The Goddess and the Green Man, Samhain, the Pleiades and the Four Quarter Days

 Hola darlings!  Today is Hallowe'en.  Because of the pandemic, there is no trick or treat this year in my city, and no nighttime neighborhood children will be out in their costumes going door to door as my subdivision normally hosts.  In a way I'm relieved, because it's  windy out there today, and I can imagine it will be very cold again tonight.  When I got up this morning there was a heavy frost on most everything and the water in the bird bath was frozen.  Brrrrrrr! 

Yesterday morning I received Katherine Neville's Newsletter  October 30, 2020 "Time Out" Newsletter, which she titled "Three Days Out of Time."  It was brief but fascinating; she explained how Hallowe'en arose out of an ancient Celtic celebration called Samhain.  I was shocked to discover that the word is pronounced "sow-win."  Why on earth is it spelled like it is?!?

As I mentioned long ago, in my 2009 Hallowe'en Newsletter: tomorrow--beginning at Sunset on October 31--we enter a period of Time that resembles pushing the "pause" button on a video or musical recording:

"In the ancient Celtic calendar, so it is said, All Hallows Eve (which begins at sunset on October 31) marks the end of the old year, and the new year doesn’t begin until dawn on November 3. The intervening days (All Souls and All Saints days in the Christian calendar) are days outside of Time, days when we can celebrate what happened in the past and discover what is about to happen in the future."

Neville, one of my favorite authors, wrote the incredible novel "The Eight," a book that I can easily say changed my life in ways I never would have dreamed possible.  I could not recall ever having read or heard that particular description of what Samhain is about.  And, as she usually does in her always too short newsletters, Neville wrote just enough to intrigue me; I went digging around on the internet a bit to get more information.

I found the idea of taking a "pause" or "time out" to think about the past and contemplate the future is just what I need right now, a necessary and welcome break.  I could not help but ponder the past four years, during which I dedicated my efforts, my skills and my money to take Wisconsin back, one office at a time. from what I believe to be destructive political forces and restore our state to the great state it was before 2010.  I also worked to advance the same cause in elections around the United States.  On November 3, 2020, three days away - Federal and State election day for us, those "three days out of time" will wane, and early voting tallies after the polls close may reveal what direction the United States will take for the next four years - our future.  I could not have imagined that what many consider one of the most consequential elections would take place in my lifetime.  But here we are.

I discovered an interesting website called the Goddess and the Green Man out of the UK, and an article on the origins and traditions of Samhain.  I couldn't help but think of Mr. Don during our Goddesschess get-together in August 2007 at my place, along with Georgia (a/k/a Isis) and her daughter, Michelle.  He did a lot of yard work around the house, helping me get the back and front yards in tip-top shape for Georgia and Michelle.  I had him tackle chopping down and getting rid of an out of control wild grapevine that had possessed the wood picket fence along the north line in the backyard.  Here's a photo of Don as the Green Man, dressed in some of the remains of the wild grapevine (you can see he still had a great deal to do as the bulk of the grapevine, still up on the fence, was laughing at him behind his back!)

As the legend of Samhain goes, the Goddess is born again in the spring as the Virgin, but at Samhain she is old and worn out, the hag (witch).  Her mate, the Green Man, has died from the cold and the increasing darkness but the harvest is safe and secure in storage.  In his honor, the Green Man's remains are seeded in the earth during the Three Days Out of Time, in which the past is recalled and the future is pondered, awaiting to be discovered.  A new year starts at the end of the third day (daybreak on November 4).  The Green Man will be reborn in the Spring on the Equinox from his seeds.  My own Green Man passed away in his sleep on October 12, 2012.  I hope he has been reborn, the world needs more people like Don.  

I also found this very interesting article at EarthSky on astronomy and learned more about Samhain (never too late to learn something new).  Halloween, the modern descendant of Samhain, is one of the four cross-quarter days.  I don't recall ever reading or hearing about cross-quarter days, but after reading the article they makes perfect sense!  Basically, there are eight main dates on the ancient calendar - the Summer and Winter Solstices and the Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes.  About mid-way between each solstice and equinox is one quarter-day (Autumnal Equinox - Hallowe'en (quarter-day October 31) - Winter Solstice -  Ground Hog Day (quarter-day February 2) - Spring Equinox - May Day (quarter-day May 1) - Summer Solstice - Lammas (quarter-day August 1; cycle repeats), marking eight main days of celebration or Holy Days/Days of Memory on the ancient calendar.

These eight days marked on the calendar, as noted in the article "Samhain/Halloween" at the Goddess and the Greenman website are called "The Wheel of the Year."  I was reminded of a ship's wheel which generally feature eight spokes, and how many ancient cultures compared the Heavens to the seas on Earth.  Water, of course, is the ancient "void" and with the water there was only darkness and a shapeless chaos, out of which light (life) sprang forth.  The analogy from the ancient Egyptian tradition is in the Biblical account of creation at Genesis 1:1-5.  The ancient Egyptian god Nun (or Nu) and his female double Naunet is/are the origin from which all things were created.  Nun represented the void/the dark waters that surrounded an amorphous something, out of which sprang his "son" who was known as the Creator god Atum or Atum-Re - the original sun god from which light sprang forth.  So again, there are the elements of creation:  a watery void (sometimes depicted as a canopy of water over a "sky" hovering above an amorphous gaseous nothing, and darkness, and from out of these elements first light and then life springs forth.  Nu and Naunet were part of the most ancient gods and goddesses of Egypt, the Ogdoad or eight (yes, there's that eight again): Naunet and Nu, Amaunet and Amun; Hauhet and Heh; and Kauket and Kek. It is no surprise that Moses, to whom the writing of the Biblical account in Genesis is attributed, would analogize the creation of the Earth and the life on it to the Egyptian account with which he was no doubt quite familiar, having been raised by Pharaoh's daughter as a member of the royal court.  

