
As the Pagan mid-winter celebration of Yule was adopted by Christians as
Christmas (December 25th), so too the Pagan mid-summer celebration was adopted
by them as the chow down of John the Baptist (June 24th). Stirring 180 degrees
isolated on the sashay of the time, the mid-winter celebration commemorates the
switch on of Jesus, seeing that the mid-summer celebration commemorates the switch on of John,
the foreshadowing who was born six months beside Jesus in order to emancipation his
arrival. This sure titbit is moderately salient, in that John is the Impartial
saint in the inclusive Catholic hagiography whose chow down day is a celebration of
his switch on, somewhat than his death. A schedule ago, Catholic nuns were committed of
explaining that a saint is commemorated on the public holiday of his or her death
because it was really a switch on fashionable the Country of Heaven. But John the
Baptist, the single release, is definitely commemorated on the public holiday of
his switch on fashionable THIS world. Although this makes no ache viewed from a Christian
perspec-tive, it makes pure romantic ache from the remain motionless of Pagan
symbolism.
In ceiling Pagan cultures, the sun god is seen as time out amid two opponent
personalities: the god of light and his bend in two, his odd, his far afield organism, the
god of half-light. They are Gawain and the Rustic Knight, Gwyn and Gwythyr, Llew
and Goronwy, Lugh and Balor, Balan and Balin, the Holly King and the Oak King,
etc. Regularly they are depicted as stroke nomad battles for the curve of their
goddess/lover, such as Creiddylad or Blodeuwedd, who represents Natural world.
The god of light is ever born at the winter solstice, and his atmosphere waxes
with the expansion days, until the thrust of his crucial power, the summer
solstice, the LP day. And, feel like a characteristic in a mirror, his misery organism, the
lord of half-light, is born at the summer solstice, and his atmosphere waxes with
the expansion nights until the thrust of his crucial power, the winter
solstice, the LP night.
Indirect write down reinforcement this mirror-birth lettering is strongest in the
Christianized form of the Pagan myth. Heaps writers, from Robert Graves to
Stewart Farrar, wait unconsciously quick-witted out that Jesus was identified with the
Holly King, seeing that John the Baptist was the Oak King. That is why, 'of all the
vegetation that are in the copse, the Holly tree bears the cap.' If the switch on of
Jesus, the novel of the making, is highly praised at mid-winter, Christian folk
tradition insists that John the Oak King was born (somewhat than died) at mid-
summer.
It is at this sense that I requirement fail to agree from the inspect of Robert Graves and
other writers who wait followed him. Graves believes that at midsummer, the Sun
King is slain by his opponent, the God of Darkness; entitlement as the God of Faintness is,
in turn, slain by the God of Slim at midwinter. And yet, in Christian folk
tradition (consequential from the dreary Pagan entice), it is births, not deaths, that
are take undue credit with the solstices. For the chow down of John the Baptist, this is
all the improved salient, as it breaks the program as to all other saints.
So if births are take undue credit with the solstices, what do the gesture deaths
occur? Afterward does Goronwy slice Llew and what does Llew, in his turn, slice
Goronwy? Afterward does half-light procure light or light procure darkness? Evidently
(to me, at lowest possible), it requirement be at the two equinoxes. At the autumnal equinox, the
hours of light in the day are eclipsed by the hours of half-light. At the vernal
equinox, the total is upturned. Above and beyond, the autumnal equinox, called food
Spot, is in advance take undue credit with be deprived of, principally that of the spirit of
backbone or erase. In this armor, the god of light would be keep pace with.
In Welsh mythology in careful, put on is a astonishing argument of the
nomad put up of the sun god's death, the concern of which occurred to
me in a new-found dream, and which I haven't seen unfashionable. Llew is the Welsh god
of light, and his name resources 'lion'. (The lion is commonly the symbol of a sun
god.) He is betrayed by his 'virgin' partner Blodeuwedd, fashionable standing with one
base on the rim of a cauldron and the other on the back of a goat. It is entirely
in this way that Llew can be killed, and Blodeuwedd's lover, Goronwy, Llew's
dark self, is rout adjacent with a blow at the obstinate. But as Llew is struck
with it, he is not killed. He is more readily new fashionable an eagle.
Putting this in the form of a Bardic hitch, it would go everything feel like this:
Who can participation in what spice up the Lion (Llew), betrayed by the Virgin
(Blodeuwedd), fluid on the Pay, is new fashionable an Eagle? My readers
who are astrologers are I assume in advance desiccated in merit. The sequence is
astrological and in acceptable order: Leo (lion), Virgo (virgin), Libra (unify),
and Scorpio (for which the eagle is a personal alternate symbol). Above and beyond, the
network icons, cauldron and goat, can arguably represent Bane and
Capricorn, pro summer and winter, the signs beginning with the two
solstice points. So Llew is balanced amid cauldron and goat, amid summer
and winter, on the unify (Libra) sense of the autumnal equinox.
This, of course, is the input to a fluky Bardic hitch. Routinely, the
'Mabinogion' tells us that Llew requirement be standing with one base on the cauldron
and one base on the goat's back in order to be killed. But nowhere does it participation
us why. Why is this careful situation the Impartial one in which Llew can be
overcome? For instance it represents the equinox sense. And the equinox is the entirely
time of the inclusive time what light (Llew) can be depressed by half-light (Goronwy).
It have to now come as no shock that, what it is time for Llew to kill Goronwy
in his turn, Llew insists that Goronwy stands everyplace he in the manner of stood seeing that he
(Llew) casts the blow. This is no mere vindictiveness on Llew's part. For,
although the 'Mabinogion' does not say so, it have to by now be blatant that this
is the entirely time what Goronwy can be depressed. Slim can depressed half-light entirely
at the equinox -- this time the vernal equinox.
So Midsummer (to me, at lowest possible) is a celebration of the sun god at his cover, a
crowned king on his throne. He is at the point of his atmosphere and equal 1/4 of
a time away from his ritual death at the hands of his opponent. The blow and the
cauldron wait commonly been recycled as symbols for this holiday and it have to now be
easy to see why. Sun gods are touching on ever take undue credit with spears (even
Jesus is pierced by one), and the midsummer cauldron of Bane is a symbol of
the Divine being in her power. It is an especially sweet time of the time for
