The Lapwing, the Dragon and the Day After Christmas

There is a witch’s dilemma. There will always be a witch’s dilemma. People talk about blue Christmases, but the truth is that the actual blues do not set in until the day after Christmas, until the grand celebration is done and you are left with the prospect of your life as is and three months of a winter which, for the most part, has not truly even begun.

You had thought in pretending to disavowing the mainstream and Christianity that you would not be caught up in this, but the truth is you have simply traded in Christmas for a pretend ancient modern day imitation of it. Calling a Christmas tree a Yule tree or a Solstice bush does not save one from witch’s dilemma, predicament, problem.

In my personal practice, at certain times of year, I still do use the services and rtuals of the church I grew up in, the mother church of the west. The times when my old practice coincides with the new is a lovely return, and then time when they must separate is always strange and a little awkward.

This morning, after a beautiful season of Advent, I had the distinct sense that this was the last time I would do the Church readings in the morning or in the evening, that now that Christmas Day had passed, it was time to dig deeper and in other directions for the fulfillment of what I had seen on Christmas night, and worked toward (waited for) all Advent. Doing the same thing again and again was not the answer.

There is that childish place. Unfairly (maybe) I call it the Wiccan place, where you buy all your black and get a necklace and earrings shaped like pentagrams. You change the names of holidays and try to celebrate full moons, solstice, you know. But this is an external changing. This is not wisdom. The witchly change is one of perspective, understanding, being. It is not that the witch calls God Cernunnos instead of Christ, but rather that she recognizes the Antlered One even is she is sitting in a dull church with a friend. It is a way, a deep way, a hard way, a putting away of old conventions, a walking away, a deepening. And yes, it is magic.

The ending of Christmas is so tragic for the witch because, of course, we are always devoted to the Holy Child entering the world, to the Housle, to the incarnation of the divine in human living and not only the possibility, but the expectation of wonder. And it seemed, for a little while, the world around us was too. But in the churches, and certainly after, the wonder of the first 25 days of December is packed up for business as usual, and here we are, out in the cold again.

The lapwing is that symbol of the nature of Craft. The Lapwing is the guardian of it, but it seems to be pointing in the wrong direction and so, if we are not carefully while watching her, we can mistake the symbol for the actuality, the shallow dig for the deep dive.

At this time of year we are susceptible to the magic of Christmas, because we do not yet understand the word magic, or perhaps even the word Christmas. The warm feelings of endless possibility, glinting lights and childish joy, the general openness that touches more people than usual, the soaring idea that anything can happen, the childish wonder, the happiness—if one feels any of those—is a lapwing. Though we talk about blue Christmas, the blue return to actual life is the real bump in the road. During this time of year, everyone around is a little more willing to be open to magic, and that does change things, but that is only a face of magic. The actual magic continues today, when everyone else has forgotten about it.

The temptation of living so close to the rest of the world, religious and otherwise for a little time in the year is remembering that neither the church nor the life most people lead is the answer either. When we have come in from the cold to join the common life at Christmas, it’s hard to remember the common life is not necessarily our place, and to find our place we must return to the altar, and to the root and to the dragon at the root, and acknowledge all our strange fears and feelings and continue to offer them.

Emmanuel, Such Power In the Hands of Men

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

And he arose, and departed to his house.

But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.


Matthew 9.6-8

As Cochranists, we are mystics and priests first, seekers of wisdom and doers of good whose rituals are enacted to bring the divine into the world. The word witch can be debatable, and is enfolded into the rest of what we do, The story of the Paralytic Brought Through the Roof in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke is a perfect illustration of that which is sometimes called magic, of the divine alchemy. The power of Christ is the divine power working through the hands of men to heal and to bring change in the midst of perfect love and perfect trust, the final incarnation of Christ called upon before Christmas, Emmanuel, not merely God is with us, but God with us, God as us, the Divine in our midst, in all of our doings




Latin:

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster,
exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum:
veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

English:

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
come and save us, O Lord our God.

Limo Formasti

Latin:

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.
English:

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.


Two thoughts as we approach tonight's meditation. Firstly, I remember my old prayer book--I mean it was OLD--full of all the Catholic self abasement one could long for, and in the O Antiphon was translated thusly:


O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save Man,
whom you fashioned from the slime of the earth.


I will take the straightforward translation Google gives me


King of the Nations, and their desire;
keystone, who makes both peoples one,
Come and save mankind;
whom you shaped from the mud.

Because this is the one that tells me the most about this verse. This isn't really the place to dwell on kingship except to say all this time we have heard of the Root and Shoot of Jesse, the King of Judah, the King of Israel.Now we chant to the ruler over all, not simply the ruler over a few people and a few things, but the overarching ruler over everything. This is an idea that seems to Christian in many Craft circles, but I'll accept it. Without dwelling on it too long I want to look at what this King has come to do. He functions as the cornerstone which makes the two peoples into one, that's an important point because the question next is what two peoples. In the language of early Christianity and Judaism for that matter it is the people who are Jews and the people who are not. But, even though Christians didn't trouble to think about it, it should have also meant Christians and whoever was not Christian. The idea of two peoples always includes those who are out and those who i think are in, Those who are occultist, and those who are not, those who are magical and those who are not, those who are witches and those who are not. It would be ashamed to get stuck on the nature of God/Goddess , Kingship and forget the central message is that the energy of god we call on at this moment is the energy that purifies us from the us them mentality and heals these old wounds, refuses to be boxed into one camp..

