Samhain                                                                      Winter Moon

Samhain ends tomorrow with the arrival of the Winter Solstice.  The long fallow season following Summer’s End fades into the coldest months of the year.  Here in Minnesota the coldest days of the year begin on December 1st, meteorological winter; the old calendar reflects a different climate situation in Ireland and Britain.  Still, that calendar and its larger cultural context is the one which continues to influence our holy day practices.  Christmas comes on the celebration of Sol Invictus, the all the conquering sun, a Roman holy time set by the coming of the Winter Solstice.

Paul Strickland heard a Christian talk radio show lamenting the re-emergence of Winter Solstice celebrations and complaining that everyone knows Christmas came long before such pagan holy days.  We all laughed.  Christmas is a late addition to the Winter Solstice celebration collection and not a very important holiday among Christians until the Victorian era.

When Samhain ends at the Winter Solstice, the old growing season shifts from the death and desiccation of fall into decay and enrichment, preparing the way as the light begins to increase.   When Persephone returns to the Underworld to rule with Hades, the active forces of the soil begin their work in earnest, breaking down the fallen, dead and rotting materials into rich nutrients that feed soil organisms and will feed plants when Persephone returns home to her mother Demeter in the spring.

James Hillman said we see the gods today in our pathologies and I suppose that’s true in his sense, but the gods of polytheism suffered their Nietzschean fate long ago and have come again in more than psychological ways.

As Paul Ricoeur suggests, Christian’s familiar with biblical scholarship might return to the texts with a second naivete and see them once again as holy; so, I would suggest that the gods and goddesses of polytheism have long since resurrected, once again ready to offer themselves to us. All we need is our second naivete to see them. They can help us follow the recurring cycles of nature and understand them as powerful and dynamic realities, ones to which we owe allegiance.

Our blasphemy toward the old gods has created environmental havoc. We wantonly pollute–in the religious as well as the chemical sense–Poseidon’s ocean, Persephone and Hades’ soil, Zeus’s sky and even Aurora’s dawn.  Perhaps only Apollo’s Sun has escaped our meddling.

We are heretics to the old religions and we have paid the price.  If we do not repent, it will lead, as the logic of religion suggests, to our damnation.