On Easter and the Fertility of Aspens

Ostara by Johannes
Gehrts, 1884 

Most people know (or should know) that modern Easter is a celebration of fertility and spring in Europe, joined with the death and protection of Pesakh (Passover) of the Jews, and the resurrection of Jesus of the Christians.  There's some common threads there, if you look carefully.  Death and Rebirth.

The Resurrection of Christ
by Carl Bloch, 1890

The Christian calendar shows Good Friday, which was last Friday, as the day Jesus was crucified.  He was dead before sundown, as they removed the bodies before the Sabboth, with begins at Dusk.  So Good Friday is the day of Death, and Easter, Sunday, is the day of Life, or Rebirth, when Jesus returns from the grave.

A depiction of the blood
on the door posts.
Artist unknown.

The Jewish Passover, of course, recounts when G-d came to kill all the first born of Egypt.  To be safe, the Jews had to put blood on their door posts, and G-d would pass by.  This is in a way a story of rebirth as well, though different.  And a story of magic.  Death is coming around, and blood is placed on the door post to fend it off, to turn it aside.  It is a sacrifice.  A lamb was prepared and taken care of until the time, then killed, their blood put on the door post to ward off Death.  It is a ritual, a Rite.  The meat had to be roasted.  Everything had to be eaten before morning, or burnt.  You were to eat it with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand.  There is the practical aspect that they were to leave immediately afterwards, so needed to be ready, but there is the symbolic aspect of the Rite.  You are prepared to leave, because you will be able to leave.  Blood for Death to pass by (pass over), a meal to consecrate the action, dressed to leave to show that the magic would work.  A Rite both of protection from Death, and to be allowed to live Egypt.  Overcoming Death, receiving a new Life.  In this way, it is a Rite of Initiation.

From a Witch point of view, these symbols and connections are important.  If we look back, we have the Sacrifice of the God on Samhain, the Old Year, the Darkling Twin, he passes through the Gates of Death into the Underworld, the Otherworld.  His journey ends at the Winter Solstice, he settles in.  The old year is dead with him, Autumn gives way to Winter, as his coils curl up around it and he sleeps.  The sun is reborn, a premonition of his return.

At Imbolc, his Bride calls for him and he awakens, uncoils, and prepares for a new journey, swimming up across the Veil through the Well of Worlds, seeking Her, who he died for and will now be reborn for, the New Year, the Bright Twin.

On Imbolc, Spring begins, though it's slow in awaken in Wyoming, often not realized until May or June.  By the calendar, Summer will begin on the first of May, but these are tides, not calendars, and May 1 is a convenient date, but the tide falls where it will.  The Spring Equinox marks the approximate middle of the Spring Tide.  Passover begins on the 15th day of Nisan.  As I've discussed before, the Hebrew calendar is Lunar.  Each month begins when the moon becomes dark.  The 15th of each month lands on the full moon, or close to it, the mid point of the month.  The 15th of Nisan is always the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, so it's a lunar event timed to the solar mid point of Spring.  We're in the middle of Passover at the moment, so the Christian Easter landed on its old determination this year.  Essentially, Passover (which originally determined Easter, Good Friday being the first Friday after the beginning of Passover, until changes in calendars messed it all up) is point of importance between Imbolc and Beltaine.

Cernunnos (La Tène) / 'ernunno
on the Gundestrup Cauldron

Around Passover and Easter is the resurrection of the God.  Jesus, of course, is a type of the Sacrifice God, so it's no surprise that his ressurrection would fall around this time.  Since Imbolc, the God, the Bright Twin, has been swimming upward, and now he emerges, the First Fruits, the rebirth of Spring.  New Life comes from the Death of Samhain.  Now he prepares for his wedding to the Bride, the May Queen, God Herself.  The Serpent warms himself in the sun, and prepares for what is to come.

Spring, be it Imbolc and Candlemas, be it the Spring Equinox and Passover and Easter, be it May Day and Beltaine, is a time of rebirth.  It's Himself reborn, the Sacrificial Mortal God, but also the rebirth of the earth, of the land.

Over the last few weeks, I've been watching the aspen trees wake up.  I work during the week and have an aspen right out side my window.

