Deiseal vs Widdershins

Deiseal - circumambulation with the object at your male right hand (aka "clockwise" and "deosil") as e-ample - http://www.deiseal.net/

Widdershins - circumambulation with the object (God forbid!) at your female left hand (aka "counter-clockwise") as e-ample - http://www.widdershins.org/

Eucharistic Musings for Christmas Day

From the 25th Chapter of the Gospel of Saint Matthew in plain King James' English - so that the "Current Occupant" (cf: Garrison Keillor) and his prosperity "Christians" ("our riches are proof of our goodness, your poverty is proof of your evil") can read between their bites of goose and ham on today's ancient "holy day" - let those with ears, hear:

"[31] When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:[32] And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:[33] And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

"[34] Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:[35] For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:[36] Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

"[37] Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?[38] When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?[39] Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?[40] And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

"[41] Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:[42] For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:[43] I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

"[44] Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?[45] Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

"[46] And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."

Sorry, GWB - but some light Christmas reading for your new Year might be useful.

Solstice Greenman

If studying maypoles, one should build and site maypoles. If studying the greenman, it follows that one should become a greenman. Happy Solstice! Greenmen everywhere - and Greenwomen as well.

"Boldness has genius...and magic in it."

Oft credited in its entirety to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - the good Frater's favorite quote. Thank you, William Hutchinson Murray (b:18 March 1913 - d:19 March 1996)

"This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth - the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans - that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'"

-W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951.
- quoted "couplets" from J. W. von Goethe in Faust, 214-30 based on John Anster's "very free translation".

Wreathed Pine Trees in Rome - 204 BC to 420 AD

Tis the Season for the daring who are able to leap into the second layer of mythic onion in a single bound - an earlier "Christmas tree" - notice any interesting parallels? - the decorated pine tree with celibate celebrants (sorry!) in "woman's clothing" waiting to be "saved by the Blood" on Vatican's (pre-Christian) Hill?? Hmmm!? OK, it's not a "Christmas" tree, it's an "Easter" tree - no rabbit; yes bull.

From Sir James George Frazer's (1854–1941), The Golden Bough published in 1922 - Chapter 34 The Myth and Ritual of Attis cf: the newer and more scholarly "Cybele and Attis" by Maarten J. Vermaseren, London: Thames & Hudson, 1977, isbn 0500250545

"ANOTHER of those gods whose supposed death and resurrection struck such deep roots into the faith and ritual of Western Asia is Attis. He was to Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears to have been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection were annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The legends and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the ancients themselves sometimes identified them. Attis was said to have been a fair young shepherd or herdsman beloved by Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, a great Asiatic goddess of fertility, who had her chief home in Phrygia. Some held that Attis was her son. His birth, like that of many other heroes, is said to have been miraculous. His mother, Nana, was a virgin, who conceived by putting a ripe almond or a pomegranate in her bosom. Indeed in the Phrygian cosmogony an almond figured as the father of all things, perhaps because its delicate lilac blossom is one of the first heralds of the spring, appearing on the bare boughs before the leaves have opened. Such tales of virgin mothers are relics of an age of childish ignorance when men had not yet recognized the intercourse of the sexes as the true cause of offspring. Two different accounts of the death of Attis were current. According to the one he was killed by a boar, like Adonis. According to the other he unmanned himself under a pine-tree, and bled to death on the spot. The latter is said to have been the local story told by the people of Pessinus, a great seat of the worship of Cybele, and the whole legend of which the story forms a part is stamped with a character of rudeness and savagery that speaks strongly for its antiquity. Both tales might claim the support of custom, or rather both were probably invented to explain certain customs observed by the worshippers. The story of the self-mutilation of Attis is clearly an attempt to account for the self-mutilation of his priests, who regularly castrated themselves on entering the service of the goddess. The story of his death by the boar may have been told to explain why his worshippers, especially the people of Pessinus, abstained from eating swine. In like manner the worshippers of Adonis abstained from pork, because a boar had killed their god. After his death Attis is said to have been changed into a pine-tree.

