June brides were a pop song cliché when I was young. But it wasn’t just because June rhymed with Moon. It is a very ancient custom. People tended to get married in June for centuries because in the old days when Beltane was celebrated as the beginning of summer in May, that month was the month in which the god and goddess were wed and conceived the divine child to be born at Yule, nine months later. (See my posting Hooray! Hooray! The first of May…Beltane 4/27/2007).
Every pagan knows about that connection. People then didn’t want to compete with the deities, and marry in May, bad luck at least and great misfortune at worst. So they waited until June to follow the marriage example. And June 21, the Summer Solstice was treated by them as Midsummer, not the beginning of summer.
As a major event in the cycle of the year this day has many names. Going through the alphabet we have: Alban Heflin, Alben Heruin, All-couples day, Feast of Epona, Feast of St. John the Baptist, Feill-Sheathain, Gathering Day, Johannistag, Litha, Midsummer, Rising Day, Sonnwend, Thing-Tide, Vestalia and many others.
John the Baptist is there for the usual reason, the Church adopted the pre-Christian pagan festivals, renamed them, and then invented reasons why for their followers.
As a bit of connect-the-dots religious trivia note that the feast day of St. John the Baptist was set as June 24, a few days after the Summer Solstice. It is probably the oldest feast in both the Greek and Latin liturgies to honour a saint. Those interested in saint’s days will notice that this day is called the birthday of John the Baptist. Most other saint’s days are observed on the day of their death. The Church points out that this John was filled with the Holy Ghost from the day of his birth, so his birthday is a day of triumph. How it knows this is not explained.
You will probably notice that his birthday is a couple of days after the pagan festival, just as Christmas is a few days after the pagan celebrated Winter Solstice at Yule.
The same Church that organized the dates of Easter so that it could never occur on the same dates as Passover, would certainly take care that there would be no exact equivalence among the pagan and Church observances, if it could be avoided.
I have gone into the differences between the lunar calendar of the Temple priests and the solar calendar of the Essenes, in my book Who was Jesus really? As I consider that both John and Jesus were members of the Essenes who held their Passovers at different times from the Temple calendar, it forms an important factor in explaining the problems about keeping the religious Law in the gospel stories of the crucifixion.
Recent archaeological work at Qumran, the Essene headquarters has shown that what the first investigators assumed to be a dining room turns out to be a solar temple. The altar on the back wall is illuminated by the rising sun on the day of the Solstice. “I am the Light of the world.” may have a deeper, or at least an extra meaning now.
In Europe, the Summer Solstice was always associated with the constant warfare between the Oak king and the Holly king, the Light and the Darkness. The Solstice was the pinnacle of the power of the Oak king. Every day after that his power decreased, and that of the Holly king increased until the Winter Solstice, when the Holly king’s power began to diminish as the days became longer.
At the Autumn equinox their powers were equal, since the duration of the light was equal to that of the dark. There are dozens of stories referring to this cycle of the year. Every religion whatever their pantheons had a story referring to this continuous struggle between the Light and the Darkness.
Wiccans and Druids everywhere will be celebrating the day as one of their Sabbats. The sacred name involved is Jack in the Green. You have probably seen pictures of the Green Man looking out from a halo of leaves, they are even sold in plant nursery stores round here. The Church countered with a picture of John the Baptist with unkempt hair.
Some Wiccans accept the name Litha given to the day by Adrian Kelly in the 1970’s. He apparently took it from the Saxon name for the period of the year.
Here in the U.S.A. there is not likely to be much publicity about their ceremonies, unless there’s a violent incident, or an influential fundamentalist gets a hearing to berate them. But, as in many other ways, things are different in Canada. Here Wiccans are only likely to get noticed, if at all, around Hallowe’en, but there Wiccan activities are considered to be newsworthy.
There is a Wiccan Church of Canada, started in 1979 and based in Toronto. It is different from many other Wiccan groups in that it holds public rituals, though membership as usual is an initiatory affair. The Wiccan Church of Canada will hold a public Solstice ritual in Toronto. Others will be held in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec. Canada has lots of people in the Craft and they are not routinely denigrated by government officials, police or armed services, as happens here.
And by a very clever piece of calendar work Canada holds a National Aboriginal Day, to celebrate native cultural achievements, and holds it on the Solstice. Many aboriginal groups choose this day to celebrate their heritage. The aboriginal celebrations take place across the country and there is even an aboriginal TV network APTN that will give a full day’s coverage including aboriginal music. Can you even imagine that happening here? If not, examine why not.