Aspen tree beginning
to bud, April 2, 2012

On Friday, March 30, it still looked asleep.  No sign of buds.  The next Monday, April 2, there were small buds.  I presumed they were leaf buds, that I would see leaves soon.  It had been in the low 70s F that weekend, but had dropped below freezing that day.  I could see a hard coat around the buds and figured that was to protect the new leaves from the cold that could still come for a few more months.

The same aspen tree
with larger buds, April 5, 2012

By Thursday (April 5), the buds had grown quite large.  I still thought they were leaf buds, but they were getting big enough, over an inch long, that I thought I'd see leaves in the next few days.

The same aspen tree,
now with male catkins,
April 9, 2012

Today, however, I discovered I was wrong.  They had indeed opened, but it wasn't leaves inside.  They were flowering.  In the trees where the buds had been, there were almost two inch long catkins hanging, dangling in the wind.  Very neat to see.

I've never really had a chance to observe the cycles of aspen before this, I haven't looked closely at them over an extended period. But with a tree just outside my window at work, I get to see it, with all its changes, every work day. Very interesting to observe. I'd love to figure out a way to observe the willows and lodge pole pines in the same manner.

From what I read, male catkins droop, and female catkins are erect (make what metaphors you want with that).  The male ones produce pollen, and if fertilized, the female ones produce tiny seeds.  But reproducing that way is actually fairly rare.  Each tree is either male of female, and most groves are basically one tree, reproducing via runners that form an exact natural clone, so essentially, each grove is either male or female.  Logically, this means that a male grove with always remain male only unless it grows far enough to combine with a female grove, whereas if the catkins in a female grove get fertalized, potentially it could contain both male and female aspens.  I really wish the mountain roads were open this time of year, so I could go up and look as several groves and find out which ones were male and which were female and find out if there was a different "feel", a different "energy".  But you can only determine the sex when the trees are in bloom, which is around this time, and the roads don't typically open until Memorial Day, which is May 28th this year (last year, they couldn't get the roads clear for Memorial Day for the first time in like 30 years, because the snow was eight feet deep and kept blowing back full every night, so they couldn't make progress; the roads opened in July).

Which brings us back to fertility and rebirth.  The Aspens awake first, not with leaves to harness the sunlight, but with flowers, the catkins, to reproduce.  They awake in fertility, in Sex, the essence of Creation.  As should we all.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

Establishment and Prophecy

Statue of Peter Waldo.
Image from Wiki Commons.

The year is 1179.  The place is Rome.  It is the Third Lateran Council, and a small group of men stand before Pope Alexander III.  One of them is named Peter Waldo.  They are known as Waldenses or Poor Men of Lyon.  They have come to Rome to ask permission to preach, after the Archbishop of Lyon had forbidden.  The answer was no, they could only preach with the permission of the bishops.  They ignored this decision and preached anyway.  One thing they denied in their preaching was the authority of the church.

Painting of St. Francis of
Assisi.  Image from Wiki Commons.

The year is 1209.  The place is Rome.  Twelve men stand before Pope Innocent III.  One of them is Francis of Assisi and the other eleven are his disciples.  They have come to Rome to ask permission to preach and to found a new order.  Innocent gave his blessing and the Poor Franciscans were formed.  Francis would found two more orders and was declared a saint after his death.  One of his main messages was against the gathering of wealth by the Church and by clergy.  He said that to follow Jesus is to give up all you have and give it to the poor.

Jan Hus at the Stake.
Image from Wiki Commons.

The year is 1414.  The place is Constance, Germany.  It is the Council of Constance, and John Hus, after being promised safe conduct by the Pope and Emperor, is arrested and put to death.  His message was that the Church needed to be reformed and return to the scriptures.

Throughout history, there have been reformers, wanting to change the established order.  Sometimes the order has listened and changed.  Sometimes they have tried to crush the dissenting voice.  But either way, change has come, sometimes immediately, sometimes centuries later.  You can find this pattern in every place and time on earth.  It is the natural order of things.  Change occurs, then settles into the norm and stops changing, then prophecy or reform or dissent come and stir things up, then things settle again.  And the cycle continues.  Most of my ideas on this came from the book A History of Medieval Christianity - Prophecy and Order by Jeffrey Russell.

