The King is Dead! Long Live the King

By Francesca C. Howell, M. Phil

On the Summer Solstice, Wicca and tbe lessons we may glean from them…

June 2005

There is a humorous book on some of the cultural differences between Britain and America called Brit-Think, Ameri-Think by Jane Walmsley which states: “Americans think death is optional”. Humorous and satirical as that is, there is some truth to it. Our culture glorifies youthfulness and vigor, positive and optimistic behavior, and downplays the omnipresent reality of death. We try to cheat age and time.

Perhaps part of our reluctance to acknowledge death, comes from the adherence to "linear time" that our culture seems to cherish. Ancient cultures and others in the world today are aware of time in a cyclical sense, in what some call "polychronic"… various time frames are held at once. We in the developed northern cultures are (as one sociological work called this time sense) under the "spell of Descartes": we continue to see life and nature in a linear sense, with a mechanistic view. As Morris Berman phrased it, in a wonderful book The Re-enchantment of the World, we have "dis-godded" Nature and the world, taken the Divine out of all around us, making time and life much less diverse or multi-dimensional.

There are many great lessons and fonts of wisdom the Western Mystery traditions can offer us today – one of those being a deep understanding of the cyclical nature of energy, of life…of time… and also of death… As Stephanie mentioned in her very kind introduction, I am a practitioner and a High Priestess of Wicca -- an Earth-honoring, polytheistic tradition which stems from pan-European and Middle Eastern origins, among other cultures. Wicca is one lineage or religion within the great umbrella term "Paganism" – or as some prefer to say "Neo-Paganism" – like Druidery, another European, pre-Christian Nature religion that has had a renaissance in recent years. Wicca, like Druidery and others, is an Initiatory religion, requiring years of training and study to pass from one level to the next. These are part of the world's mystery religions – and of course today also part of the diverse sources nurturing our Unitarian-Universalist religious movement.

Last Tuesday, June 21 st, was the Summer Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, when the Sun moves into Cancer, and summertime officially begins. The Latin-based word Solstice comes from the belief that the sun seems to “stand still” for a moment as it passes over Cancer, or in the winter here over Capricorn. (From "Sol" and "sistere") This was a very key event for our ancestors. Ancient people everywhere watched the skies day and night, month after month, trying to understand what was happening with the seasons and the constellations… One of the great lessons of Nature and of spirituality is that we must “stand still” in order to truly see, to observe, to hear…whether in the world around us, or the world within. Recognition of such celestial events as the Solstices, give us modern-day people, in our frenetic, technologically-charged times, a chance to “stand still” and draw some wisdom from past practices. (Many ancient sacred sites, both here and in the " Old World", are oriented towards the Solstices… some also to the Equinoxes, but in the pre-Christian era, the Solstices were the more important event in European paleo-astronomy.)

But what has this all to do with the title "The King is Dead! Long live the King?" As I mentioned, our ancestors did not yet have the mindset mentioned in Brit-Think, Ameri-Think that death could be "optional". Death was a constant part of life in past times, through disease, injury, warfare; lives were short, and death could not be shoved under the rug or put out of mind. In earlier centuries in Britain and across Europe into the Middle East, when a monarch died the traditional cry was “The King is Dead! Long live the King”! It is a bit like a Zen Koan, a riddle with a deep, metaphysical meaning…, and it is also a fact of political continuity: at the monarch's passing his successor would immediately take over for him to insure calm and stability in the realm. An individual could die, the king or prince or queen… but the monarchy, the sovereignty, the kingdom and the land would continue. The ruler had a sacred bond with the land… and that too passed on from leader to leader. Nature teaches us a similar lesson: that all life is a cycle, and life goes on. In this sense life and energy can be symbolized by the “Ourobouros”, the image of the snake biting its tail…a traditional sign for eternal life and the indestructibility of energy … when one life ends , another begins.

Awareness of life and death being perpetually wrapped together, in loving cyclical continuity, is a deep mystery couched in every World Wisdom Tradition, including Wicca. Such images are omnipresent: Russian Matrouschka dolls, one hidden within the other, on and on; the baskets of certain Mexican and Central American Indian tribes; the spirals of galaxies and of shells, of flowers and of our own DNA… Life spirals inwards and onwards, ever curled up with Death and Rebirth as loved ones entwine and curl up together. The sacred bonds of life, of heritage, of love, transcend death – passing knowledge on.

In Wicca the Gods themselves participate in and are subject to changes through these cycles. For example, the forms of the masculine divinity honored in Wicca are particularly tied to the Solstices. At Summer Solstice the mystery is that within the verdant fertility of Summer Solstice, alongside the beauty of green fields and abundant flowers, is hidden the knowledge that as the summer begins, the light begins to die. The climax of the year's light, its apex, is also the beginning of its decline. The length of the days begins to shorten once more, moving us in the North towards the longest night in December, the Winter Solstice.