"The worship of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods was adopted by the Romans in 204 B.C. towards the close of their long struggle with Hannibal. For their drooping spirits had been opportunely cheered by a prophecy, alleged to be drawn from that convenient farrago of nonsense, the Sibylline Books, that the foreign invader would be driven from Italy if the great Oriental goddess were brought to Rome. Accordingly ambassadors were despatched to her sacred city Pessinus in Phrygia. The small black stone which embodied the mighty divinity was entrusted to them and conveyed to Rome, where it was received with great respect and installed in the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill. It was the middle of April when the goddess arrived, and she went to work at once. For the harvest that year was such as had not been seen for many a long day, and in the very next year Hannibal and his veterans embarked for Africa. As he looked his last on the coast of Italy, fading behind him in the distance, he could not foresee that Europe, which had repelled the arms, would yet yield to the gods, of the Orient. The vanguard of the conquerors had already encamped in the heart of Italy before the rearguard of the beaten army fell sullenly back from its shores.

"We may conjecture, though we are not told, that the Mother of the Gods brought with her the worship of her youthful lover or son to her new home in the West. Certainly the Romans were familiar with the Galli, the emasculated priests of Attis, before the close of the Republic. These unsexed beings, in their Oriental costume, with little images suspended on their breasts, appear to have been a familiar sight in the streets of Rome, which they traversed in procession, carrying the image of the goddess and chanting their hymns to the music of cymbals and tambourines, flutes and horns, while the people, impressed by the fantastic show and moved by the wild strains, flung alms to them in abundance, and buried the image and its bearers under showers of roses. A further step was taken by the Emperor Claudius when he incorporated the Phrygian worship of the sacred tree, and with it probably the orgiastic rites of Attis, in the established religion of Rome. The great spring festival of Cybele and Attis is best known to us in the form in which it was celebrated at Rome; but as we are informed that the Roman ceremonies were also Phrygian, we may assume that they differed hardly, if at all, from their Asiatic original. The order of the festival seems to have been as follows.

"On the twenty-second day of March, a pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a great divinity. The duty of carrying the sacred tree was entrusted to a guild of Tree-bearers. The trunk was swathed like a corpse with woollen bands and decked with wreaths of violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis, as roses and anemones from the blood of Adonis; and the effigy of a young man, doubtless Attis himself, was tied to the middle of the stem. On the second day of the festival, the twenty-third of March, the chief ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets. The third day, the twenty-fourth of March, was known as the Day of Blood: the Archigallus or highpriest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. Nor was he alone in making this bloody sacrifice. Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, until, rapt into a frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood. The ghastly rite probably formed part of the mourning for Attis and may have been intended to strengthen him for the resurrection. The Australian aborigines cut themselves in like manner over the graves of their friends for the purpose, perhaps, of enabling them to be born again. Further, we may conjecture, though we are not expressly told, that it was on the same Day of Blood and for the same purpose that the novices sacrificed their virility. Wrought up to the highest pitch of religious excitement they dashed the severed portions of themselves against the image of the cruel goddess. These broken instruments of fertility were afterwards reverently wrapt up and buried in the earth or in subterranean chambers sacred to Cybele, where, like the offering of blood, they may have been deemed instrumental in recalling Attis to life and hastening the general resurrection of nature, which was then bursting into leaf and blossom in the vernal sunshine. Some confirmation of this conjecture is furnished by the savage story that the mother of Attis conceived by putting in her bosom a pomegranate sprung from the severed genitals of a man-monster named Agdestis, a sort of double of Attis.

"If there is any truth in this conjectural explanation of the custom, we can readily understand why other Asiatic goddesses of fertility were served in like manner by eunuch priests. These feminine deities required to receive from their male ministers, who personated the divine lovers, the means of discharging their beneficent functions: they had themselves to be impregnated by the life-giving energy before they could transmit it to the world. Goddesses thus ministered to by eunuch priests were the great Artemis of Ephesus and the great Syrian Astarte of Hierapolis, whose sanctuary, frequented by swarms of pilgrims and enriched by the offerings of Assyria and Babylonia, of Arabia and Phoenicia, was perhaps in the days of its glory the most popular in the East. Now the unsexed priests of this Syrian goddess resembled those of Cybele so closely that some people took them to be the same. And the mode in which they dedicated themselves to the religious life was similar. The greatest festival of the year at Hierapolis fell at the beginning of spring, when multitudes thronged to the sanctuary from Syria and the regions round about. While the flutes played, the drums beat, and the eunuch priests slashed themselves with knives, the religious excitement gradually spread like a wave among the crowd of onlookers, and many a one did that which he little thought to do when he came as a holiday spectator to the festival. For man after man, his veins throbbing with the music, his eyes fascinated by the sight of the streaming blood, flung his garments from him, leaped forth with a shout, and seizing one of the swords which stood ready for the purpose, castrated himself on the spot. Then he ran through the city, holding the bloody pieces in his hand, till he threw them into one of the houses which he passed in his mad career. The household thus honoured had to furnish him with a suit of female attire and female ornaments, which he wore for the rest of his life. When the tumult of emotion had subsided, and the man had come to himself again, the irrevocable sacrifice must often have been followed by passionate sorrow and lifelong regret. This revulsion of natural human feeling after the frenzies of a fanatical religion is powerfully depicted by Catullus in a celebrated poem.