This antiphon is a call to the God who made us to remember us and come back again. To really bring us to life. The image is the story of Adam. We are not simply being told that we are made of mud, but remember that in several ancient stories human beings were fashioned, but did not possess full life until God himself had breathed into him. And so wait to be not only saved, but recreated, re inspired, born again.

Even while this holy coming is the desire of nations, the nations do not seem to desire this divine visitation. We want to be real and alive, but we still play in the mud with the things close at hand, afraid of the change that could come.

Mother Night and the Return of the Light

There is irony in the fifth O Antiphon

Latin:

O Oriens,

splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae:

veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

English:

O Morning Star,

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:

Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

As Nox, Nyx and Nuit, Night is a primordial grandmother goddess. On the longest night of the year while she covers everything, the Light is reborn and promise restored.

Or if there is not irony, then there is anticipation. Every O Antiphon is sung in the evening, and this one is always sung on the evening of the longest night of the year. Oriens is the Morning Light, the Morning Star, Lucifer, the Radiant Dawn, the Rising Sun, but all of these things are sung as the longest night of the year approaches. The mystery celebrated is that the Holy Child will not be born until the darkest night is passing or has passed altogether. For most the Holy Child on the back of the Roebuck is Jesus, born three nights after the Solstice, but even if the birth is celebrated tonight, still, it is celebrated on the other side of midnight, after most of the night has passed.

In the day we remembered The Veiled One, he who is called Saturn and Odin and Tinia. As we went to the island and cut the thorns and berries and brought them back, we remembered the one who makes tyrannical kings impotent and clears the way for new life. Tonight we rest under the brooding shadow of Mother Night and wait for the brilliant Light to be reborn. This darkness is not the shadow of death. This is the original holy darkness. In the morning the Bright One, Llew, the Christ, will come and sanctify the day, but for now, Mother Nyx has come to sanctify the night.

We need that holy night, and we wait for the blessing of the day. We do not know who the holy child is, not really? We do not understand the mystery, and for the most part, are too superficial, too frightened to delve in. And yet, here he comes anyway, the One we long for and fear.

Key And Scepter, Conquering Lion

The O Antiphon "O Key of David" in the end leads me away from its imagery. David is a character I could never love who worships a God I could never serve. I spent a long time writing about this trying to find my way to the heart of this antiphon. In the Gospels, even Jesus seems disinterested in his connection to David, a connection that might not even be real. Jesus ism ore concerned with the Christ as Son of Man and Son of God. When I continued to listen to the antiphon what struck me was the other term of royalty, a term deeper than the name of David, Lion of Judah. The Lion of Judah is the righteous king who resists all tyranny, frees prisoners, and sets rights wrong. To the Ethiopians, Christian and otherwise, that legacy was in their homeland, and to Jews, Christians and Rastafarians, the Lion of Judah is present wherever and whenever he is needed and people are willing to let him into their actions and lives.  

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;

qui aperis, et nemo claudit;

claudis, et nemo aperit:

veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,

sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

English:

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;

you open and no one can shut;

you shut and no one can open:

Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,

those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Judah is the beloved people of God, the holy promised land. And, of course, all people are the people of God when they acknowledge themselves to be. All lands are holy when this holiness is remembered. Of all the antiphons this gave me the most trouble. I wondered what it meant to be a key. Of course keys open and of course the Lion of Judah is releasing prisoners, bounding and unbounding, but I looked up the word clavis, surprised it was actually still in use and not just an old Latin term. The definition gave me something like insight, and something like insight is what Christ as Clavis is supposed to provide.

cla·​vis | \ ˈklāvə̇s, -äv- \

plural claves\ -​ˌvēz \ or clavises

Definition of clavis

: a key or glossary serving as an aid to interpretation

On this night when we are waiting for heat and waiting for snow

When the light on the tree is not yet the light of reason

The monks are singing

Oh key of david, or key…

The sound is sweet, but david means nothing to me

And I am not done with churches

Clavis like clavicle, like the key shaped bone I traced

over your chest, locking your heart in the heat of a night

long ago, when snow did fall.

Clavis, a word used two thousand years ago,

that I don’t know the sense of then, but do now

I don’t understand, I don’t understand…

Why you left

Why you’re still here

And long I must wait

I don’t understand

Anything

To know, and then to love, and to love when we don’t know

Teach us to understand,

Interpret on this cold night for me

The breastbone of eternity

Root

Things get old. Devotion gets old. Commitment gets old. Waiting gets old. We become tired or depressed or simply walk away. We can forget why we came to wherever we came, lose the hunger and the sense of profundity we once felt. Having traveled on one way so long it is easy to forget just what the hell we are doing. Every tree, everything worth having, has roots. This time of the year is not simply about nostalgia, but about an actual return to the root of who we are, a fuller commitment in a time when, quite frankly, is so easy to lose sight of things and give up hope.