The title of this talk, "The King is Dead, Long Live the King" refers to those teachings… but also to some specific traditions we celebrate in Wicca and other forms of European Paganism. Often in Summer Solstice ceremonies we actually stage a “battle” or match between the Gods of the Light and the Dark, also known as the Oak King and the Holly King, Lord of the Waxing Year and Lord of the Waning Year. In Wiccan teachings, the God waxes and wanes in His power and life, he dies and is reborn… He is a God of Life, and a God of Death. Simultaneously the Goddess also changes, and may go down to enter the Underworld for a time… like the Persephone legends of the Greeks, Proserpina of the Romans -- but She never dies. She gives birth to him, She marries him and She offers or participates in his offering his life up… (depending on the version of the myth or the pantheon that a particular practitioner or group is honoring and following.) The dying and sacrificed God form comes to us not only from North European traditions, but also in differing images, from the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

"The Goddess gives and the Goddess takes away, blessed be the name of the Goddess” – to paraphrase teachings from another tradition in the UU family of religions.

As we say in Wicca, the Lady’s Wheel has turned, and so the natural world is moving towards autumn… and that means in the agricultural cycles, towards the harvest. It is time to remember the seeds we hoped to plant in our lives at the beginning of the Spring. When the harvest begins, along about August, we will think on these "plantings", on our efforts of the last six months, or perhaps the last eight or nine months, and what we have brought to fruition. If those seeds and seedlings haven’t blossomed and come forth as we wish, there is time to plant again and to meditate on what we might do differently. As mentioned earlier, one of the lessons is making the time to be still … to see what the cycle has brought round this year… to gauge the lessons that the waning light with its lengthening shadows can offer. All such Earth-honoring traditions help us to tune into the lessons in life around us – as our ancestors did – to stop and pay attention: whether it is to walk more mindfully on the Earth, watching our impact and our lifestyle; or whether it is to embrace and honor life and death, in their intimate relationship. The seeming riddles in wisdom are many: death is not final, and the "dark" is not necessarily evil.

Now, as many of you know, Wicca is both a religion and a craft – often known as Witchcraft in fact -- which practices other traditions sometimes connected to the “psychic” or supernatural. Some resonances of Midsummer are not so foreboding! As the Earth shows us her splendors and we feel the joy of life all around, as life teems and the harvests begin to beckon, so do we often sense a magical, enchanting air pervading all at Midsummer. Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream drew from real folk customs and some formerly sacred traditions. The dreamy quality of a world such as that inhabited by Titania and Oberon is definitely palpable on these bewitching summer twilights. Our ancestors saw this season as a time when the Faery folk were about… from May 1 st (Beltaine) to summer are times when the Faeries are said to be particularly active in our world. There are many who like to practice divination and to pay attention to their dreams at these times of year… marking them as opportunities when the Elemental Beings of Nature, however we may call them or imagine them, are able to “speak” to us, to share with us portents of the future, or other special messages.

You might like to keep a journal of unusual events or patterns that arise at this time of year, what Jungian psychology calls “synchronicity” – (the seemingly meaningful coincidences) -- or you might make journal entries about significant dreams. One time-honored teaching of Mystery religion is "Know Thyself", inscribed over the Temple of the Delphic Oracle.

If you like the idea of communing with the realms of unseen dimensions, then try simply making an “offering” of some food to the Faeries. (Your ancestors may have done this– it is a common custom in many, many of the world’s traditions!) If you have young children they certainly would enjoy participating in that. This is a good time to leave some favorite food or drink outside for the Nature beings – particularly if you have a garden and want to ask the Nature Spirits, the Devas or Faery folk to bless it.

This past week also marked the Full Moon. Full Moon in June is known as the "Honey Moon" – stemming from customs that spanned many European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures. The preponderance of weddings at this time of year, June, is tied to that belief – this was considered an auspicious time to get married, when the Earth was fertile and life abundant. The newlyweds would drink honey wine or Mead for a month as good luck and a blessing – the "Honey Moon"!

In Closing

I would like to thank you all very much for inviting me. I am very honored to have been asked to speak here at the UU Fellowship, to share a brief smattering of traditions and concepts from Wicca and the Mystery traditions. Perhaps on some enchanting summer evening you will feel that you have glimpsed a bit of Faery… or heard the echoes of an ancient duel as the Waxing Light meets the Waning Light, Forces of Light and Dark, circling around and around in the cycles of time… Maybe deep within you will sense once more what our ancestors knew. Perhaps in a larger sense some of these ideas can inspire modern day Westerners to bring the sacred and a sense of the divine back into Nature… by doing that, we may re-enchant our sense of time, of life, of sacred bonds, and of the world.