These two Twins are one way to view history.  Establishment and Prophecy.  Order and Chaos.  Orthodoxy and Heresy.  A constant dance between the two.  Establishment breeds prophecy, prophecy changes establishment and brings a new establishment.  The reformers of one generation are the establishment of the next.

In Taoism, the established order is Yin.  Yin is settled, still, static, passive.  It only acts if Yang acts on it.  Change, revolution, is Yang.  Yang is dynamic, moving, active.  There can be no change without Yang, but there can be no stability without Yin.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

All Hail the Summer King!

Image from TundraFunda.com.

Going back through my old posts, I've written very little about either the Summer Solstice or Winter Solstice.  I seem to be either busy or distracted around those times of year.  What do I do on either solstice?  Very little, actually.  Around Winter Solstice, I have Christmas celebrations I've always done, but around Summer Solstice, neither me nor my family has had any traditions, celebrations, beliefs, or anything that acknowledged that this time of year had any importance, let alone power.

Desert in New Mecixo.
Image by BawBaw on IgoUgo.

My sister, when she lived in New Mexico, during her time in the desert, celebrated both solstices.    They were important to the people there.  When she moved to Alaska, where the change of the seasons have a lot more impact, she expected the two holidays would also be very important.  She reached her first Summer Solstice, and no one did anything.  She was very confused.  What she found out is the Winter Solstice means light is returning, and is greatly celebrated, but the Summer Solstice marks the beginning of the decline of sunlight, leading to the dark long winter, and people don't find anything to celebrate in that.  Not related to the solstice, but I liked a quote from her this week, "Something about the desert makes you believe in every possible spirit or force; something about the great north makes you believe in nothing but the earth."

The Tao-Chi showing the year.
Image from Chinese Fortune Calendar.

While the equinoxes are about balance, equal day, equal night, Spring and Autumn, the solstices are times of extremes, longest night and shortest day, shortest night and longest day, Summer and Winter, hot and cold.  This plays out in Yin and Yang of Taoism, Chinese folk religion, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.  If you take an eight foot (using the Chinese measurement of a foot) and measure the length of the shadow each hour of each day and plot them on a circle, you end up with the Tao-Chi symbol, the symbol everyone thinks of as Yin and Yang, with the two intertwining paisleys or fish, one white and one black.  The Yang part of the year starts at the Winter Solstice and is the light part of the year.  It starts out as a point, with darkness, Yin above it, then grows until Summer Solstice, where the old Yin disappears and the new Yin begins as a point.  Likewise, the Yin part of the year starts at the Summer Solstice and is the dark part of the year.  Winter Solstice is the extreme point of dominant Yin, Yang being at its minimum.  But Yin and Yang are a cycle.  When Yin rules, Yang is born, the son born from the mother.  And he grows until he rules at Summer Solstice.  Summer Solstice is the extreme point of dominant Yang, Yin being at it's minimum.  But she will grow again.

The Web That Has No Weaver helped me to understand Yin and Yang outside the Western dualistic way of looking at them.  I had read the Tao Te Ching when I was younger, and the I Ching, but never really separated what I read from the Western thought I had grown up with.  I grasped it when I read the five principles the author gave for Yin and Yang.  And understanding Yin and Yang is essential to understanding Chinese thought.  I posted these on Twitter a bit back:

• All things have two facets: a Yin aspect and a Yang aspect.
• Any Yin or Yang aspect can be further divided into Yin and Yang.
• Yin and Yang mutually create each other.
• Yin and Yang control each other.
• Yin and Yang transform each other.

If you don't get what these are trying to say, please either ask me and I'll expand on them (eventually I will in separate posts anyway, but not now), or, better yet, get the book and read the first essay, Medicine East and West: Two Ways of Seeing, Two Ways of Thinking.  It is an excellent book, and that first chapter is very profound, describing the foundation on which the rest of the book is built.

This understanding of Yin and Yang has greatly influenced my understanding of the Divine Twins in the Feri tradition of witchcraft.  And the Divine Twins are fundamental in my understanding of the universe.  It is the Dance of the Twins that creates and destroys, that is what makes up our universe.  They are Yin and Yang, opposites, yes, but also one.  There is not one without the other, and neither function independently.  It is their interplay that defines all things.