Latin:

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.
English:

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

I sing it every year, but I've never really asked exactly what the root of Jesse is. There is a Bible verse about the Root of Jesse and one about the Shoot and often people just say they are the same, that the shoot means the Jesus of Christmas being descended from David. Leaving aside the matter that we do not really know if Jesus was descended from David, let's think about the simple fact that a root is not a shoot.  A root is the source. Often in the Craft, and n Advent we have spoken of the Tree, but now we are called to go deeper, to the root of the Tree, to the Source of Things. Tonight the avatar of the Divine we look at is the Root of things,  the tough system that sustains us though no one can see. The Roots of the Tree are the Underworld, Mimir's Well, the internal country so close to death and suffering where we find rebirth and redemption. In Norse myth there is a dragon that threatens to nibble at that tree. We feel it some time. But this is a time to address that dragon. Now at Midwinter, under many names, we move past sentiment and even bad memory to go to our core, and remember out commitments, to dare to be terrified, and meet the underground dragon.

*Yule is bright and sunny, almost too warm for all I have on. Someone silly could be forgiven for thinking spring was on its way. The water is low and one pool to the side is swirling like a cauldron. On the island I am consecrated to, where the Nemeton is, I cut the berries and thorns and pray that, as Saturn once cut Uranos so that an old tyrannical reign might end, so might the same be done with these berries and twigs (pun intended) Then I prayed, as the Uranos was castrated and life sprang from his genitals, so might life spring from this cutting. Processing back home from the Nemeton, I realize that this cutting is the time when a shoot can indeed be a root. The Shoot of Jesse is the shoot of that which was cut and might be dead, but which became something new and fostered life. With that knowledge I carried the thorny branch home, and there was nothing else to say.




O Radix

rad•i•cal | \ ˈra-di-kəl  \
Definition of radical
 (Entry 1 of 2)
1: of, relating to, or proceeding from a root: such as
a(1): of or growing from the root of a plant: radical tubers
(2): growing from the base of a stem, from a rootlike stem, or from a stem that does not rise above the ground: radical leaves

Radical, not farsical
Simple, not quoting the quotable
Stand there in the small breeze
The sand washed up, black and soaked to show
a thick root from a distant tree
It said be like me
Small, and tough as stone,
Slender and lyrical
it rose from the sand alone
such is the mystery and meaning of being radical.

Adonis, the Beloved Lord

O Antiphon for December 18.

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel,
qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,
et ei in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.


English:

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

By the time his story reaches us in Roman and Greek tales, he has become a side character in a minor myth, pretty much bastardized so that Adonis is a good looking kid two goddesses squabble over, but if one looks even a little bit, the older story remains. God of love and beauty, he was conceived in darkness for nine  nights and born from the myrrh tree.

Ovid tells is strange story, a princess of the Levant named Myrrha fell into lust with her own father and found a way to, while all the women on the island were being celibate on a nine day celebration, climb into her fathers bed and have sex with him all nine nights, he not knowing who she was as she came to him in the dark. Ted Hughes translation says, "He crammed her with his seed." She repeated her dead the nine magical times.

Somehow she is found out. Her father comes after her. In some versions, Ceridwen and Taliesin like, he and she transform into different animals as he chases her, trying to kill her. At last she is transformed into a--or the first--myrrh tree.

Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume
    Breathes a life of gathering gloom;—
               Sorrowing, sighing,
               Bleeding, dying,
    Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

The lyrics of the Christmas hymn reminds us myrrh is not only linked to royalty and worship like other incense, but to death and sacrifice.. Like the yew tree, the myrrh tree is a tree of life and death,  It is in desert climes and to get the myrrh one must wound the tree so that it bleeds sap. The coagulating blood is the myrrh. The myrrh branches, covered in sharp needles, resemble nothing so much as a crown of thorns. The myrrh tree is the Cross, is the Tree of Life, is the World tree, and born from it, the very myrrh, is Adonis..

To understand Adonis a little more we have to understand he is getting the same treatments as the two goddesses who are fighting over him. Even the term goddess doesn't quite fit. The goddesses are Theia, female Gods, not Mrs. Gods or lesser deities. The female gods are Gods. Let's get that out of the way, and their worship, while important and cultic, is problematic. It happens outside of the mainstream of male dominated society. What is more, it is not mythological, or rather its myths do not make stories cycles. And so often the Theia figure low in mythology. Demeter, Hestia, Rhea all share the same mythological--or rather legendary-- fate as Persephone, storywise, they are sidelined by male Gods and heroes.

