O Sacred Head

At the end of August comes the Passion of Saint John the Baptist, the commemoration of the beheading of the Forerunner of the Morn. The month of Lammas is a time of transition associated with the sacrifice of the protecting god, the God in the Grain who is cut to feed the earth. This is the time of the Wicker Man upon whom old sins and ailments are placed before burning. We have built the Wicker Man. We have taken him to the water. We have burned him, we have struggled through our demons and continue to do so. To the Irish Lammas was the Telltown where they celebrated the funeral games of Tieltui. The Lady is not the sun, but the foster mother of the Lugh, the Shining One who represents the sun light. She is the Lady of the most ancient race of gods, and she cleared the land of trees to provide farmland for the people that they might not starve. Some say she died of exhaustions, others that she was the Green Woman, and in cutting the trees cut down her own power. Either way Tieltiu gives her life.

The Mother who gives herself as sustenance shows her face as the Corn Mother in the Americas, she who demanded to be dragged across the earth until her blood and bones became corn and tobacco to feed her stariving children. So this time of the year is the time of the Life giver, the one who loses their body and gives up their life, most often seen in the removal and veneration of the Sacred Head.

The story of John the Baptist’s beheading is fairly simple. It is sad, but more than sad it is a symbol. John is the Green Man. He Gran Bwa, the Great Forest, as Tieltiu is the Green Lady. He allows Gawain to behead him and then places his head back on. He is a symbol of the power of the Sacred Head, the Sacred Head surrounded or so wounded.

To some witches, the Green Man is also a symbol of Cain, and the skull amidst growing plants is Cain the first farmer. But if we are dealing with biblical figures and Ancestors, then it is wise to remember that Adam and Eve, who give up immortality and innocence to engender the human race, human life and time including the wheel of life and death are the original Green Mother and Green Father. Christ, the second Adam, is incidentally viewed by Mary Magdalene as a gardener in the garden where he was buried, and here there is also a symbol to contemplate, the Gardener who gardens himself, raising the seed of his new life from his dead corpse.

 In India, the Sacred Head is Chinnamasta, the Hindu and Tibetan deity who cheerfully chops off her own head, sacrificing herself to give to all her children, who feeds us with the blood gushing from her throat like a fountain. Not only had she lost her head, but we must lose our heads in order to enter this mystery in joy rather than repulsion. This beheading is also the secret of Medusa, not that she is monstrosity, but rather that she is mortality, a Goddess offering, her own sacred head surrounded and sore wounded. Yes, to enter into this mystery of life giving, we have to lose our own heads as well. The Princess of Swords in the Tarot deck is Salome, and the head she holds is not only John’s but our own. Today, at this sacred time, may the God who gives his head and the Goddess who gives her life bathe us in this mystery.