Tao produced the One.
The One produced the two.
The two produced the three.
And the three produced the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry the Yin and
     embrace the Yang and through the blending
     of the Qi they achieve harmony.
~Tao Te Ching, Chapter 42

When the West looks at an event, they look for cause. Everything is cause and effect.  A leads to B leads to C.  The search that lead to Western science is the search for the Causae Causantes, the cause of the cause, the reason of the cause, the originating cause.  We want to know what happened first, what started it all.  And when we look at events in our lives, we look for why, not what.  My stomach is sick today.  I've been thinking about the scallops I ate last night as a cause, instead of thinking, what's wrong now?

When the Chinese look at an event, they want to understand the state in the moment.  What is out of balance now.  What does the event mean now.  They don't not believe in cause and effect, they just mostly find it irrelevant.  The title of the book, The Web That Has No Weaver, makes the point well.  In the West, we always had our weavers: the three Fates, the three Furies, the three Norns (and all the lesser norns), Ananke, Necessity, Fate, Destiny, and many more besides.  Wyrd/Fate/Destiny/Necessity, by whatever word and whatever name, have always played a big part on the Western psyche.  But this "who" isn't important to the Chinese.  It's the web not the weaver that matters.  It is a dance, not a chain of events.  For my stomach, the cause would be irrelevant, what matters is what it out of balance at the moment that can be balanced to fix the problem.

Summer King/Winter King from
Hrana Janto's 1995 Myth & Magic
Calendar from Llewellyn.
Image from Hrana Janto's Goddess Gallery.

But I digress.  The Winter and Summer Solstices are Yin and Yang, the Divine Twins.  The Divine Twins are the Winter and Summer Kings, death and rebirth, sacrificial kings, consorts to God Herself, the White Goddess, who is also the Black Goddess.  There's three ways to divide the year for the Winter and Summer Kings.  One is using Samhain and Beltaine.  The Summer King is born on Beltaine and is sacrificed on Samhaine, when the Winter King is born and takes over.  Or the Summer King is born at Midsummer (Summer Solstice, well, the solstice is June 21st, Midsummer is St. John's Night, the 23rd, the Eve of St. John's Day) and dies at Midwinter (Winter Solstice), when the Winter King is born.  Or is it the other way around?  Or the third is a mix.  The Summer King is born at Beltaine, is crowned and wed to Herself at Summer Solstice, and is sacrificed at Samhain, reborn as the Winter King, who is crowned and wed at Midwinter.  I like this latter best.  Regardless how you see them, the point is a cycle with the Twins constantly changing which is in control, like the spirals of the Tao-Chi.

Title page for The Boy's
King Arthur.  Image from
Wikimedia Commons.

So, here in the Northern Hemisphere, we reach today the high reign of the Summer King, Yang is in control and Yin just a point, the Winter King dead or dying.  The sun is directly over head (well, further south it is, but here in Wyoming, it is at its highest point).  To the Jew, this is the point where the sun stands still and shines evenly on everyone, a point of no shadow (for shadow is the Winter King).  That point of standing still is a liminal point.  And all liminal points are important and should be noted.  The Summer King reigns supreme for a moment, his power growing until then, it receding from then.  Until today, he was gaining power, and though he finally seized it, he can't hold it, and his power deceases from here.  The Winter King takes back a little each second, each moment, each hour, each day.  For neither King can rule supreme for more than a moment for their power comes from Herself, not from themselves, and She shares it with both of them.

Many people celebrate Midsummer differently.  The day varies as does the name, but like all the different holidays around Midwinter, around the equinoxes and the "quarter-quarters", it seems a natural time to celebrate.  Some celebrate for religious reasons, some just for fun.  Some practice magic on this day (or Midsummer's Eve), while others use scientific instruments to observe the sun at its highest point.

"John the Baptist and Jesus"
cast bronze by Lawrence Plowright.
Image from Plowright Studios.