Adonis suffers the Aphrodite treatment, which is worse than the other Theia because, unlike Demeter or Persephone, her origin is not Greek. She is imported, so to speak, from another pantheon which means that much of what her place ought to be can only be guessed at, is occupied by other Gods, male and female, and Adonis is part of her story. Both of these Gods come from Lebanon, and are imported to Cyprus and through Cyprus to Greece, and Cyprus and the Levant feature in their story. Aphrodite, bird headed, penis headed, nude and furious, called Foam Born, but earlier called Ashtoroth, Asherah, Ishtar and Inanna, one face of the dread Lady of Love and Battle is the lover of Adonis who is, and this still remains part of his story, love of the Lady of the Underworld, slain to be resurrected. When his story comes to Greece is is confusing. Greece tells us of a deceived girl Persephone, who was lured by the king of the dead. But this tells us of a Persephone already Queen who lures Adonis to be her lord--presumably of the dead. Persephone is life and death, and so is he. The two are one.

His symbol is his flower, the Adonis, quickly grown and quickly dying, resembling drops of blood. Properly some of his names are Tammuz and Damuzi. Adonis is the Greek form of his title, the Beloved Lord, which the Hebrews also used in the form  Adonai.

In the Occult, we are always having that Robert Graves moment where we threaten to start weaving so many strange and disparate things together we are nearly incomprehensible, but anyone with  passing knowledge of the Bible will know that the enemy of the Israelite God, or Israelite religion was Baal. Only a few times in scripture is it revealed that Baal is no proper name, but the Canaanite title of my'lord, given to a series of closely related male Gods or forms of the same male God. But the Hebrews, when calling their God anything, settle, in the end for another form or Lord, a more affectionate one, and the one used by their friends the Phoenicians, Adonai, Adonoy, Adonis. That nearly three thousand years of Jewish and Christian tradition have turned their version of Adonis into a sexless, distant and somewhat contrarian god does not change the fact that, essentially, this is whom they chose to pray to, that the Greeks and Romans turned him into a sex toy of two fickle goddesses just shows how hard it is for us to understand or revere God as love, and not love in the very proper and sterile Christian sense, but love in all its passion.

Oddly enough--well, not odd at all, because truth is truth, to see Adonis/Adonai in action again we must travel to the North and meet him in our Asatru friends. Krishna bears some comparisons too, but is distant from most witchly minds. In the North there is the lord Frey, of love, of the fuck aHnd the field, the twin (and lover?) of Freya. Frey the loving lord of the erect penis. the male model of the tree of life. We get so used to Frey as name that we forget it is no name, but a title, and that title means--yes--Beloved Lord.

This season, calling in Christmas or Yule or Montol or what have you, remember the antiphons, remember Adonis. Welcome Adonai. Be embraced by the Beloved Lord.

Adonai

Oh, Adonis, lover of the Lady above and the Lady Below

Who was born like sap from the tree of life and death,

Who burned is sweetness and longing and teaches the law of love

Come to me, save me with your outstretched arms

Oh my beloved lord, all the year I have held out my arms to you

The myrrh dripping on your hands you turned the latch of my door

I wasn’t ready, but I said come in, and you clutched me lightly

Behold

I am still dripping

They said, but it isn’t allowed, it isn’t allowed

 And with stone beads in chains hanging around their necks they sought the law on stone tables

But that business was chiseled out by moses and I need your fire

You are only fire, but they could barely see the cloud

It isn’t allowed, it isn’t allowed

The shell fish, and the selfish, the pig and hot and the cloven hoofed

It isn’t allowed, it isn’t allowed

But you put your hand over my mouth and whispered, don’t cry our loud

Not so loud

This child is conceived in secret

Nine nights, nine nights in the dark, the father and the daughter and the father’s son

What a trinity made from her

The woman who was a tree who was the mother of myrrh

Desire and death were the words she purred lying in the bed and clutching him

And then in the final flowering, red flowers like drops of blood on green, dowering the widowed earth

We learn that out of death is endless life and birth

And Adonai, means Adonis, means love.

I love you, Lord

Saturnalia and the O Antiphons

No matter what week of Advent it is, the 17th of December is the first night when the O Antiphons are recited in the evening, generally before the chanting of the Magnificat. In order they are:

17 December: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
18 December: O Adonai (O Lord)
19 December: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
20 December: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
21 December: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
22 December: O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)
23 December: O Emmanuel (O With Us is God)

They are invocations to Christ to come soon in seven aspects. They could be looked at, but a few of these aspects are not necessarily identified with Jesus. Sapientia is generally perceived of, even in the antiphon, as female and separate from the conventional Christian view of God. Adonai is the name Jews use in place of Tetragrammaton. Clearly, on one hand, what the antiphons are doing is looking at Divinity is seven different phases and saying that a true Christ is in all of them, not merely Christian, not merely male and not merely contained in the story of Jesus. There may even be some connection to the Jewish idea of the seven sefirot, or the Hindu idea of the various gods all being avatars of One.

The first avatar called upon is the Lady Sapientia, Wisdom, Sophia, Prudence, sometimes identified with the Virgin or the Holy Spirit. She is certainly virginal in aspect, and definitely holy. Her Tarot card it the High Priestess.

