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