So Many Traditions...II: Midsummer Through Thanksgiving
by Rosemarie Taylor-Perry [Also see Part I]

SUMMER SOLSTICE / SKIROPHORIA / HESTIALIA / FOURTH OF JULY

Midsummer at my residence...!

"Insanity" would not be too strong a term. Take last Midsummer, for example:

Six ready-to-fledge bluebirds (and, by the way, did you know that bluebirds smell like a just mixture of fresh oranges and trimmed grass?) clamoring for a chance to hunt in the murky, reeking, screen-topped canister of one thousand huge crickets which are, to this songbird rehabber, a midsummer necessity slightly more important than making sure I remember to fix dinner. Two pugnacious grasshopper sparrows I'd raised from pinkie chicks had slipped our of their weaning cage while I was trying to clean it, and were leading me a grim chase around the house at roughly two hundred and ten miles per hour. In the living room, somebody's abandoned conure (favorite food: human fingertips) was screaming obscenties gleefully. My stepdaughter thought these last two scenarios hilarious, as did the fledgling raven taking up most of my dining room in a huge dog kennel.

At about this point, the phone rings, and I try to hush the raven-imitating-child- imitating-parrot long enough to hear a teenager from Munds Park tell me in awed tones that she's not sure what they are, but she's found ten of 'em! I assure her that we'll be there to pick "them" up (petrifying visions of an unlikely number of baby ravens dancing in my head) just as soon as we nab the sparrows, who've finally decided to alight and converse through the cage wires with my "unreleasables": a tiny red linnet which had lost half of one wing to some brat's BB gun that March, and an even tinier blue-gray/rust-brown junco, heir to neural damage and a useless left foot thanks to a short but eventful flight into a car windshield.

Handing my daughter our largest osier basket, lined with soft bits of fleecy baby-blanket and draped with a heavy bath-towel "lid", I grab up my keys and we head down to the car, a cantankerous contraption fond of showing its dislike for summer by overheating, and its dislike for winter by stalling out in dramatic fashion.

My Equinox Car...

Looking at my daughter clutching the basket (she told me once that she likes to think of these little "rescues" as a scene from "Animal Planet",) I'm reminded, guiltily, that she hasn't yet carried the basket which was borne by my own ancestors as young maidens in Greece for Midsummer. SKIRALIA was the term for that portion of the weeks-long Hellene Midsummer festival: young girls would take the covered baskets to sacred ceremonial grottoes, where elder Priestesses alone would perform the secret ceremones meant to ensure the swift coming of late-summer showers and the promise of autumn's coolness, which would bring moisture and "fertility" to the fallow fields. Midsummer's sky-fire could render the fields unplantable (the Greeks harvested their crops in May or June and didn't replant until at least September) should the showers -- as appeared to be happening in our hometown that year -- not come at all. In the girl's baskets were symbols of the god Iacchos, "Pure Flame of High Summer," (that godform requiring appeasement at this time of year,) and symbols of virility, fertility, rebirth; of new life forever emerging from the field of death. When these little maidens married, they too could choose to partake of the rituals of the Grotto, but until then, the Mystery was closed to them (ARRHETON,) even as the basket they carried so piously was closed and covered.

Arriving at our destination, we encounter ten inhumanly tiny, just-pinfeathered titmice squalling for food and glaring through half-opened eyes at a world where absolutely everything's larger than themselves. Baby titmice do not care about this minor fact of existence: their only mission in life is to EAT whatever is small enough to fit down their throats.

As I backed away and watched the little maiden I love so dearly transfer each tiny bundle, so bursting and eager and demanding of life -- life NOW, life at any cost! -- to the basket, then close the top and pick it up, care and concern altering the lines of her face so that, for an instant, she seemed ten years older, the guilt and concern about the neglected teachings left me:

This is THE basket, and she is learning to honor life in its myriad forms already, like any Priestess. It had all begun a month before when, curled into my lap against sadness and a summer squall out of nowhere, she'd wept disconsolately over a baby crow that'd died in our care. As warm rain puddled in the newly-broken soil around an azalea bush, I whispered into her ear the meaning inherent in that sacred Mystery basket which I'd been too darned busy to show her, colored by snatches of a Johnny Cash tune I'd heard once, in passing: MAYBE HE'LL COME BACK AS ANOTHER BIRD, OR AS A PERSON, OR EVEN JUST AS A SINGLE DROP OF RAIN...BUT HE WILL COME BACK AGAIN!