Latin:

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem,
fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.
English:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other,
mightily and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

(Coincidentally???) the 17th is also the start of the old Saturnalia, the time when Romans consecrated themselves to the God who consumed what was waste and brought renewal, and they looked back to an old age of gold while praying for a better future. Saturn is more than the Roman name of Greek Kronos. Saturn was a deity who was eventually identified with Kronos, but they were not exactly the same. Their origins were different for one. Kronos is famous for being the Titan who castrated his own father, Uranus with a sickle (we'll come back to this sickle) and then took his turn as ruler of the older gods, the Titans. His age was, for most people, an age of gold. But not for his children. As the Goddess Rhea bore each one, he consumed them until, at last, Rhea wrapped the last child, Zeus, in a blanket and replaced him with a stone. Later, Zeus's first wife/girlfriend, the old goddess Metis, helped him give Kronos a potion by which he vomited out the other Gods. To make a long story short, Zeus takes over, Kronos is chained in the depths of Tartaros.

The Roman stories differed, and they said that Saturn was not exiled two Tartaros, but to Italy, where the golden age continued. In then end he kept traveling West, even went to Britain. There is more to this story, and we'll return to it later. For now let's stay with Italian Saturn and even with our O Antiphons. Later, Metis, who made Saturn/Kronos, vomit his children up, is herself, eaten by Zeus (long story) only to be reborn as Athena who bursts from his head. But when I grew up reading myths, I got the Roman version based on Ovid and there Metis has her Latin name: Prudence. Athena is, of course, Wisdom, and I cannot help but see an interesting link between the antiphon stating:  O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, and the Goddess who turns the High God's mouth, a consuming tomb, into a womb. There is a mystery here worth dwelling on.

But before we leave, why would Romans devote so much time to a God who ate his children, who had attempted infanticide on all of his children, the ruling gods of this world? I think maybe it was for that very reason. The Greeks had a very interesting relationship to their Gods, but the Romans had a very interesting relationship to themselves. Most of their culture had not only Greek origins but Etruscan origins, and the Etruscans had known their own golden era before being eclipsed by Greece and Rome. Their myths were quite different from Greek and Roman stories and became darker as the time of their freedom and independence was further in the past. Many of their gods took on Greek or Roman names. The Etruscans were still very much a people in the time of the early Roman Empire, many Roman families were descended from them as was much of Roman religion.

The chief of the Roman gods was Jove or Juppiter who we know as Jupiter who is amalgamated with Zeus as his wife Juno is identified with Hera. But the head of the Etruscan gods was Tinia, an altogether different type of monarch, and his gracious wife, Uni. Her name is probably the origin of Juno, but she is identified not with Juno, but with Mama Matuta, the Great Mother, Ops, the Mother of Grain, who the Romans eventually identified with Rhea. This would make Tinia not synonomous with Zeus, but with Saturn, and when people in the present looked about and saw hor troubled they were, and how unjust the gods of the current age were, why would they not revere the god of a better time, the one who castrated old powers with his sickle, who had attempted to devour the gods who did so little or maintained such a stale status quo, and who might do it again. After all, to the Romans he was not chained in Tartaros. He was just hanging out west, biding his time, and they may have thought, as Christians pray today, "Lord, quickly come!"

The Christmas Ghost

The close and opening of the year was always a ghostly time and a time for telling ghost stories and warding off the gathering darkness. In the modern world this has been forgotten so that ghost and ghoulies are reserved for Halloween and family gathering and cheer for Christmas, but of old they were a piece. The one remnant we sill have of that old time is Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but he was not starting a tradition, he was delving into one long established.

The World Tree

Yggdrasil, Odin's Tree, the Cross in all of its forms, The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the wood of the cradle of the Infant Christ and of course, the Evergreen tree at Yuletide and Christmas are all faces of the World Tree. In ritual the World Tree is, of course the Stang, the Altar Itself, the Spiral Castle, the very priest, magician and devotee. The World Tree is the not only the Axis Mundi, put the sharp pendulum joining the Overworld, the Otherworld and the Apparent World in which we stand. The World Tree is not only a place to observe, but the place in which the devotee stands and experiences life and power and the presence of God constantly reborn.

Gaudete Sunday, the Midwinter Bright Hero

"The Lord is coming with all his saints and will not delay, and then there will be endless day."
-Advent Antiphon

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.co

In waiting for the saviour, the Light Hero, the Child Born in Winter, we are not simply waiting for someone else not yet here, we are waiting for ourselves and he is waiting for us. This is why in the Gospels it is the Son of Man who performs miracles and when he does, the people "give thanks to God for putting such power into the hands of men." This is why the saviour comes not alone, but with all of his saints. We, as we live now, barely know who or what we are. We are waiting not simply for someone else to save us, but for the saving power in ourselves. We are not only waiting for the Prince and the Hero. We are the Prince and Hero coming. As Carl Jung said in his Red Book, it is not enough to worship Christ, one must become Christ. This, too, is the Alchemical Mystery, to learn that when Jesus says, "the Father and I are One," it means that in some way, we must say the same.