In many branches of Christianity, including Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic, the solstices are very much a time of the Divine Twins and the Two Kings, here in the form of Jesus and John the Baptist.  Jesus' birth is celebrated on December 24th, the date of the Winter Solstice before the changing of calendars shifted the solstice back three days.  John was born when Mary was three months pregnant with Jesus, so six months before Jesus was born.  So John's birth was conveniently placed on June 24th, which was the Summer Solstice.  John and Jesus very much are the Winter and Summer Kings.  John's ministry came first, a ministry of repentance and water baptism.  It was Geburah, Judgement, the harshness of Winter.  It is the Baptism of Water, birth from the woom, Yin.  Yin is earth and Yang is heaven.  In John 3:31, John the Baptist says, "He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all."  But as Jesus' ministry grew, John's receded.  As John the Baptist said concerning Jesus in John 3:30, "He must increase, but I must decrease."  And John was sacrificed first, the sacrificial king, beheaded.  Jesus' ministry was one of love and forgiveness, and fire baptism.  It was Chesed, Mercy, the growth of Summer.  It is the Baptism of Fire, Baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, being born of spirit, born of heaven, Yang.  Jesus said in John 3:5, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."  Both Water and Fire, both Winter and Summer, both Yin and Yang, but John and Jesus, are needed.  They can't be separated.  And the year turns, first John, then Jesus, then John again.

Goddess of Fire -
both sacred fire
and domestic.
(Hestia/Vesta).
Image from
True Time Tales.

Fire and Water are interesting in the celebration of the Summer Solstice.  The two most common practices you find are the burning of bon fires, often involving jumping over them, a topic in and of itself, and the visiting of water wells.  Fire and Water.  In the West, we tend to think of Fire as masculine and Water as feminine, but even in the West, it doesn't always hold up.  Hestia to the Greeks and Vesta to the Romans was goddess of the hearth and the hearth fire.  In Vesta's temple, a fire was kept burning eternally by the Vestal Virgins.  The Greeks and Romans had a god of water, not a goddess, Hestia's brother Poseidon, who was Neptune to the Romans.  In Ireland, we have Brigit (by whatever spelling) who was a goddess of fire, and became St. Brigit.  In her monastery at Kildare (Church of the Oak), where the goddess Brigit once had a shrine, it is said that the nuns kept an eternal fire burning for the Saint.  Among the pre-Christian people of Europe, and in many other places of the world, there are both fire gods and fire goddesses, water gods and water goddesses.  And there are strong arguments to connect each element with each gender.

Just about every culture for every holiday used bonfires at some point.  The Yule log from Germanic origins is the remnants of the Yule/Midwinter bonfires, as are the candles and Christmas lights many use for Christmas.  On Samhain, the Celts in Ireland would put out all fires and wait for the new fire to be lit.  It was lit at Tlachtga then carried to Tara, where all the people would gather.  It would be used to light a bonfire there, from which all the people would get new fire to bring back to their homes.  There's of course the famous story of St. Patrick lighting the bonfire on Slane, drawing the people to look away from the fire of the old religion to the fire of the new religion.  In Britian, bonfires are lit in honour of Guy Foxe's Gunpowder Rebellion.  Fires were burnt at Beltaine and Easter as well, and many other days.

Gozanokuribi Daimonji bonfire
from Gozan no Okuribi.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

It is believed that the earliest bonfires were used to drive away evil spirits.  The Celts (from whom the name is derived, originally banefire) burnt bones in a huge fire to ward off evil spirits.  The Yule bonfires were lit to guide the sun back.  In Kyoto Japan, Buddhists light bonfires in specific character and image shapes at the end of O-Bon, when the spirits of the dead visit.  Gozan no Okuribi, the celebration that the fires are lit for is a send off party for the dead.

My scallops last nigh.

And what did I do for solstice?  Well, last night I made scalllops, and today I spent the whole day sick from them.  It was a beautiful day, but I spent it sleeping it (food poisoning?) off.  But after waking, I gave the solstice a lot of thought, if you couldn't tell.

If I want to look at my own traditions, the celebration of solstice could be seen in Fourth of July, with the fireworks (bonfires?), picnics, parties in the park.  It's a little later than the solstice, but I'd say that's where I can find it in my own traditions.