"The parallel of these Syrian devotees confirms the view that in the similar worship of Cybele the sacrifice of virility took place on the Day of Blood at the vernal rites of the goddess, when the violets, supposed to spring from the red drops of her wounded lover, were in bloom among the pines. Indeed the story that Attis unmanned himself under a pine-tree was clearly devised to explain why his priests did the same beside the sacred violet-wreathed tree at his festival. At all events, we can hardly doubt that the Day of Blood witnessed the mourning for Attis over an effigy of him which was afterwards buried. The image thus laid in the sepulchre was probably the same which had hung upon the tree. Throughout the period of mourning the worshippers fasted from bread, nominally because Cybele had done so in her grief for the death of Attis, but really perhaps for the same reason which induced the women of Harran to abstain from eating anything ground in a mill while they wept for Tammuz. To partake of bread or flour at such a season might have been deemed a wanton profanation of the bruised and broken body of the god. Or the fast may possibly have been a preparation for a sacramental meal.

"But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the god was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave. On the morrow, the twenty-fifth day of March, which was reckoned the vernal equinox, the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of glee. At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the form of a carnival. It was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria). A universal licence prevailed. Every man might say and do what he pleased. People went about the streets in disguise. No dignity was too high or too sacred for the humblest citizen to assume with impunity. In the reign of Commodus a band of conspirators thought to take advantage of the masquerade by dressing in the uniform of the Imperial Guard, and so, mingling with the crowd of merrymakers, to get within stabbing distance of the emperor. But the plot miscarried. Even the stern Alexander Severus used to relax so far on the joyous day as to admit a pheasant to his frugal board. The next day, the twenty-sixth of March, was given to repose, which must have been much needed after the varied excitements and fatigues of the preceding days. Finally, the Roman festival closed on the twenty-seventh of March with a procession to the brook Almo. The silver image of the goddess, with its face of jagged black stone, sat in a waggon drawn by oxen. Preceded by the nobles walking barefoot, it moved slowly, to the loud music of pipes and tambourines, out by the Porta Capena, and so down to the banks of the Almo, which flows into the Tiber just below the walls of Rome. There the high-priest, robed in purple, washed the waggon, the image, and the other sacred objects in the water of the stream. On returning from their bath, the wain and the oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers. All was mirth and gaiety. No one thought of the blood that had flowed so lately. Even the eunuch priests forgot their wounds.

"Such, then, appears to have been the annual solemnisation of the death and resurrection of Attis in spring. But besides these public rites, his worship is known to have comprised certain secret or mystic ceremonies, which probably aimed at bringing the worshipper, and especially the novice, into closer communication with his god. Our information as to the nature of these mysteries and the date of their celebration is unfortunately very scanty, but they seem to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood. In the sacrament the novice became a partaker of the mysteries by eating out of a drum and drinking out of a cymbal, two instruments of music which figured prominently in the thrilling orchestra of Attis. The fast which accompanied the mourning for the dead god may perhaps have been designed to prepare the body of the communicant for the reception of the blessed sacrament by purging it of all that could defile by contact the sacred elements. In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with devout eagerness by the worshipper on every part of his person and garments, till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows as one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of the bull. For some time afterwards the fiction of a new birth was kept up by dieting him on milk like a new-born babe. The regeneration of the worshipper took place at the same time as the regeneration of his god, namely at the vernal equinox. At Rome the new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of bull’s blood appear to have been carried out above all at the sanctuary of the Phrygian goddess on the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the great basilica of St. Peter’s now stands; for many inscriptions relating to the rites were found when the church was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609. From the Vatican as a centre this barbarous system of superstition seems to have spread to other parts of the Roman empire. Inscriptions found in Gaul and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their ritual on that of the Vatican. From the same source we learn that the testicles as well as the blood of the bull played an important part in the ceremonies. Probably they were regarded as a powerful charm to promote fertility and hasten the new birth."