The Lady at the Gate of Dawn

The Merciful Mother

Our Lady at the Gate of Dawn



Remember, O most gracious Lady, 
that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, 
implored thy help, 
or sought thy intercession was left unaided.
Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee,
O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; 
to thee do I come; 
before thee I stand, 
sinful and sorrowful.

O Mother of the Word Incarnate, 
despise not my petitions, 
but in thy mercy hear and answer me. 
Amen.

The Woman Clothed With the Sun

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.


Revelation 12.1


Guadalupe, Santa Lucia, the Woman Clothed with the Sun and Beavi the Reindeer Goddess of Lapland are all versions of the brilliant Shining Woman who comes in the midst of December with her healing,

Christ in the Cave: The Alchemy of the Pregnant Earth

 

Today’s Advent image, or concept was the pregnant Earth. As I thought of it the old antiphon that we sang in the monastery, in the very living hills of Kentucky came to me.

℣ Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum
(Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just)

℟ Aperiatur terra et germinet salvatorem

(Let the earth be opened and send forth a Saviour").

The image of incarnation, though it was written eight hundred years before the Christian doctrine, the image of salvation taken by Christians as the image of the origins of the savior. Andrew Rissik in his play Dionysus has the chorus chant that the mystery of that God is heaven being joined to earth. This is the mystery of the Holy Child, of all true magic, all true power, all true and living religion. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus heals the paralytic and we are told the crowds “praised God for putting such power in the hands of men.” By the same token Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man, and this is telling us something we see over and over again in the Christian mystery, which is the Alchemical Mystery, the Dionysian mystery the mystery of the Craft: the true Magic, the True Magic Child, the True Christ does not come strictly from heaven, but from the alchemy, the passion, the yearning of heaven and earth. The rain brings forth the saviour, but so does the dew. Crosses symbolize this juncture and of course so does the World Tree, but the Cave symbolizes this as well, first and last. It is the liminal entrance of the cave where magic is performed, where  Persephone, Demeter, Adonis and Inanna are adored, where Mary Magdalene re-finds Jesus, but also where Ave Maria gives birth to him. The Cave is the door where the Underworld opens to this one and shouts up to the upper ones.

To the Brown Witch and the Witch of the New World

The witch of this world is the witch of THIS world. The American witch cannot simply be aping something from the British Isles. Tied to our land and its many cultures we are digging deeply, for we have many resources, and the practitioner of color cannot live like the white occultists, for often we have more immediate connections to the occult. We did not have the long winter of thou shalt not Protestantism that isolated us from the natural magic of the world. A brown witch often has other magics at hand that the British witches are just rediscovering and -+*British druids hardly know.

The American druid is the druid in this land and this time, not a second rate Irishman or a reconstructionist. This is not a renaissance fair, al though there is nothing wrong with a turkey leg and a fit, firm assed man in tights. We are drawing lessons from all places, as those before us did, for like them we come from all places. The idea of eclecticism only came because were under the spell of Orthodoxy. Christianity, and through Christianity, Judaism taught us that. But of old people were learning from every way. From north south east west, present past and possible future, the witch was weaving her way, the druid was constructing his temple.

So we’re going to need Advent wreaths and Advent candles and Christmas hymns. We may even need baby Jesuses and Crosses. And we’re going to need reindeer, reindeer women and Sun Goddesses. We’re going to need Norse Myths and Greek ones and Mabinogions. We’re going to need Cesar Chavez, Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga and Che Guevara, maybe even Fidel Castro too. We're going to need the letters of James Baldwin and Eldridge Cleaver, of Black artists on Negritude, to properly raise up our witch’s temple. We’re going to need the personal gods of our own house with names no one has ever known, and we’re going to need intuition. We’re going to need prophecy and inspiration and our own powerful imaginations. We’re going to need to not be afraid to follow our own way.

Ladies of the Season

There are so many signs of the season and so many people have written extensively on them. I can only do  patch up of them. The truth is, there isn’t a need for me to reinvent the wheel by talking about them all over again, but they are worth talking about. On my Facebook I’e featured, for every day of Advent a person or thing sacred to this season, and maybe here we can begin to go through a few, even if not in order.

            Not in order because I’ve been reading Danielle at GatherVictoria's piece on Doe a Deer, a Female Deer which is on the Reindeer. She points out that Santa’s winter reindeer are actually all females, for not only to female reindeer have horns, but they keep those wonderful cradling seats all year while the males loose theirs and it is they who guide the great sleigh not only of the shaman, but of the Goddess Beavi, the Winter Sun. The Sami, who live in that coldest part of the world are brilliant psychologists in the truest sense of the word and know that winter is the time of depression, isolation, where the wolf insanity is at the door. Offerings to this Goddess remember that she carries healing in her and the reindeer who bear her in their horns carry healing in those antlers.