The Ojibwa Indians in Canada treat this day as their ancestors did, as a time for sacred rituals including prayers for healing medicine, good crops and a good harvest, just as European pagans did before Christianity. In Ojibwa it is known as Rising Day. The APTN people regard it, they say, rather as Martin Luther King day in the the U.S.A.
Maybe Canada soon, and America in a century or so, will acknowledge that all life, even that of elected officials, actually depends on the cycle of the year, and the day will be a national holiday.
Everybody probably knows that there will be a Midsummer Day festival at Stonehenge in England. The stones are known to be arranged so that there is a line up of significant stones with the rising sun on the Solstice. The neo-Druids will do their stuff and it will be in the papers and on TV. Such stone symbols of the importance of the Sun in past cultures are found all over the world.
In Vermont there is a natural amphitheatre about 20 acres in area. There are rocks around the perimeter. The stones are arranged to demonstrate the solstices and the equinoxes. This site was called Calendar One by its modern discoverers.
The Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming is one of many such sites in the high plains of the Rocky Mountain range. It has a small external cairn of stones that lines up with the central cairn and the rising sun at the Solstice. There are other external cairns that definitely have been placed to line up the centre cairn with dawn rising stars such as Rigel, Sirius, and Aldeberan. Those ancient peoples noticed things, and knew that life was a series of cycles.
Back briefly to other matters that illustrate the importance of the Solstice before going on to the possible Harry Potter connection with the Wheel of the Year.
At this time of the year, in the story in ancient Egyptian mythology, the solar deity Horus, the god of the Sun got the upper hand of his uncle, Set, the Egyptian Lord of darkness and evil. This is another parable of light and darkness, death and rebirth.
Because of this Horus victory the Nile began to flood, bringing fertility back to the banks of the Nile. This day, around June 23, became, and still is, the beginning of the Egyptian New Year, thousands of years after the start of the celebrations.
Associated too with this time of the year was the star Sirius which appears around this time and shines directly down one of the shafts cut in the Great Pyramid, into the so-called King’s Chamber. Sirius is associated too with the goddess Isis and the god Osiris. One story is that it was the tears of Isis mourning her dead husband, killed and dismembered by Set, that made the Nile overflow. Ceremonies to Isis are still held today, here and abroad by The Fellowship of Isis. She will be honoured on the Solstice.
In Finland the day of the Solstice is called ‘ Juhannus Day.’ It is always celebrated for public convenience on a Saturday, rather like the moveable President’s birthdays here seem to produce long weekends. Everyone who can goes into the country. Everyone goes into the sauna and then they dance and sing all night by the light of bonfires. Everyone takes birch tree wreaths into their houses to keep the Midsummer happiness in the home. The day is celebrated in other countries too. Check the Web for dozens more.
In places very far north the day is very important. In Circle, Alaska, the Solstice celebration party lasts all day, and ends at midnight as people watch the Sun just touch the horizon, exactly north.
Later on in the year is another very important pagan festival, the Equinox, when the light and darkness are of equal duration. In Celtic mythology it is the only day in the year when Lugh, the god of light, the Sun god, is vulnerable. In the well known Celtic version he is called Lleu.
The only way he could be defeated was wheedled out of him by his wife and betrayer Blodeuwedd, who was the lover of his dark twin and rival Gronw. He told her that he could only be killed by a specially created spear that was thrown at him while he was standing with one foot on the rim of a cauldron and the other on a goat.
People used to reading between the lines will see at once that this means that he was at the midpoint between the Winter Solstice (Capricorn the Goat) and the Summer Solstice (Cancer the Cauldron). He was therefore at the Fall Equinox in Libra. Blodeuwedd is the Virgin (Virgo) and Lugh/Lleu, hit by the magic spear becomes a wounded and decaying Eagle (Scorpio). Birds were a common symbol for the soul in the Inner Realms.
Later on, the great wizard Gwydion finds Lleu and restores him to human form. At the right time in the year cycle Lleu kills Gronw with a spear that goes through the rock behind which he is hiding. Blodeuwedd is punished by being turned into an owl, a creature of the night.
Incidentally, some Victorian translators who knew the language but not the religion, altered the goat to a buck, because it seemed more sensible. This totally missed the whole point of the story. I wonder how many more unnoticed ‘translations’ of this kind have been done by academics without inner knowledge but with common sense, deadly to the story.