But what would I do on the Summer Solstice if I wasn't sick?  Would I celebrate it with a trip to the mountains (oh, yeah, they're still closed because of snow)?  Would I do some great work of magic up in the hills (oh, yeah, snow)?  Maybe in my back yard?  Ritual inside on the Summer Solstice seems sacrilege.  Would I walk my dog by the river (oh, yeah, all the paths are flooded because of all the snow melt and the fact that June is the rainy month here)?  Maybe a long walk around the neighbourhood?  Lay in the back yard in our hammock?  I honestly don't know.

The Summer Solstice is a time of high magic, sun magic, life magic, the reign of the Summer King.  It's the transition from planting to haying in many European agricultural societies, a transition point, a liminal point.  At the minimum, it's a point of change, a point to acknowledge and remember to see how the world changes from the past to the future, the light to the dark.  At the most, it's a time to make change.

All Hail the Summer King

All hail the Summer King!
For now he reigns supreme!
Dark has failed and light has won,
And now it begins again.

All hail the Summer King!
For now he reigns supreme!
His brother’s dead, off with his head,
His blood runs down the streets.

All hail the Summer King!
For now he reigns supreme!
The fires burn, the waters flow,
And all is as it seems.

All hail the Summer King!
For now he reigns supreme!
Upon his throne, with his lovely bride,
Good cheer he spreads around.

All hail the Summer King!
For now he reigns supreme!
But darkness grows, and Winter comes,
And soon his time will come.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

"I am the queen: of every hive"

"Holy Mother, in Whom we live, move and have our being, from You all things emerge and unto You all things return." ~Victor Anderson

Mary the Virgin Mother of God.
Image from Cyberbrethren blog.

Though Mother's Day is a "greeting card holiday" invented by the greeting card companies and flower companies to sell their goods (*NOTE: Not accurate. See comments), motherhood is holy and important to life.  I have big issues with people who say women's only worth is in being a mother.  You should have that choice, and there is power is the non-maternal feminine as well as the maternal feminine.  But there is something special about motherhood, for life ceases without birth, and there's not birth without the mother.  And obviously no birth without the feminine.  There's power in the masculine, but life comes from the feminine (Unless you're Krana, "He who creates for himself").

Snows of Winter, Heat of Summer

Image from SodaHead

Snows of Winter, Heat of Summer
By Muninn’s Kiss

Snows of Winter, heat of Summer,
Two times, two worlds.
The Twins, they dance.

Winter King, in darkness reigns,
Death and darkness, ice and cold.
A crown of thorns upon his head,
Clothed in shadows, hidden light.
Magic dark and waning sun.
Tettens, Woden, Hermes stalks,
From the Castle of Weeping comes.

Summer King in brightness reigns,
Life, rebirth, light, and heat.
Winged crown, light rebounds,
Clothed in fire, born in light.
The sun it rises, warms the land.
A Child is born to warm our hearts.
Lucet, Lucifer, Morning Star,
Riding forth on wings of the morning.

The Twins, they dance,
The passing year.
Light, then dark, then light again.
Two Kings reign, both to die,
Two grooms for oh blessed Night.
Life and Death, Light and Dark,
Ever changing, ever the same.
Snows of Winter melt and thaw.
Heat of Summer takes their place.
Out of darkness shines the brightest light.

Romulus and Remus: Establishment and Witch

Back a while, I had a dream that I wrote about where there were four groups, two large, two small, and the two big groups were led by Romulus and Remus.  Later dream, we (the group I was in, one of the small ones) met Romulus and a small group of his people.  I don't remember them, but I remember a sense of his people (the small group of them, not all of them) behind him and our people (once again, not all of them) behind me and the leader of our group.  I was a priestess in the dream, and the leader was also female.  I think we were on a couch or something similar, and it seems like the encounter took place in a parking lot.  Our leader was sitting on the right hand side of the couch and I was sitting on her left, pretty close to her.  Romulus was standing, bent over her trying to sexually assault or maybe rape her.  She had her knee up trying to push him away and I was grabbing at his arm, trying to stop him.  He was dressed all in tight black leather that covered everything but his hands and head.  I woke up in the middle of the struggle.