            Last night I dwelt on the Winter Hag, Le Befana, the Baba Yaga, Frau Holle. Of course, their (Her) time is not only now. Her time is really just approaching. She is all of winter. LeBefana is the other side of the Goddess Strenia as Frau Holle is a face and phase of Freya and the Hag of he alluring Lady. All are faces of the bright Sun Saule or Beavi, for the ancients know that everything, especially the gods,  has more than one face, and even the rough face of a thing can contain beauty, power and blessing.

            But if, at this time, we see the difference faces of Devi, of Goddess, making peace, then there is also the differing face of the Ancestral Woman, our Human Mother. In other societies the link between Ancestress and Divinity is well known, but with us it is a little more covered up. The original mother is the mistakenly  called “sinful” Eve, the Mother of All. Say one of the saint’s liturgies, the Virgin Mary, greeted by the angel Gabriel, “Ave Maria” turns “Eva to Ave.” The luminous Virgin of Hope, the Mother of he new creation, and the old Eve who is said to have brought down a creation we never knew any other way, are the same.

Merry Christmas?!?

Firstly… testing, testing. Timothy Foster, are you out there?

Had to get that out of the way.

Tonight I was smoking, drinking coffee, lighting candles, shopping online and listening to Christmas music. While hearing Once in Royal David’s City, I was put in mind of the old lessons of church, the dour fear of Christmas and joy where we were told that this was Advent and we should be listening to Advent hymns, and concentrating on waiting for Jesus, not joyful celebrating. I remembered he very last church I was a member of, the liberal Episcopal one that was, in its way, much more dour than any Catholic church I’d ever attended. There the pastor who loved for things to revolve around him declared with a smile on his face that helped me to leave organized religion forever, that there would be no Christmas carols till Christmas, no decoration till Christmas. This was Advent.

But there are  few problems with this. One is the problem of theology. The old hymns point to a weighty and glorious mystery, and it is very much a mystery because churches do not approach it until the 25^th of Dccember and then we pack it away with Epiphany. Every Mass celebrates the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, but this suspect and pagan nativity, Christianity has always been uneasy with. The mystery of the Roebuck and Child is allowed in, tentatively, at the end of December, and quickly it is put away.

There is another problem with the winter mystery, and it is that a mystery is a living and eternal thing. Jesus does not only die on Good Friday and he does not only rise on Easter, and the things we are waiting for now, we will cease hoping for on the 25^th. The time to celebrate and rejoice in the mystery of Christmas is now. We cannot wait. There is no time to wait.

So I continue listening to those hymns.

Advent Begins

 

It was some time in early summer that the Witch Craft   sailed away from the common shore with Christianity, the most open western tradition, but as the summer turned to winter and we left 

Extraordinary Time, once again approached that old common shore, the time where we celebrate not only what other people celebrate, but where our altars look surprisingly like Christian altars and what we are doing is not so much the opposite or the extra of Christianity as something like a deeper faith. We pass Michaelmas and then come to Allantide, and now, after Thanksgiving, we sail into Holy Friday and the first Sunday of Lent, welcoming the Virgin, the Child and he Gift Giving Old Man to our altars. The Witch Craft touches familiar shore, and the carols casually sung take on deeper meaning. Red and green and green in the form of evergreen enter the house and we wait for the gifts and blessings of the Small Folk as we make our offerings.

But what is Advent? It is, as Shani Oates writes on her Clan of Tubal Cain page, the beginning of the Tide of Hope, and maybe that is the problem of it, problem in the old sense of the word, problem as riddle and challenge and mystery. At these times of the year when what I do is so close to what I once did, I am listening to an Anglican sermon where the priest is trying to figure out what Advent means. There is the problem of the fact that once Christians expected the emanate return of Jesus, and a return that had nothing to do with babies in mangers or Christmas trees. There is the problem of a hope that the whole world will be changed, its very nature, that God will show his fae and right wrongs and that we know this will not happen by the 25^th of December?

            That is the Christian problem of Advent, but what is he witchly problem? What is the witchly meaning? Decorating the altar, and singing the old tunes, watering an unloved sapling and setting it up in my apartment, I wondered, what is this all about? My heart feels hopeful? But what am I hoping for, and why do we are we suspicious of hope? The writer Ece Temelkuran declares that hope is not strong enough, that what is required is determination, and I think this is what we all fear, that hope is for children, that grown ups do more than hope, or that grown ups are over hope. We act. We are practical. We do not wait. We do not expect. The vague feeling of hope is not enough.

            But what these weeks tell us that this is not true, or rather, that if hope is not enough, then whatever is enough cannot exist without hope. Hope is the ground and beginning place, and of course it is for children, but this why this time of the year is the time of the Holy Child, and why the Virgin Mother invites us all to become that Child.

            Years ago, I said something and my mother asked me, “Who said that?” I said, “Jesus.” She shook her head, put down her cigarette and said, “I’m sorry, but he was wrong.”

            Jesus also said that in order to enter into the Kingdom of God, one must gain the heart of a child.”