Anyway that’s a pretty straightforward story of the cycle of the year from the Celtic point of view. It resonates with every other story of the same circumstances, though the people concerned may have different names. The important thing to note is that both Lugh and his rival perform their parts over and over, just like Oak king and Holly king, and any pair in any of the year cycle legends. Each dies and is re-born and the cycle continues forever.
OK, now what on earth or heaven has that to do with Harry Potter? Well, I posted an article on this site last year, Using Harry Potter type Spells for Real Results, 11/09/2006 , and went into some details about my views on the clever ways in which Rowling has woven mythology, alchemy, magick and astrology into her wonderful story, which is basically a fight between good and evil with unexpected deaths here and there. Reading it over will be a good introduction to this final bit of stuff, as the last book comes out very soon now, on July 21st and will answer all questions. The two protagonists, Harry and Voldemort fit very well into the twin gods of light and darkness with different destinies story.
Anyone who has read Chamber of Secrets, or has even seen the movie, knows that Tom Riddle/Voldemort and Harry have a lot in common. They are both half bloods, both grow up in places without love and affection, neither knowing their parents well, nor that they were wizards by inheritance. Both speak parseltongue and their wands each have a phoenix feather as the source of wand power. Both, as Dumbledore said, have a habit of disregarding authority and using amazing ingenuity to achieve their ends.
There are some of the similarities, but there are major differences. Voldemort is the ultimate soloist. He never accepts assistance unless he is in charge of it, and has never experienced the love of another person. His relationships are based on fear of his power. Harry on the other hand is willing to accept friendship from Hermione, Ron, Hagrid and his owl, Hedwig, not to mention house elves. Unlike Voldemort who keeps everything close to his chest, Harry tells his friends just about everything, and is instructed by Dumbledore to do that.
The books are not just about the fight between good and evil and unexpected deaths, a main theme that runs throughout is the importance of making choices. Dumbledore is adamant that it is our choices that make us what we are, not just our abilities. And Harry starts off by making a serious choice. When the Sorting Hat suggests Slytherin he says “No” in effect and is put into another house.
Voldemort made the opposite choice, rather like the powerful wizard Saruman the White,in Lord of the Rings, who also made a conscious choice to ally himself with the power of Mordor in that other good versus evil epic.
Mordor comes from the same root as Mordred, the evil nemesis of King Arthur. Stories about archetypes are always connected along an invisible Web of Wyrd. They reflect each other in many ways.
Now let’s see how making choices, twin gods of good and evil, and the pagan Wheel of the Year might connect with the seven books of the series.
In The Philosopher’s Stone, renamed The Sorcerer’s Stone by some American editor, we find that Harry is scarred, and his parents killed at Hallowe’en, the beginning of the Celtic year, the moment when the year cycle falls deeply into the darkness.
Harry however was born on July 31, the Eve of Lammas or Lughnasadh. This day is the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and the Fall Equinox, a year cycle point of major power. And Lugh is the god of Light, and master of all major skills. Among his many names is Macnia, which means ‘boy hero.’
Hold those dots in your head and then add these. Voldemort was first born on December 31, the Yuletide period in which the god Lugh is reborn and darkness is gradually supplanted by light. When he is temporarily defeated by his own spell rebounding from the shield of the love of Harry’s mother, Voldemort is reborn on June 24, the feast of St. John the Baptist, the Herald of the Light named Jesus. during the period we have been discussing.
This, as in the Oak versus Holly story is the time when the light is at its most powerful BUT it’s at the point where it is beginning to decline. This happens when Harry is into his fourth year.
I think that Rowling knew just what she was doing when she chose those dates, or allowed her characters to choose them. The God of Light and the God of Darkness are always psychological and magickal twins in some way, two sides of a coin, two horns on the same goat, many similes are used. In all the old stories the God of Light is born on the shortest day, and the God of Darkness, his fated alter ego is born on the longest day. Voldemort was born when the power of the God of Darkness was increasing, and then reborn on the day when the power of Light, though great was beginning to decline. If he chose that day, and made a Rowling choice, then it seems that he chose darkness and the path of darkness, though his power was great as a potential god of Light.
