The
Wisdom Traditions: Paganism
Delivered by
Ilona Forgeng, Dec 14, 2008
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
One week from today, at 12:04 on December 21, we
officially enter into the winter solstice. I don’t know how many of you
were here for Jimmy Merritt’s first talk to our fellowship, but he said
something that has stayed with me ever since. He said that the winter
solstice marks the first day of summer.
Today, for our third foray into the wisdom traditions,
the approaching solstice calls us to honor the traditions of the pagan
religions, the primitive, earth-centered religions of our ancestors. According
to Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, religions developed when mankind
first became self-aware and therefore, fearful. Similarly, UU minister
Forrest
Church
says that religion was our human response to being born and knowing we are
going to die. But for today, I prefer UU Minister Roberta Finkelstein’s
idea that religion started when the first human stood on a mountain
looking at the stars and uttered the classic line, “Holy Shit!”
I like that because I can relate to it, having stood
in the high desert on a clear night, looking at that sweep of stars. Even
knowing what those stars are, we feel a sense of reverence for their
beauty, awe in the immensity of the universe, and we react to the mystery
of things beyond our understanding. And we, too, wonder if there might not
be other beings up there, beings more powerful than ourselves.
This plaque, the classical labyrinth, was done by
Marty Chandler. This exact labyrinth design may date back as far as 5,000
years, but many maze-like designs have been found that go back much
further. Marty’s plaque signifies the “Earth-Centered” Traditions.
On the back of your order of service you will see that the living
tradition we share draws from many sources, and the final source says,
"Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions, which celebrate
the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the
rhythms of nature."
When the popular culture talks of pagans, usually it
means Druids and Stonehenge, or perhaps Teutonic maidens marching to
Valhalla
. Technically, however, a pagan is anyone who is not Christian, Jewish or
Muslim. A Pagan can be anything from a Celt to a Navajo to a Hindu. Most
of us here, technically, are probably pagans, ourselves. So, today we will
talk of the “Earth-centered” religions, religions which draw us closer
to the natural cycles of life and death, the yearly circle that we are
fast about to close.
Celebration of the sacred circle of life goes back
even further than the first modern humans. Neanderthals of 200,000 years
ago had rituals for burying their dead, preparing them for some kind of a
journey, providing them with tools and weapons, even casting flowers on
the body. Ivories have been found in
Africa
, apparently representing some sort of mother goddess. These ivories may
date as far back as 300,000 years ago, back to an even earlier ancestor.
One of Jane Goodall’s assistants tells of climbing a
cliff overlooking a lake to watch the sunset. Two male chimps were
climbing the same cliff from different angles. The chimps finally saw each
other, made greetings as chimps do, and then all three of them sat and
watched the spectacular sunset. Reverence, ritual, art, idols, where then
do we say that religion begins?
Even we sophisticated city-dwellers are impressed by
the powers of nature, of thunder and lightening, earthquakes and floods,
the warmth of the sun and the cold of a winter’s night. How much more
awesome these must have been to early man who had no understanding of what
was happening.
There is no agreement about the origins of religion,
but most anthropologists assume that the earliest religious responses were
a reaction to what people saw around them.
Early man found gods everywhere, thunder, oak trees,
water, fire. Everywhere. Do you talk to your car? Do you curse your
computer? You may be closer to paganism than you realize.
The Jews say that God created mankind because she
loves stories. We humans are not only tool makers, we are story-tellers;
we can’t help ourselves. We have a basic need to make sense of things,
and the best way to make sense of things is to tell stories about them.
All Indo-European languages from
Ireland
to
Sweden
to
Spain
to
India
have their roots in one early proto-language that originated in
Turkey
. Mythologists believe that stories were passed along and passed around,
with the spread of language, and the same stories can be found in all
these cultures. But it is often difficult to tell if a given story is a
variation on an earlier story or if it is an archetype that sprang up
everywhere from the natural workings of the human mind.
One of these stories, of these archetypal myths we see
all around the world, is the concept of death and rebirth or resurrection.
