Mabon

 

 

In Young Tradition, the Eight Feasts are Eight Times. Mabon is the first day of Mabon. The High Feast last three days, the low feast is the first eleven and all contained in them, and the month and a half part of the year after that feast is Mabon as well.

And this is all interesting, but ....so what? The motif of the abducted son is one we haven't looked at much and we could do to move east. Adonis, who we are always brining up here on Young Tradtion, is far more than an obscure tale told by Ovid, the lover of Aprhoditie and Persephone. As stated earlier, he and Hades (whose proper name is Aidoneus) were probably originally the same. making Adonis God of fertility, love, desire, and death and the afterlife. And the name Adonis, like the name Freyr, means Lord. It is connected with the Hebrew Adonai, and yes, it is possible that once upon a time he might have been the Hebrew Adonai, also known as God. 

Adonis and Aphrodite are an eastern story that has been brought into the Greek world. Adonis is conceived in an inconveniet way and his mother turned into a myrrh tree. The Goddess Aphrodite, opens the tree and removes him from it, thus he is,  like Aengus, born from nature and like Pryderi and Aengus, separated from his mother. But in the Levant and Mesopotamia where their story originates, Aprhodite is Ishtar and then Inanna, and the proper name of Adonis is Tammus or Damuzi, both which mean, Young Son, or Flawless Young.

This Young Son is the fullness of a spring, life and love, and what is more, given the way the world is and always has been, the fullness of a spring and glory that is only in our heads, to which we only aspire and continue to long for. He is the Young Lord who is separated from us and from his Mother, but it is unclear if he is separated by death and possible death and dismemberment, or by abduction, or by all three. All three figure in the various stories. What is certain is that he is restored. Adonis is not simply killed, he is lord of the dead and returns to the world of the living. Pryderi is restored to his mother and his rightful life. Aengus comes into his power and keeps company with his mother. It is not even certain if at this time we lament the Young God's passing, or we rejoice at his return, but what is certain, and what we are being told at Mabon is that those things which are lost will be restored. Lord of the Above and of the Below, Shine on us at this time and reveal unto us the mystery of restoration.