928 EAST FIFTH STREET VOLUME V I #6
Brooklyn, New York 11230-2116
Copyright 1993 by: Temple of the Eternal Light (718) 438-4878
An "Omni-Denominational" Religious Fellowship
"TEMPLE ACTIVITIES DURING THE SUMMER
Most Temple events will be suspended during the summer. Correspondance and Home study programs will be continued. As usual "Points of Light" will be suspended for the summer. This will be the last issue until September.
Visitors will be welcome. Kindly call a day ahead to assure we will be in.
TO ALL OUR READERS: LOVE AND L.V.X. FOR THE SUMMER.
Rt. Rev. Jerome Peartree, Publisher Rev. Karen DePolito, Editor
OPEN INVITATION TO ALL
These events are open to both members and non-members. Please call a day in advance and let us know you are coming.
SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1993 @ 8:00 P.M. SUMMER SOLSTICE SABBAT
SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1993 @ 8:00 P. M. LAMMAS SABBAT
Suggested Donation: 1..00 Kindly bring some food or drink
ARACHNE'S APHORISMS FOR WICCANS-#3
For every Wiccan who actually gets it, there are two who could get it but don't want to bother, three who'd never get it if they tried, and four who can't hear you above all the talking and loud music.
Those whom the Goddess wishes to destroy, She first makes computer
system operators.
Wiccans and Jehovah's Witnesses really agree on a lot of things -- they only feel differently about them.
Pagan Gatherings would be a lot more restrained if participants thought they'd ever have to meet again in the real world.
Before any public ritual, always remember to:
1. Get the ashtrays out of storage.
2. Clean the bathroom.
3. Hide all hairbrushes.
Sex is for Wiccans what cannibalism is for Catholics: a symbolic ritual act that we admit to only under duress.
Thelemites are just traditional Wiccans with better lawyers.
Q. What is the difference between "nature spirituality" and "Witchcraft"?
A. Who wants to know?
Death is Nature's way of telling a Wiccan to turn off the computer.
MIDSUMMER
By: Rev. Karen DePolito
(also called Litha, around June 21st)
We call this holiday Midsummer, though of course it's not the middle of summer at all, but the beginning. (Go figure.) What it is the middle of, however, is nature's yearly cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death and rebirth, of which each Sabbat marks a different phase. Indeed, we can think of the Sabbats in terms of hours of the day -- whereby Midsummer would correspond to 12 noon, and its opposite holiday, Yule, to 12 midnight.
As with Yule, and the Spring and Fall Equinoxes, Midsummer focuses on the Sun's progression around the Wheel of the Year. At this solstice, the longest daylight period of the year, the Sun God is honored at the zenith of his powers, as a triumphant warrior and Father of Nature. In this form, he fully consummates his union with Mother Earth, climaxing the courtship that began with the "dawn" of spring. At the same time, the high noon of the solar year is also the hour of his death, whereupon begins the gradual decline of light and warmth over the next six months. It is a death he willingly submits himself to, in order to keep the Wheel turning as it must, that the earth may bear fruit in abundance and all God's critters be fed, hallelujah. The nature of the Sun God's death has taken a myriad of forms from one culture to the next. He is burned alive, torn limb from limb, pierced with a stake of mistletoe, or hung up to die on a T-shaped cross. And there is enough evidenc e to indicate that in the earliest times, the god's earthly representative (perhaps the king himself) was thus sacrificed each year at Midsummer.
(Remember, "as above, so below.") This became more symbolic with the onset of civilization, the human sacrifice being replaced, say, by an inanimate object like a poppet.
Church authorities did not lose sight of Midsummer's significance to the common folk. St. John the Baptist, in his beheading by King Herod, took over the role of the dying god; his feast day, June 24, is replete with pagan stuff
--notably the gathering of the herb called St. John's wort, to be burned in the Midsummer fire, or kept around the home for protection.
(Incidentally, many historians believe that John the Baptist's death may actually have been a ritual sacrifice of the type mentioned above -- in which case the saint would have been an unfortunate "stand- in" for the sacrificed king.) But what about the Goddess -- how does she figure into all this? For a clue, recall how she appears at Yule, the solstice at the other side of the Wheel. There she is cold and barren on the surface, yet containing deep within the embryo of a newborn Sun. By contrast, the Lady at the summer solstice appears, like the Earth itself, lush, fertile, and sensuous. She entices her Lord to a climactic mating -- an orgasm which is also his sacrificial death.
Thus the Goddess at Midsummer is a literal "femme fatale": on the outside, she is all seductive and fecund; on the inside, she is the force that kills. And this death, in turn, plants the seed for new growth.
At the point of solstice, we see the sun moving out of the mutable air sign Gemini, into the cardinal water sign Cancer. As the watery aspect of Air, Gemini is symbolized by ether, the transmitter of signals through space (as in
"on the air"). Abstractly, the sign represents the decided Mind functioning as vehicle for the Will. So another practical symbol here is the magickal Wand, directing energy toward a specific goal (note that Mercury, the planet ruling this sign, has a close connection with this magickal weapon.) Fire of Water, which is Cancer, is symbolized by swiftly moving water, the ecstatic downpour of rain, springs and waterfalls -- all appropriate metaphors for the Midsummer experience. Remember too, the water element's association with death and rebirth.
Both fire and water figure prominently in any Midsummer celebration, representing the male and female creative forces working together. A caldron of water should be present in the circle, and the water used in the ritual for blessing all within it. As with Beltaine, a bonfire is an appropriate addition to any Midsummer ritual as well. Wands and staves are also used at this Sabbat, particularly a Y- shaped staff called a stang (perhaps a variation on the Tau/cross?), which at Midsummer is entwined with flowers and has a large candle stuck between its prongs.
And since this is one of two pivotal points on the Wheel of the Year, a wheel should appear, decorated with flowers, somewhere on or near the altar.
What we celebrate at this Sabbat is a formula familiar to poets and philosophers, as well as magickians: Orgasm = Death = Insemination = Rebirth.
This is no more, or less, than the natural order of things. It took several millennia of patriarchal fear to make these ideas evil, and one neo-Pagan essay will not change things overnight.
BLESSED BE TO ALL!