The central cultural story of the ancient Egyptians was the story of Isis
and Osiris, where Osiris is killed and his wife and sister Isis finally
finds his body and through her efforts he is brought back to life. The
plains Indians tell of the “Buffalo Bride” who brings her father back
to life. The
Buffalo
then teach her the Buffalo Dance to assure the return of the
Buffalo
each year. In
Polynesia
they tell the story of the girl who must decapitate her lover and bury his
head, from which springs the coconut palm. You can tell the story is true,
because every coconut carries the eyes and mouth of her lost lover.
All
around our early ancestors was the story of birth, growth, death, decay
and rebirth. This essential story was reflected in their universal stories
of the death and the rebirth of the gods.
Under
the names of Osiris, Tammuz and Adonis the peoples of
Egypt
and
Western Asia
represented the yearly decay and revival of life in the form of the god
who annually died and rose again from the dead.
There
is reason to think that in early times a living
man died in the character of the god. Among agricultural people, the
corn-spirit was often represented by a human sacrifice whose body assured
fertility the following year. Harvest suppers celebrated by many churches
today are long-forgotten remnants of these sacramental sacrifices of the
corn-spirit. This sacrifice also survives in the ritual cannibalism
represented by the rites of the Catholic mass.
Our ancestors confronted some basic questions they
needed answers to. The question of what made food, what made the sun and
rain and warmth.
They needed answers to why,
why do these things happen? Obviously, they must happen because the gods
make them happen. Then how
could one keep the gods happy, how could they keep the gods on their side?
Well, they came up with the stories to tell each other and they came up
with ceremonies to go with the stories, rites designed to please the gods
so they would keep the tribe safe.
How does this relate to the winter solstice this week?
Tales of the winter solstice are all about death and
rebirth; they are all about keeping the people safe.
In early societies, being able to time the cycles was
critical for sowing crops, mating cattle and being assured that the
harvest reserves would last through the winter.
Astronomical events were our ancestors’ calendars. At the winter
solstice the three stars in Orion's Belt align with Sirius to point to the
Sun’s rise for the next three mornings. Since the Summer solstice, the
Sun’s arc has lowered each day. On the winter solstice, the arc finishes
its southern retreat and daylight reaches its minimum for three days. For
those three days the sun rises at the same spot, then it again heads north
and the days grow longer. Not surprisingly, cultures all over the world
have told stories about the death and rebirth of the sun, about the battle
between the powers of light and darkness.
The ancient Mesopotamians marked the Winter Solstice
with a festival celebrating the sun god’s victory over darkness.
Egyptians welcomed Ra’s triumph over death.
In the early Aegean civilizations, in the Festival of
the Wild Women the women tore apart and ate a man representing the god
Dionysus, a sun-god figure. Then a baby, representing Dionysus reborn, was
brought in.
The Celtic Druids believed that during the three days
of the Solstice, the Sun God journeyed through the underworld, to learn
the secrets of life and death.
Early Swedish tribes celebrated midwinter with both
human and animal sacrifice.
The Slavs marked the day when the dark powers of the
Black God defeated the old and weak sun. After the solstice, the Sun was
reborn.
In
China
and
East Asia
, where gods are not important, the solstice is related to the yin and
yang, where it marks the time the yang, the power of sun and light begins
to take over from the darkness of the power of yin.
In
Iran
they still celebrate the
remains of a pre-Zoroastrian festival dedicated to Mithra, born at the
solstice after the defeat of darkness by light.
The Festival
of the Sun of the Incas involved tying the sun to a stone to
prevent it from escaping.
The
winter solstice ceremony of the Zuni and the Hopi ceremonially brings the
sun back from its winter slumber.
And we in
America
still celebrate the birth of a sun god. You can tell he is a sun god by
the halo of light around his head. We celebrate on December 25, and before
we lost four or five days to an inexact calendar, December 25 marked the
winter solstice.
Our ancestors knew the sun rose each day in the east,
set each evening in the west. The sun was not only the source of light and
warmth and life, it was constant and unchanging—except for its annual
journey from north to south and back. Its constancy, its importance to
mankind, gave the sun, the solar deity, the
most important place in pagan pantheons.