Harry was born on the day of the feast of the Sun god Lugh. This was the first harvest festival of the Celtic year. The second harvest festival was at the Fall Equinox. If Harry and Voldemort are the shadows of each other, then Harry is the shadow of the one who chose darkness, and is therefore chooser and bearer of the light. When the glass globes are smashed in the Hall of Prophecies the disjointed sentences heard contained the word ‘solstices,’
Both Harry and Voldemort were born on magically significant days of the Wheel of the Year, and experienced important events on magically significant days of the Wheel. Hardly likely to be a coincidence considering the other astrological references I mentioned in the November 2006 posting.
None of the little band of warriors takes much notice of the astrology of Professor Trelawney but she mentioned Harry’s dark hair, physical type and miserable early childhood as evidence that he was born under the influence of Saturn and therefore probably Capricorn, and winter. Harry wasn’t born then, but his magickal twin was. Maybe the psychic professor was picking up on Voldemort, the twin, and giving the reader a clue about the cosmic drama involved. Snape has similar characteristics, dark hair, miserable childhood, definitely a Capricorn. Come to think of it so do I, before my hair went grey it was black as jet.
The Harry/Voldemort connection looks like a deliberate inversion of an ancient story, with dates and characters to match. Yang is called Yin and Yin is called Yang. The mirror world looks a lot like the one reflected. Gravity could just as easily be a push as a pull. The equations would be the same, and nobody would feel any different, but the basis of the physical world would actually be a reversal of the currently accepted version. It looks as though Sun God type Voldemort deliberately chose to become his own shadow side. His magickal twin Harry, created by Voldemort’s own action, is therefore the shadow side of the dark side, which is the power of light and love.
This seems clear now because in spite of the fact that Harry speaks parseltongue and has an awareness of the world of Voldemort he has never once even thought of joining his side. In the legend the god Lugh/Lleu is only vulnerable at the Fall Equinox. Voldemort is the Lugh/Lleu who chose the dark side. On the Fall or Spring Equinox, or its Rowling equivalent, he and Harry will have equal powers, if Harry finds the last four horcruxes, one of which may be himself or in himself, the scar for example, might be an involuntarily produced horcrux when Voldemort survived his own reflected death spell.
The relationship between Harry and the Dark Lord is similar in some ways to the relationship between Neo and agent Smith in the movie Matrix. When Neo accessed his power and dissipated the vehicle that Smith used as agent of the Matrix it actually freed Smith from the rules of the Matrix, and he began creating clones of himself, just as Voldemort did after he was freed from his vehicle by his attack on Harry, and recruited Death Eaters. Smith’s growth threatened the whole Matrix and could only be stopped by Neo allowing Smith to make him a clone and integrate the two of them. Then they both disappeared from the scene. So Neo became the Saviour of humanity, since Smith was no longer a menace, and Harry has been called chosen one and saviour too.
The famous Celtic shadow/light battle is between King Arthur and his shadow Mordred, his brilliant bastard son. In this case the being of Light creates his own opposite, the being of Darkness. Once again there is a pair of opposites doomed to fight to the death. They do, and once again both die. We have to wait and see how the shadow problem is solved by the brilliant Rowling. All of these splendid stories have come from a very deep mine of archetypes about man and his fascination with his own shadow side. That, I think, is a source of their Jekyll and Hyde power to fascinate all ages of those who can read.
The Native Americans have a great story about the Crow who kept pecking at his shadow until it became alive and ate him. This is what we do when we focus almost exclusively on the negatives in our lives and then wonder why we get sick or experience hard times. This is how we create our own dark side story. As the Indian story points out…if we face the light then our shadow is always behind us and doesn’t interfere.
All the stories mentioned are about light and shadow as personifications. They all apply to ourselves in some way or another. Hence the fascination that the stories hold for us. We can hardly wait to see who wins, if anybody. The result is important to the parts in ourselves that are reflected in the stories.
We’ll have to see in July what happens in the last book. From the November 2006 posting you can have my thoughts about the names of several characters, the cat question, the identity of RAB, and the possible heroism and validation of Snape in the last book. Professor Trelawney’s description of what she thought of Harry’s birthdate fits in perfectly too with Snape’s birthday of January 9, and his dark hair and clothing and miserable childhood. And as a wild card there’s the pure-blooded Neville, who might have been Voldemort’s real target if he hadn’t been so hasty about Harry and thus lit the fire that will eventually consume him. What a great story! I honour the lady author who has made millions of children become readers, a legacy greater than any politician for decades.
Happy Solstice anyway, and the Force be with you in case you need help with the Dark Lord and his Nemesis in a few weeks.
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