 The constellation "The Seven Sisters" (Pleiades) also has an ancient connection to Samhain. (Read more about it at souledout.org "Halloween and the Pleiades.")  The tiny "dipper" shaped constellation is one of my favorites from my sky-exploring years in my pre-teen and early teen years.  If we do not have clouds tonight, I will go out and look for them in the sky.  Right now you can spot it where Mars rises after the sun sets.  It's hard to miss Mars in the eastern sky, it is one of the brightest "stars" out right now.  It was spectacular last night, but I wasn't looking in particular then for the Pleiades!  

We're also experiencing a full Moon tonight, folks.  You know what a lot of people (anecdotally, police and medical personnel) say about how strange or cray cray things happen when it's a full Moon.  I can't help but wonder if Katherine Neville was well aware of all these things when she wrote her brief paragraph about "the Three Days Out of Time," and said just enough to make some of us curious enough to go digging about for more information.  Hmmm...

The Hind of Hinds - Continued

From Woman’s Encyclopedia, pages 51-54: Arabia

Before Islam arrived in the 7th century A.D., Arabia was matriarchal for over a thousand years of recorded history. The Annals of Ashurbanipal said Arabia was governed by queens for as long as anyone could remember.(1)

The land’s original Allah was Al-Lat, part of the female trinity along with Kore or Q’re, the Virgin, and Al-Uzza, the Powerful One, the triad known as Manat, the Threefold Moon.(2) [Side Note: Annals of Ashurbanipal – Assyrian royal chronicles on cuneiform tablets, dating form the 7th century B.C., found in the king’s famous library at Nineveh by 19th-century archaelogists.]

At Mecca the Goddess was Shaybah or Sheba, the Old Woman, worshipped as a black aniconic stone like the Godess of the Scythian Amazons.(3) The sacred Black Stone now enshrined in the Kaaba at Mecca was her feminine symbol, marked by the sign of the yoni, and covered like the ancient Mother by a veil.(4) No one seems to know exactly what it is supposed to represent today. [Yeah, but all those Arab dudes still kiss it as part of their worship ritual!]

The Black Stone rests in the Haram, "Sanctuary", cognate of "harem," which used to mean a Temple of Women: in Babylon, a shrine of the Goddess Har, mother of harlots.(5) Hereditary guardians of the Haram were the Koreshites, "children of Kore," Mohammed’s own tribe.(6) The holy office was originally held by women, before it was taken over by male priests calling themselves Beni Shayban, "Sons of the Old Woman."(7)

Mohammed’s legends clearly gave him a matriarchal family background. [He would not have been seen as legitimate, otherwise, by the people of the time unless he HAD the necessary matriarchal lineage!]  His parents’ marriage was matrilocal. His mother remained with her own family and received her husband as an occasional visitor. Mohammed lived with his mother until her death, because she was his true parent according to the ancient system; "children belonged to the woman’s family … paternity in the biological sense was relatively unimportant."(8) She may well have been one of the "aged priestesses" who served the temple in Mecca.(9) The traditions of such priestesses may well date back to Assyro-Babylonian um-mati or "mothers," the only people permitted to enter the Holy of Holies. Archaic Arabian shrines were usually served by seven high priestesses, recalling the lawgiving Seven Sages, who were women.(10) The first collection of the books of law called Koran – the Word of Kore, or Q’re – was attributed to them. [Side Note: Seven Sages – Legendary figures in both Greek and Arabian lore, identified with a variety of seers and philosophers, the earliest ones usually female, confused with the Seven Sisters, or Pleiades.]

Pre-Islamic Arabia was dominated by the female-centered clans. Marriages were matrilocal, inheritance matrilineal. Polyandry – several husbands to one wife – was common. Men lived in their wives’ homes. Divorce was initiated by the wife. If she turned her tent to face east for three nights in a row, the husband was dismissed and forbidden to enter the tent again.(11)

Doctrines attributed to Mohammed simply reversed the ancient system in favor of men. A Moslem husband could dismiss his wife by saying "I divorce thee" three times. As in Europe, the change from matriarchate to patriarchate came about only gradually and with much strife.

Many Koreshites remained faithful to the Goddess and to their queen, Hind al-Hunud: the Hind of Hinds, similar to the title of Artemis. She was also called Lady of Victory. But her victories came to an end with one of the last queens, whose husband betrayed her and surrendered her city of Makkah to the enemy.

Legend claims the stepdaughter of the divine Hind married Mohammed himself.(12) However, the history of early-medieval Arabia is nearly all legend. Like Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and other founders of patriarchal religions, Mohammed lacks real verification. There is no reliable information about his life or teachings. Most stories about him are as apocryphal as the story that his coffin hangs forever in mid-air "between heaven and earth," like the bodies of ancient sacred kings.(13)

Footnotes omitted. 

See also The Hind of Hinds, February 28, 2008, Goddesschess blog.