This is the lush, effusive, blinding promise of Midsummer writ small. Our Pagan ancestors trusted in it, and, though they called it by new names, symbolized it with a new godform, and celebrated it through different rites, our Christian ancestors held it just as sacred.

Traditionally, Midsummer (just like Midwinter) is a fire festival. Our American 4th of July celebrations, filled with sky-fire and barbecues, cause us to reflect on the destructive ("...bombs bursting in air...") and liberating ("...showed true through the night/that our flag was still there!") aspects of fire, foe and ally. By the way: the "Star Spangled Banner" tune quoted above -- our National Anthem -- was, in fact, NOT written about the Revolutionary War, as many Americans erroneously believe. It was written during the French and English war, in 1814 when the British once again invaded America in attempts to end American commerce with France (see: http://www.icss.com/usflag/ francis.scott.key.html.) Our modern 4th of July celebrations are, in fact, a fascinating amalgam celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776,) our second discrete invasion by the British and their subsequent repulsion, during Madison's presidency (September 1814,) and ancient Midsummer "fire" rituals, such as the Roman Hestialia (Vestalia,) which -- depending upon festival and culture in question -- might take place anytime between June 14 and July 9.

AUTUMN EQUINOX / ELEUSINIA / MABON

My husband, a small group of others, and I are attempting to revive the Eleusinia as it was anciently practiced: it is tough and slow going. Some current neo-Pagan groups have put the sacred visionary experience which was the Mystery Night at Eleusis down to a play. Hmmm, sure; seven months of pre-Initiation rituals and symbolic cleansings and fastings in order to see a play. Ten years' worth of investigation into this yearly, millenia-old, nine-day-long Hellenic pre-planting ritual, in which secrecy and life-altering visions were order of the day, cause me...well, not just to DOUBT the "play" theory, but to reject it entirely.

In those years when the summer rains have had their lush way with the Northern Arizona mountains, we go scouting high-mountain glens and valleys for relatives of those creatures which, without a fragment of a doubt, gave the ancient MYSTAI of the Eleusinia their eye-opening (EPOPTIA) visions...

Mushrooms!!

Edible ones in this case, however. In these mountains grow boletes one could use as a lawn chair. Even when the first snows roar over the San Francisco peaks (our Hopi friends will tell you that the ancestor Kachinas are returning to the lowlands to bless the desert corn and squash, as they have for uncounted centuries,) knots of honey mushrooms poke their golden heads above the snow, where they cling to rotting hardwood trunks.

The tree has died, but because of the oak's sacrifice, the mushroom can live. Should my stepdaughter be with us at this time -- though this is rare, for autumn's Equinox days are school days, and her school is in Phoenix -- we remember to tell her the tale of Mabon, the Celtic "Beloved Son" godform, equivalent to Baldur in the Norse tradition, who dies so that the plans of the gods (of good ever triumphing over evil, of life ever sprouting through death) may come to pass. This can be a difficult concept to grasp in autumn, when leaves are falling dead from trees and the earth is settling down to a winter nap, so we use the mushrooms as our teachers, and believe in their message as fully as our Christian ancestors believed in the message of Eternal Life through the sacrifice of their "Beloved Son", Jesus Christ.

Many of the mushrooms we dry for later use. Thanksgiving is coming, and we often spend that holiday with close Navajo friends. My husband, being part Native American himself, was keen to learn the blessing rituals and vision rituals of the Navajo people when we moved to Northern Arizona. On Thanksgiving, we give each other Navajo blessings with smoke and crystal-water, and our differences are subsumed and forgotted in the love we feel for each other. As I like to joke: We are traditionalists and, traditionally, Thanksgiving was spent with the Indians!

"CROSS-QUARTER" DAYS

Between each Solstice and each Equinox lie two "cross-quarter" days -- one which celebrates celebrates the first harvest held, paradoxically, when summer appears to be at its sweltering height -- signalling the inexorable approach of winter even in the midst of summer, and another which celebrates the final harvest with the coming of the "blood moon" and, with the first chill winds, ushers in the "dark half" of the Wheel of the Year (the celebration of which may be found in Part I of this two-part article series.)

LUGNASADH / LAMMAS OR "LOAF MASS"

Several fascinating parallels exist between the methods of worship of the ancient Greco-Romans (my mother's people) and the ancient Celts (my father's people.) One of these becomes apparent when the Celtic month-long celebration of Lugnasadh is studied (apx. July 14 - August 4): Lugnasadh included feats and contests of athletic skill, with awards given classes of winners, not unlike the Olympian and Panathenian festivals (from which the modern Olympics derive) celebrated by the Hellene people throughout the summer.

