A Witch Alone: Thirteen moons to master natural magic. Marian Green
an offering for calm weather and full fish nets is accomplished at this winter festival of Up-Helly-Aa. The name is supposed to mean ‘the days of the holiday are up’.
When the might of winter loosens its grip upon the land and the first white flowers of the snowdrops nod their pale heads above the melting snow and the first royal purple crocuses thrust their elegant cups into the winter air, many pagans celebrate the Festival of the White Goddess as Brigid, Bride or even Lucy, the Light Bringer. The Church has adopted this feast as Candlemas, when Mary was returned to her people, cleansed after the ritual period after the birth of Jesus. The Celtic name for this celebration is Oimelc, literally ‘ewes’ milk’, for now, in the warmer parts of the land, the first lambs are born, and a new harvest of ewes’ milk is available for them and the people, to whom this was a valuable foodstuff. To celebrate this feast there is a traditional drink called ‘lambswool’, made from hot wine or cider and water in which the flesh of several roasted or baked apples are heartily mixed. The resulting frothy white drink resembles lambs’ wool. Shakespeare writes of ‘the roasted crabs hiss in the bowl’ and it is the pink-fleshed crab apples rather than the crustacean he is talking about, ‘As nightly sings the staring owl, toowhit toowhoo’. Another good old Goddess symbol, sacred from Britain to Athens.
In the villages this Candlemas feast has two aspects. One is the secret womens’ Mystery of how the Goddess renews her youth, and all the women deck with their brightest scarves, their most precious ribbons, a chair beside the hearth to welcome the return of the Goddess. Then in darkness, when the men have been allowed to creep into the room, a small figure in a dark cloak arrives. Wreathed in ivy and warmly wrapped, a young maid from the community brings in the first flowers and the new flame. Under her cloak, which one of the older ladies removes, she is dressed in white and green, and carries a dish of early flowers, snowdrops, violets, jasmine or the earliest daffodils. Among the blossoms is a small candle, and from that a candle for every member of the community is lit, set out on the floor. The Goddess, in the guise of this little girl, is welcomed in a blaze of light and grants her blessing on all. Each of the men and women kneel before her, silently asking a gift or practical help in the coming year, and each pledges the work of their hands to the benefit of the people.
As soon as the soil began to warm up and be workable, roughly at the time of the Spring Equinox (about March 21st), seed corn and barley would have been laboriously sown by hand. Among it would be the special ears of corn saved as the corn dolly or kern king, symbol of the potency of the Sun God, sacrificed at harvest-tide. The Church’s calendar has Easter at about this time, too. Easter, again named after a Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre, is the only one of the Christian festivals which is decided by the phases of the moon, which is why it moves about. Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the full moon on or after the Vernal Equinox, which is when the sun enters the sign of Aries. It is the same time as the Jewish Feast of Pesach, or ‘Passing Over’, when a lamb is slaughtered and eaten in haste, with bitter herbs and cups of red wine. Many of the other European countries derive their names for this festival from ‘Pâsques’ in French, ‘Pask’ in Dutch or ‘Pasche’ in Latin, most of these being taken to mean ‘Passion’, and relate to the Crucifixion.
Once again the symbols linked with the Easter festival contain many pre-Christian ones. The decorated eggs, found all over Europe, stand in for the rebirth of Nature; the chocolate rabbit is the Goddess’s sacred hare in disguise. The Easter bonnets worn at the Easter Parades represent the new sets of clothes worn for the first time as spring unfurls her golden daffodils, and the tufts of pussy willow fur the branches in the hedges. It is a great time of renewal and new beginnings, when life rises refreshed from its sleep through winter’s dark. As day and night are seen to be equal, at the Equinox, the whole energy of the sun helps the Earth to dress in her new green gown.
The next sacred flower to mark the passage of time to the country folk is the hawthorn, sweet-scented may blossom. ‘Cast not a clout ‘til May be out!’ the grandparents advised us not so long ago. The May in question is not necessarily the month, but the quickthorn used as a hedge plant until mechanised farming grubbed up these old corridors of natural life. The first green leaves of hawthorn used to be eaten as a spring tonic and are rich in vitamins, so vital after a boring winter diet of salted meat, hard cheese and rough bread. At May Day, the flowering of the hawthorn signals Beltane, the God’s Fire, when the animals were set free from their winter quarters. By may-blooming time there would be more grass, and all the people would be ready to celebrate the advancing warmth and outdoor life. The maypole, a phallic symbol, would be raised on many a village green, and the young children would deck it out with flowers and lace it with ribbons, binding together the fertilising sun power from above with the nourishing earth power below. Bonfires would smoulder and the cattle would be cleansed of ticks by being driven through a thick medicinal smoke of burning herbs.
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