Wicca for Beginners (16 page)

The French kings often witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own hands. In 1648 Louis the Fourteenth, crowned with a wreath of roses and carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced at it and partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But this was the last occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer bonfire in Paris.
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Frazer, however, believed that Midsummer/Summer Solstice bonfires were not about kings but rather for protection against witches. A different legend has it that Louis banned Midsummer fires.

Whether the God gives way or maintains his position, at the Summer Solstice he stands at his highest point, and from there he can look backward at the months that have passed and forward to what will come. Because of this, some Wiccans believe that divination is especially effective at this solstice.

Like Beltane, the Summer Solstice is said to be one of the times of the year when the fairy court changes residence. Anyone who has ever seen fireflies flitting around on Midsummer night might believe this is true, and certainly Shakespeare thought there was enough connection between the fey and Midsummer to write an entire play about it.

Although they acknowledge the pregnant Goddess, Wiccan Summer Solstice rites tend to be geared toward the God. They usually include bonfires, even if they have to be tiny, contained, indoor ones, but if the Wiccans have the luxury of outdoor space and privacy, often they will dance around the fire. The mood of a Wiccan Midsummer right is like a raucous party tinged with the awareness that tomorrow is a darker, more serious day. Like Shakespeare’s fairy glamour, it brings a sense of gleeful but fleeting revelry.

The sabbat opposite the Summer Solstice is Yule—the Winter Solstice—December 21. Decorations for a seasonal Summer Solstice altar might include oak leaves, symbols of the sun, and flowers, especially roses or sunflowers.

August 1: Lammas, Lughnasadh

Wiccans sometimes refer to Lammas, or Lughnasadh, as the first of the three harvest festivals. In the Northern Hemisphere, at Lammas the first grains and fruits are harvested. Grain—wheat, corn, and barley—is one of the main symbols of this holiday. Wiccans give thanks for the bounty of the earth. Another important theme of this holiday is sacrifice; not human or animal sacrifice (remember, Wiccans don’t do either of these things!), but the knowledge that there is a price for everything, and one thing must be given up to allow for the birth of another.

The word Lammas is thought to be a corruption of the phrase “Loaf Mass,” which was a European celebration where bread was baked from the first crop of wheat. Wheat or grain is thought to be a symbol of the God, and some Wiccans mark Lammas as the death of the God; the time when he gives up his life force to sustain humanity and begins to descend to the underworld, from where he will later be reborn.

There are several legends about the European “sacred king” or “divine king” associated with this holiday. The basic idea is that “the king and the land are one.” The king is the representative of the people and the God, and the land is the Goddess. At Beltane, they join in order to create the fruits of the harvest, and at Lammas, the king/God dies in order to feed the people and start the cycle of rebirth.

It is an old idea that in times of famine, the king, as the people’s emissary, would be sacrificed in order to bring about the harvest. After all, if you want to appease the powers of nature, you don’t give up a weak person, you give up the strongest. Sometimes, if it was impossible or impractical to sacrifice the king, a noble man would be offered as a surrogate. As I mentioned in chapter 1, Dr. Margaret Murray and others, including Gerald Gardner, hypothesized that this legend has been played out over and over again by real kings in British history. They thought that royal blood had been spilled to defend England against the Spanish Armada and that Thomas à Becket had been a surrogate for a sacred king. In one of his books, Gardner even writes about England’s witches gathering for a huge ritual during World War II to repel Hitler. In his account, they magically sent Hitler the message “You can not come,” and they expended so much energy in the ritual that some of the older witches died as a result. There is a novel called
Lammas Night
by Katherine Kurtz that contains a fanciful “history” about the British divine king, and the cheesy-but-great Wiccan must-see movie
The Wicker Man
(1973)
covers some of the same territory, although inexplicably it is set at Beltane instead of Lammas. (If you rent this, get the British version and not the chopped-up American version edited by Roger Corman.)