However, Lugnasadh also commemorated the First (grain) Harvest among the Celtic people. The second harvest, of fruits and nuts (and mushrooms!) would have fallen near the Autumn Equinox in September, while the Final Harvest would have fallen sometime near the "blood moon" in late October or early November.

Modern neo-Pagans usually celebrate Lugnasadh, or Lammas/"Loaf Mass" as the Christian Fathers renamed it, on August 2. Christianity turned "Lugnasadh" into a "harvest home" festival, since athletic competitions, as well as daily ritual bathing, were looked upon as unregenerate Pagan practices and banned by the Church: two of the more unfortunate decisions made by Church fathers, which caused a serious decline in overall human health and lifespan in Europe which would continue until the end of the Industrial Revolution. Most people vacation around August, and this is indeed a terrific time to take up sporting activities of all sorts -- this last summer, my daughter learned to swim (and very well, too!) in the months of July and August this year.

See: a "ritual" doesn't always mean a group of people gathered around a fire!

FINAL HARVEST / THESMOPHORIA / SAMHAIN / HALLOWEEN

Thesmophoria was an odd, eerie festival, in honor of Demeter and Persephone, but held AFTER the Eleusinia in Greece. Women would gather in a cave or other darkened place, lowering the remains of piglets sacrificed but not eaten during the Eleusinia into chasms in the floor of the cave. I speculate that this dank, dark place of decay may have been where the mushrooms used for the Eleusinia were tended; in any case, the eerie, dark feel of Thesmophoria is not out of context with this Cross-Quarter day.

For the ancient Celts, SAMHAIN was a three-day-long ritual which included livestock slaughter, in order to lay up provisions for the coming winter. There was a prevailing belief that the "veils between the worlds" grew thin at this time, and ancestral spirits (both beneficent and maleficent) stalked the forests and fens, to give blessings and messages (or curses and worse!) to those still living in the world of flesh and blood.

Our modern Halloween celebration derives almost entirely from ancient European rituals held at this time of year, the time when the Wheel turns toward darkness and introversion. Of course, our European ancestors did not have pumpkins until after Columbus visited the New World at the end of the fifteenth century CE (much as poor neo-Pagan scholars like to pretend they did!): rather, they would carve turnips or parsnips or other root vegetables to resemble skulls (NO, they did NOT have potatoes, either...) This harkens, almost certainly, to Paleolithic forebears of the Celtic Cult of the Skull. Certain modern tribes still perform similar rituals: the skulls of beloved ancestors are exhumed well after burial, cleaned, and placed in household shrines where "eternal flames" burn in the deceased memory, as either a means of veneration, or a method of propitiation (keep in mind that the ancients did not understand the true nature of disease, and often believed that it was caused by vengeful spirits from beyond the grave.)

Dressing in costumes, too, is a shamanic means of propitiating or contacting spirits through the "thinned veil". Indeed, in Paleolithic times, the spirits of animals appear to have been venerated/propitiated in the same manner (consider, for example, the CroMagnon "temple-caves" of France, painted exquisitely with animal "totems", or the "cave bear shrines" of Homo Neanderthalensis.) So, today, our children dress up as animals. I try not to get terribly distressed when my adorable stepdaughter wants to go traipsing around as some bizarre Pokemon character: though not a "real" animal, this is an "animal of the imagination", not so much different from some of the fantastic figures painted on the walls at Trois Freres cave -- figures promising strength and hope and some sort of consistency in a complex world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY (parts I and II)

"Ancient Mystery Cults." Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press.

"Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life." Karl Kerenyi, Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series.

"Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter." Karl Kerenyi, Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series.

"Food of the Gods: Ritual Use of Hallucinogens." Peter T. Furst, editor, Praeger Publishers.

"Greek Religion." Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press.

"Heroes of the Dawn: Celtic Myth." Time-Life Books, Myth and Mankind Series.

"Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth." Walter Burkert, University of California Press.

"Prologomena to the Study of Greek Religion." Jane Ellen Harrison, Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series.

"The Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions." Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press.

"The Masks of God, Volume I: Primitive Mythology." Joseph Campbell, Penguin Books, Arcana edition.

"The Myth of the Eternal Return." Mircea Eliade, Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series.

"The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries." Hofmann/Wasson/Ruck, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

"The Universal Myths: Heroes, Gods, Tricksters and Others." Alexander Eliot, Meridian Books.