            Advent is telling as that sometimes Jesus gets it right.

at allantide: conclusion

v.

This is the day of dead warriors. It’s changed its name so many times.

Before this war and the war before it was the feast of saint martin.

The end of allantide before the rest.

The holy final season of the year that winds out until the first old advent candle.

Sometimes it’s easier to talk to the living that the dead

Pass with me through this field of poppies,

here are those who finally earned the secret of silence

And it does not matter what comes tomorrow if we can stand in today.

I got up in darkness at six in the morning to keep two minutes silence,

and in those moments, shuffling from foot to foot to maintain half waking

balance, I remembered men who never left the war, whose minds were the war

houses, drugs and whores could not make them forget

remembered a man whose wife and his daughter were lost of his war

and the madness of the slaughter and how they aren’t here anymore.

In two minutes remember the forgotten

who did it for you,

who did it for you,

who did it for you.

On these days we are like Mary Magdalene,

gaunt and thin, turning over limbs

of branches, searching through headstones saying,

is this the body of my beloved?

where is my beloved?

I haven’t written to him I haven’t written to him because I gave

myself to him

I haven’t written to him, written to him, because writing cost

money,

and honey I can’t spend myself on those who wouldn’t spend

themselves on me

I lay under you in the dark room

I have myself to you in the sea hut

And now all you have for me is nothing.

The dog is in the kennel

The witch is in the well

I sit upon the sofa

And you sit in your cell

This is not the time to sit here sighing clinging to what wasn’t or

what never was

Eleven days ago we entered through the door of the half living,

with desperate lanterns and hopeful songs, across from us,

in a gate to the west, the dead came one by one,

and we thought we gave to them, and they knew they gave to us,

and now the giving is done, and hand and hand, we walk out of

the North Gate together

Every one has lived

And everyone has gone

And everyone will come again.

at allantide continued

iii.

Something in this cold day reminds me of sunlight in michigan city indiana,

reminds me of marching up and down one half hour to the beach to be

confronted by the silent scream of blue water and nothing to do but

be in its nothing, no distraction from the action of all of those mermaids,

all of their tails flapping, arms waving saying, this bitch is a liar, this bitch is a liar,

don’t trust her round fat ass or her check mark eyebrows,

this bitch is a liar and it was we who would see

that she never come here.

The river is fat and muscled, waves rolling into waves, satin and oil, copper

yellow and brown on allantide.

It flexes its liquid flesh, fuller than its been since springtime, thick and high

the shagwa opens its breast, takes in the sky and sends it back in muted shades,

oak leaves like little starry hands flap to fall on streets making yellow carpets

everywhere they meet,

carpets to milk and cookie the earth and water mud for the older year

turning the new year on the day of old souls as we slip candles into windows

and yellow flames in terra cotta pots lick the black night telling lost souls

to come in.

Old souls come in, kept souls come in, souls forgotten come in,

souls that are dim, all of them who help me here,

dragonish souls come in, grandmother come in,

i’ve got your cigarettes on the altar,

Linda come in, the boy who fell in the river come in.

Sit here and listen to the psalms, now, on the longest night,

remember all the songs.

bible verses from the book of Daniel.

Everything that passed passes through again,

by this spark of burning light I swear,

everything lost is found again.

You were eighteen and just a baby when you fell into

the winter water and like moses or elijah no one knows how

it happened, we thought we’d never find your body.

Just a baby, washed up, a boy under a bridge,

destined for so much, but reckoned for dead.

In this small space I hold the moment of your passing.

It isn’t mine to let go,

my letting goes are yet to come.

iv.

at allantide we arrive at the Eight Gated Castle, and it is the one

that can’t be seen. This is the mountainous mother, twirling and turning,

never seen on peaks or islands, but reached through them,

reached through the rivers and running under earth.

by hidden gates we leave the common world.

this is the Not World, the Un Season.

this is the birth of all of our births.

we want a world without seasons. That’s just a fact.  John for Jesus

and roses for snow.

But we know Christ was born in winter, and came to the frozen world

from the depths of a cave on the very back of a stag

from the house that overlooks the copper colored river she sees a gate

to Annwn, and in it all her forty years twisting out before her.

they untwist in the taste of whiskey on her lips, the smoke of the sacrifice

rising from the tip of her cigarette.

Her breasts are still full.

heavy on her chest they are her pleasure.

All her body is a pleasure and she thinks

It has taken twenty years to learn that

the lover I yearned for was really just

me wanting a distraction from becoming me,

I thought I would do that when he got here,

that he would take care of all those things or

better, that I would take care of him,

that finally I,

who didn’t want to live for myself,

could live for him

and put all of this away, but this life

is my baby and my husband and how do men hear this?

they don’t want to hear this,

my poetry, is the living with the eyes wide open.

Oh, lady who keeps my eyes wide open,

don’t let me drift back to the troubled sleep again,

the place of nightmares                         

let me be here on the edge, no matter what.

                          I can’t ever ask for anything better than that.