It had been a very long time since I did any reading on Romulus and Remus, so earlier this week, I read up on them to refresh my memory.  The following are my thoughts on the story, some of the themes, how it relates to the craft, and some thoughts about the meaning of the part of my dream I expanded on above.

Before I get into the details of the legend, I'd like to talk about twins.  Romulus and Remus are of course twins, and this is very important.  Twins are very common in legends, myths, and folk lore.  There's something about twins that people find magical, unusual, mystical, or frightening.  Twins hold a special place in our psyches, and in the secrets of the universe.  What is a twin?  Our other half?  Our reflection?  Our doppleganger?  Some cultures see twins are evil, bad omens, demons.  Others see twins as a sign of favour from the gods.  In some cultures, twins, or the second twin, are killed, in others, revered.  A twin that dies can haunt their sibling or be a guide or protector.  But regardless of the cultural views, twins capture our imaginations, because they reflect spiritual truths and we know, whether we "know" or not, that these are important.

To look at a few sets of twins, I'll start with Cain and Abel, the first two children of Adam and Eve in the Torah.  Though I don't see anything in the Hebrew to show whether they were twins or not, traditionally, they have been seen as such, and I think the parallels with Romulus and Remus are important.  Everyone's heard the story.  Cain raised grain and Abel raised livestock.  Abel makes an offering to G-d or the first born of his stock and G-d accepts it (probably with fire from heaven).  Cain makes an offering of the first of of his crops and G-d doesn't accept it.  There's a lot of debate on why G-d doesn't accept it, but that doesn't matter for this post.  Cain gets upset and kills his brother.  Abel's blood from the land cries out to G-d, and G-d comes and asks Cain where Abel was.  Cain says he's not his brothers' keeper.  G-d makes him a wanderer.  Cain says everyone will try to kill him, so G-d puts a mark on him to protect him.  Many witches claim descendence from Cain, but I'd like to look at this a little differently.  You can parallel Cain with Romulus and Abel with Remus.  Depending on the version of the legend, Romulus killed Remus like Cain killed Abel.  I will talk later about Romulus being the Establishment, the Orthodox, those in control, and Remus being Witch, the source of change in the world.  Remus is a challenge to Romulus' control.  Likewise, Abel being accepted by G-d was a challenge to Cain.  And, of course, Abel's blood in the earth crying out has echoes in spirits of the land and of the call of the ancestors, of the Mighty Dead.

Another set of twins were Castor and Pollox.  I don't know a lot about them, so I can't say much.  They were the children of Leda.  According to some versions of the story, even though they were born as twins, Castor was the son of Tyndareus and Pollox the son of Zeus (in swan form).  Pollox was immortal and Castor mortal.  They were raised by Tyndareus in Sparta.  There's no story of a twin killing a twin here.  Castor dies in a cattle raid and Pollox goes to Zeus to intercede for him.  There are a lot of things that could be explored in this story, but not really anything I can relate to this post.

I'm not going to go into much detail here, but the Divine Twins are very important in Feri.  I've made a lot of posts about them in the past.  They appear in many different guises, but they can be seen as the two sides of the same thing:  the Summer and Winter King, life and death, creation and destruction, past and future.  The big thing related to this post is the interconnectedness.  Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, Castor and Pollox, you can't have one without the other.  The story is about the twins, not about on or the other.  It's the interaction of the two that makes the story.  Witch moves in relation to the world around her, not just the natural world but the social world.  Sometimes he works against the world, sometimes with it, but change needs something to interact with or it isn't change.  The stillness interacts with the movement of the Cauldron.

Robert Cochrane calls two of the Wind Gods, Lucet and Tettens twins:

(Lucet and Tettens are the Twins, the Children of Night and the Serpent, brothers and some say one and the same person. Fire and Air, growth and decay. One looks forward, the other backward. One creates, the other destroys, Castor and Pollox.)

Lucet is the King of Light and the Child.  He is the day, the sun.  Tettens is the god of witches, the winter, the night.

In Voudou, you find the Marassa, the twins.  There's a secret here, because the two become three.  the Marassa are mischievous and can be dangerous.  There's a lot that can be said about the Marassa, but I'll move on for now.

To be continued...

FFF,

~Muninn's Kiss