Whether this sacred king stuff is true is more than questionable, and Gardner and Murray have been criticized endlessly for propagating it. Nevertheless, it is woven into the folklore and symbolism of Lammas. At Lammas, and at Loaf Mass, bread was sometimes baked into the shape of a man and torn apart to symbolize the sacrifice of the divine sacred king or his surrogate. Some Wiccans carry on this tradition in their Lammas rituals. Others prefer the symbolism of John Barleycorn. There are several old folk songs personifying the barley as John Barleycorn and honoring his demise and rebirth as beer. Certainly, beer is more fun at a Lammas sabbat than a loaf of bread.

The other common Wiccan name for this sabbat, Lughnasadh, means something like “the games of Lugh” or “the festival of Lugh.” Lugh was the Celtic god of light and the sun, and he carried a magic spear. Competition and games, both associated with Lugh, are common at this sabbat.

Lammas is generally a happy sabbat, but it is tinged with the knowledge of death and the coming darkness. What we enjoy at the harvest comes at a price; the death of the seed means life for all of us. All of the sabbats mark changing points in the year, but transformation is highlighted at Lammas.

Lammas is opposite Imbolc on the wheel of the year. At Imbolc, Wiccans celebrate the potential of the light and the God, and at Lammas they enjoy the fruits of that potential.

Decorations for a seasonal Lammas altar might include bread, wheat or wheat weavings, beer, or a sickle.

September 21: Fall Equinox, Mabon

Many Wiccans celebrate the Fall Equinox as the second of three harvests. The sense of winter approaching is keener, and once again day and night are equal, but this time light is giving way to darkness.

Mabon is the Welsh god of music, sometimes called “the divine youth,” and there is a lot of speculation about how his name became associated with this sabbat. Personally, I do not know what the real answer to that is, but I have included the name here because if you hang out with Wiccans long enough, you’re bound to hear it.

Some Wiccans celebrate the Fall Equinox as the time when either the Goddess or the God descends to the underworld. There are many underworld myths and legends from around the world. One of the most famous is the Greek story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. There are many variations on this myth, but the gist of it is that Hades, god of the underworld, abducts Persephone to be his queen, and Demeter, goddess of the grain, blights the earth and will not allow anything to grow until Persephone is returned to her. But while she is in the underworld, Persephone eats some pomegranate seeds. Whoever eats anything in the underworld has to stay there (this goes for the fairy realms too, in case you ever find yourself there), but because the world is suffering under the blight, the gods work out a deal where Persephone will stay in the underworld for either three or six months (one for each seed she ate) and return to earth for the remainder of the year. When Persephone returns to earth, she has changed because she has experienced death, so Wiccans see her as a symbol of transformation and wisdom. Many Wiccans include pomegranates in their Fall Equinox ceremonies in honor of Persephone.

One of the aspects of the Wiccan God is that he is the king of the dead, and at this holiday some Wiccans believe he takes up that crown. Others believe he does so at Lammas or Samhain.

Still others mark the Fall Equinox with festivals to Dionysus or Bacchus, the Greek and Roman gods of the grape and wine. Dionysus is often depicted covered in grape leaves. Wine is a symbol of blood, sacrifice, and youth, and Dionysus represents all of these things, as well as transformation and ecstasy. Festivals to Dionysus, called “Dionysia,” often included frenzied dancing and drinking, and Dionysus was known as a god of fertility and fecundity. In some myths, his female followers, the maenads, were said to leave regular society and live wild in the woods, where they tore to pieces any man who dared set foot in their vicinity. At the Fall Equinox, some Wiccans make wine to honor Dionysus, and others just drink the wine and enjoy a little raucous Dionysia of their own.

As I already mentioned, the sabbat opposite the Fall Equinox on the wheel is the Spring Equinox. At the Spring Equinox, the God, like the sun, is rising in his power, and at the Fall Equinox he is weakening or dying. Like on the Spring Equinox, Wiccans stop at the Fall Equinox and mark the day of balance, knowing that it is fleeting and powerful.