The solstice itself was an important part of the
annual cycle in Neolithic times. Late Neolithic and Bronze Age sites like
Stonehenge in Britain and New Grange in Ireland have axes that align
either with the winter solstice sunrise like New Grange, or
with the winter solstice sunset like Stonehenge. Newgrange was built in
3200 BCE, predating
Stonehenge
and even the pyramids. The stone mound was constructed so that at dawn on
the Winter Solstice, a shaft of sunlight entered deep into the stone
tunnels, striking the carved stone basin in the central chamber. Likewise,
the Egyptian Monument of Abu Simbel was constructed so that the rays of
the rising solstice sun fell deep in the temple and struck the statue of
the pharaoh, himself an incarnation of the sun god.
The winter solstice was an existential event. By
now, communities had to be prepared if they were to survive the winter
months. Rather than use up their critical supply of grain to feed the
cattle through the winter, most of the cattle were slaughtered. Midwinter
was nearly the only time of year when fresh meat was plentiful. Wine and
beer was properly fermented by this time and ready for drinking. Not
surprising then, that many of the midwinter festivals were, so to speak,
bacchanals.
Bound up in all this seasonal mythology are the
ancient human fears of darkness and death, both symbolized by the decrease
in sunlight and the apparent death of the sun as its arc slowly gets lower
and lower and the days get shorter and shorter and the sun gets weaker and
weaker. Remember that the sun stops for three days. Almost as if it is in
a battle, trying to win its way north again against the powers of
darkness. It was up to us to help the sun in this struggle, this battle
against the dark forces.
It
was thought that by performing sympathetic magic, by producing light in
the darkness, the god who was the principle of life could be aided in his
struggle with the opposing principle of death. The sun’s failing
energies could be increased; he could be raised from the dead. Bring out
the candles, light the Yule log, bring in the evergreens.
In
opposition to the festivals of midsummer, when the air was warm and the
days were long, people’s participation in the midwinter rites retreated
indoors. Bonfires became hearth fires. The summer burning of the
corn-spirit became the winter burning of the Yule log. The summer flowers
and fruits became the winter evergreens and holly.
A discussion of pagans and midwinter wouldn’t be
complete without talking about Mithra. The celebration of his birth,
December 25, tells us a lot about the origins of Christian mythology.
Mithraism was the most important religion in the
Mediterranean
around the time of Jesus and was Christianity’s main rival. The center
of Mithraism was in
Tarsus
, home of Paul, inventor of Christianity.
Mithra was the son of God sent to Earth to be the
savior of the world. Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25. Shepherds
brought him gifts. He had 12 disciples, with whom he shared a last supper.
He was called the good shepherd. He shed his blood to redeem mankind from
sin. Mithra was buried in a tomb and rose from the dead after three days. Mithraists
were baptized. The Mithraic symbol was the hilt of a sword, the sign of a
cross. Mithraists celebrated a sacred meal of bread and wine on the day of
the sun, Sunday.
We
all know we can trace the Christmas tree, mistletoe, Christmas candles and
the Yule log back to pagan
Europe
. We just don’t often realize how much else we borrowed from pagan
tradition.
The birthday of the sun is just around the corner.
The winter solstice is a sure and certain promise of
better times ahead, of the resurrection of the spirit, but there is no
promise that there will not be a cold, dark winter before that promise is
fulfilled. We have faith, as we enter into the winter months, that spring
will be waiting on the other side. Persephone has returned to Hades, and
her mother, Demeter, in despair, has left us. She, and we, know that
Persephone will be back, and she will make the earth glad. We needn’t
fear starvation, we here, but we all have our own winters ahead of us. The
economy is in its darkest period in our lifetimes. But we know it will
improve. Have patience with your investments. Light a ceremonial Yule fire
with your broker statements. We have gone through a very depressing eight
years, we religious liberals. Believe in the promise of hope from our new
administration. Find a good book. Settle in. Light a candle. Stoke the
fire. Remember that next week marks the first day of summer. “This is
the sun’s birthday, this is the birthday of life and of love and wings.
“
|