Crown of Thorns, Page Two

Crown of thorns in Arvada, Colorado. (We are only the messenger.)

Crown of Thorns, Page One

Barbara Walker, 1983, page 962 - "Svayamvara was the ceremony of bridegroom-choosing by the queens of pre-Vedic (2700 -1500 BC) India where the queen embodied the Virgin Kali who chose Shiva, the Condemned One, as her consort, casting over his head a wreath of flowers representing her yoni enveloping his lingam. [The wreath was her own genital symbol; the god's "head" was his. (pg.311)] In the role of sacred king he would die in his mating, like a penis, and his bridal wreath would become the funeral wreath laid on his grave." Barbara Walker, "Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets", Harper Collins, 1983

Boots/posts to Crowns/thorns

So, our farmer hangs rubber tires on metal posts - why? - does it feel like the "right" thing to do? Commercial offerings of "wreath stands" - the "right thing to sell"? Christmas Wreath on a municipal lamp post on a bridge - the "right city thing". Colorful wreath hung on a stake over a California grave - staves off sadness?!

I am told that the mental exercise of bringing "water to a fish" or "ice to an Eskimo" (or spirituality to a Christian) is a logical impossibility - ie, becasue no one can step outside of ourselves to make that examination. But when we insist on a dogma - whose ancient origins we have never thought to question - such dogma by which its believing causes, no REQUIRES, the present and future death and destruction of fellow humans - then, at least, we in the fringe, can attempt to discuss "water with the fishes".

Tis the season for transition - our second motif - "crown of thorns" - "rings of stones" - "vagina dentata" - vulvas made up with phalli - see next posts.

The Knee - To 'KNOW' or not to 'know'

From a friend: "To quote my son, 'I'm a militant agnostic': 'I don't know and YOU DON'T KNOW EITHER!!'" So, to KNOW or not to know, is this the Question?

Last night's reading- art historian Carl Schuster's amazing "Patterns That Connect", isbn 0810963264, page 190-3, "Legitimation: Return to the Male Womb"-

"The word for 'knee' is used in kinship terminology thoughout many languages, including all or most Indo-European languages. . .for ideas like 'degree of kinship' or 'generation'. . .and can be traced back to the homonymy of two Indo-European roots: the nominal root *g'en for the 'knee' and the verbal root *g'en-, which seems to mean 'beget'."

"The homonymy of these roots leads to such correspondences as that between the Latin 'genu' for 'knee' and 'genus' for 'decent'. [The Greek writer] Euripideas refers to knees as 'generative members' and the knee was commonly refered to as the seat of paternity."

This last quote of Schuster's is as close in this essay as he gets to suggesting that the 'knee', 'thigh' and 'foot' are phallic euphemisms. - see my earlier blog:

(Though Schuster does later quote Hebrews 7.10 "He was yet in the loins of his FATHER when Melchisedek met him" and also mentions that "the Hebrew word for 'blessing' derives from the Hebrew word for 'knee', as in Jeremiah 1.5".)

But Schuster does continues to a very interesting observation: "The Indo-European verbal root *g'en-, meaning 'to beget' (Latin 'gigno') is used to designate exclusively the parental role of the father, not that of the mother. This has been explained in terms of what appears to be a THIRD homonymous root of *g'en-, meaning 'to know' (Latin 'gnosco')."

Then - could it be argued by 'linguisical' relationships - that the desire 'to know' and let others know you know, is 'rooted' in the phallic 'knee' - rooted in that compensation desire/construct where the need to "know" is akin to the need to run out and buy that Corvette or pickup truck or big gun.  That is, deciding 'to KNOW' something will make one feel more like a 'REAL' man - a real fundamental MAN!  A fearless and secure MAN. And conversely, those "agnostics" (even if this is a one word oxymoron) - are the "no knowing" and "weak-kneed" (anti-penis) sissy men loose on the deck - so can we have "militant agnostics"? not "hardly"!  (Sorry, too many puns!).

Did we mention "genuflect"? - "to bend the 'knee' in worship of the Divine" - Ouch!!  Unless ofcourse, it turns out that Divine is Feminine, then 'bend' the 'knee' might mean. . .hmmm?

"May the Lord add His 'Blessing' (ie His 'Knee') to the reading of His Word."