Decorations for a seasonal Fall Equinox altar might include pomegranates, grapes and grapevines, fall leaves, antlers, and cornstalks.

October 31: Samhain, Halloween

Most Wiccans refer to Halloween as Samhain, pronounced “sow-en.” There was a crazy idea proposed by a nineteenth-century folklorist and picked up by several authors since that Samhain (or Sam Hain) is actually the name of the Celtic god of the dead, and some fundamentalist Christians (particularly the makers of Christian comic tracts who equate “god of the dead” with “Satan”) perpetuate this argument. However, the word
Samhain
is really Irish for “November”—nothing fancy or occult about it at all.

Many Wiccans will tell you that Samhain is their favorite holiday, if only because they can walk among “normal” people without sticking out quite as much as they do the rest of the year. On Samhain, Wiccans believe that the otherworld is close at hand, so the beloved dead (and the not-so-beloved ones too) can cross over to visit the living. Some Wiccans think of Samhain as the Wiccan New Year, and some think of it as the third and final harvest.

In older days, Samhain was the time in the Northern Hemisphere when weaker animals were culled from a herd and killed, both to feed people during the winter and also so that feed could be conserved and used for the strongest animals. This is one of the reasons this holiday has such an association with blood and death. Blood, of course, represents the line of ancestry, and Wiccans welcome the return of their dead on Samhain. Many Wiccans create ancestor altars and rituals to encourage the spirits of their loved ones to return. Some prepare plates of food to leave out for the dead, and others conduct “dumb suppers,” which are meals held entirely in silence, with a chair and plate of food set at the table for the dead.

This is another one of those nights when the fey are said to change residence. Many Samhain stories about the fey center around the wild hunt. The wild hunt is a procession of fairies through the sky, accompanied by the dead, those humans stuck in the land of the fey, and other spectral beings, all riding on animals. Some Wiccans believe that the fey are simply witches on “the other side.” The wild hunt is led by the God in some stories, and sometimes by the Goddess. As I mentioned before, one of the aspects of the Wiccan God is the lord of the dead, so it seems fitting that he would lead the hunt.

As the lord of the dead, the God resides in the underworld, waiting to receive the souls of the dead and ready them for rebirth. The Goddess is bereft of the God at this time, but she is also pregnant with the future God. Some Wiccans believe that the Goddess is in her crone or wise-woman phase at Samhain. The energy of this sabbat is turned inward, and during this time Wiccans enter a more reflective part of the year where they rest and wait for the rebirth of the God at Yule and later the spark of life at Imbolc.

Since, as Wiccans are fond of saying, on Samhain “the veil between the worlds is thin,” it is a great time for divination. Although the association with Halloween and divination has been around for centuries, it grew considerably during the Victorian era, when young women in particular would use various crazy methods to try to determine whom they would marry. They would peel an apple all in one piece, throw the peel over their shoulder, and look for their love’s initial to be spelled out in it, or roast chestnuts over a fire, giving each the name of a potential suitor and seeing which one popped first. Most Wiccans don’t do these things, but they do whip out the tarot cards or the astrology charts around Samhain. If it is the Wiccan New Year, it’s a good time to look ahead.

Most Wiccans embrace the secular trappings of Halloween as much as everyone else; the costumes, the parties, the pumpkins, the sweets, and the love of a good scare. Some Wiccans are offended by the image of the green-faced, pointy-hatted witch that flies by on her broom this time of year, but others celebrate her as a symbol of the survival of pagan tradition and feminine power. The green face represents, among other things, fertility (not sea sickness), as does the broom, and some see the pointy hat as a symbol of power.

Samhain and its opposite sabbat, Beltane, form the polarity of sex and death—the beginning and end of life. At Beltane in the British Isles, people would drive their cattle between two bonfires to enhance their fertility; at Samhain some of those cattle were slaughtered for the winter. At Beltane, the God and Goddess unite; at Samhain they are separated by death. Samhain has a serious, solemn element to it, but it is also a joyful time of games, memories, and reunion with those who have gone before.