The Christian Calendar is derived from both the solar Roman year and the lunar Jewish calendar.

This leads to “movable” feasts, whose dating depends on Easter which in the [...]]]> There’s a number of reasons why the “Wiccan” wheel of the year and the Christian Calendar don’t match. The most important is all too often overlooked.

The Christian Calendar is derived from both the solar Roman year and the lunar Jewish calendar.

This leads to “movable” feasts, whose dating depends on Easter which in the Latin Rite falls on the Sunday after the first full moon after Equinox.

In other words, Ostara will always precede “Easter” which is more properly called “Pasch”. Pasch often falls closer to Beltane than Ostara anyway. In fact, many of the older Anglican sources often put the two festivals together.

Many other Christian festivals are derived from the dating of Pasch. Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday will fall six weeks before it.

Pentecost was a first fruits festival, and falls fifty days after Pasch (The Passover-Pentecost period is known as “the Great Easter” or Greater Pasch and among some Jewish sects is a time for special study of the paths on the tree of life.).

Indeed, the Christian Easter Season doesn’t close until Trinity Sunday, a week after Pentecost.

One particular special cycle which I did not find adequate data upon in time for this article are the Rogation Days. These days are a week long fast and prayer cycle seeking good harvest, fertility, and so on. They are also especially concerned with weather.

They were always “moveable” feasts, as they occurred in the course of a week rather than on specific days in a month.

The radicals who dominated Church offices briefly during the early days of Pope Paul VI eliminated them as no longer significant to the Modern Urban Christian.

I’m sure the millions of Catholic peasants in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere appreciated this elevation in status (and corresponding implied denigration of their powerful and magical faith).

There’s been some repairs made in the decades since, but this wound is still bleeding.

While it is common for modern practitioners to celebrate the Full Moon festivals, the old Jewish custom was to celebrate the New Moon.

Indeed, in early Christianity, there was a deliberate shift away from the New Moon celebrations in order to emphasize the Lord’s Day activities instead. It was felt that this shift in the timing of the Sabbath and abandonment of the monthly observance would establish a clear shift in the focus of worship practice.

In modern times, I personally feel that a voluntary return to such practices would be more evocative of the kinds of Divine dynamic that we want to celebrate.

As far as the Sabbats of the Wiccan Solar year are concerned, they tend to follow the modern timing of these events, rather than the more ancient calendars which have suffered a tad of drift over the years.

Besides, mythology to the contrary, I’m not aware of any culture which in fact celebrated all eight events prior the appearance of the Christian effort to sanctify all events as symbolic of the activity of the Deity.

In addition, the Christian tendency to celebrate a saint’s feast on the day of their death (which is, after all, the day of their initiation into the heavenly courts) has created a number of cross over feasts which do match with Wiccan practice loosely.

For a working list, let’s label the eight solar festivals as follows:

• Yule, which celebrates the Winter Solstice.
• Imbolc, which is mid-winter.
• Ostara or Eoster, for the Vernal Equinox.
• Beltane for mid-spring.
• Litha, the Summer Solstice is often called Mid-Summer’s day, but this is a misnomer as in fact this is the first day of summer.
• Lamasstide is a more accurate mid-summer festival, some folks celebrate this as Lughdanash, or Lugh’s Feast yet others celebrate Lugh’s feast as a fall festival for crafts.
• Mabon for the Autumnal Equinox.
• Samhain for the mid-autumn event.

There are a number of significant Christian festivals which match these events with some relevance and which would serve as fine equivalences for ritual focus.

When the date for Christmas was picked (to compete with Mithra) it was the Solstice, but that’s drifted over the centuries a tad. Summer Solstice is supposed to be St. John the Baptist’s feast (June 24th). As the real birthday of both these luminaries are unknown, I guess these dates are fitting.

New Year’s Day traditionally was The Presentation of Lord in the Temple, or the Feast of the Circumcision, has become the feast of the Purification of Mary and I don’t know what all these last couple of years.

Twelfth Night, which closed the Yule festival is Epiphany, or the Manifestation of the Lord to the Nations, and is the feast of the Magi (patrons of all astrologers) on Jan 6.

Candlemass, however, falls just before the Feast of St. Blaise — on whose feast day the candles blessed on Candlemass are used to bless throats of the faithful against choking or other throat/lung disease. Imbolc / Feb 2 ? Candlemass is also the feast of St. Brigid (various spellings) who was the druidess/nun who consecrated the goddess energies of Brigid for Christian access.

St. Valentine’s day was the focal day for a lover’s festival in Ancient Rome. St. Valentine became the patron of it because of an interesting custom.

In old Rome, the singles would put their names in a lottery. The names were matched and those folks were “lovers” for the day. Given the prevailing norms of that society, this led to behaviors which the Christians found rather shocking. So they would throw in the names of martyrs, who were single after all. St. Valentine was popular as the festival often matched his martyrdom date.

In spite of the English “Easter”, Ostara is more close to the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Not only does this link with the Lughdanash celebration for craftsmen, (and thus with a number of worker’s days), but also St. Joseph is most important as a home maker.

Father, builder, and provider as well as guardian are all focused on this individual on March 19th.

Near equivalents in behavior to Ostara’s party mood would obviously be Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Also don’t overlook St. Patrick’s day, on March 17th, with its equivalent celebration of various faery elements such as the Leprechaun!

However, the key event for this Springtide event is the feast of the Annunciation, on March 25th. As a consequence, as with many other festivals of the Christian calendar, we have a focus on the epiphany of the feminine aspect of Deity here. This probably equates with the maidenly attributes of the Saxon goddess for this festival anyway.

Beltane, on May 1, is the traditional day for crowning Mary “Queen of Heaven” too. August 15th is the feast of the Assumption of the BVM. The flower focus of this event is retained in numerous hymns, including the “O Mary, We Crown thee” and “Flowers of the Fairest.”

June 21 was often celebrated as “Midsummer” (though in fact it is just the start of Summer), and is also mated with St. John the Baptist — which like Christmas falls a tad late on the 24th. This forms a fairly solid link with Litha.

August 1 is “Lamasstide,” in which bread from the summer wheat was baked, broken, and half eaten, half saved (while last year’s bread half was given to the birds). This was a feast by showing proper gratitude would evade a famine to punish hubris.

A lot of folks celebrate “Lughdanash” (Lugh’s Feast) then, but other traditions make this a fall festival of crafts around the end of September and the start of October. Later, on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary is another Queen of Heaven event.

Mabon matches fairly well with Michelmass . Sept 29 (feast of the Archangels, St. Michael and St. Gabriel — there’s also other feasts honoring the angels, especially among the Greek Orthodox). Even though St. Matthew’s feast falls on Sept 21, the feast of Michlemass was always considered a turning point in the year and is a more likely candidate for the harmonies of the event. Again, in some traditions, this is considered the time for Lugh’s Feast.

A key event that we ought to observe is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on Oct 4th. This gentle mystics love of the revelation of the Divine in Nature should be a shining example of the kind of experience we all desire to emulate. An interesting side note is that he was also one of the authentic stigmatics.

Samhain, coming at the end of October now matches with All Hallow’s Eve, Nov 1 being the Feat of All Saints and Nov 2 being the Feast of All Souls.

The Purification of Mary, which actually is a celebration of her initiation into matronly status, has been moved in recent years to November 21st. Mary, as the supreme avatar of the Deity (as opposed to the Incarnation of the Deity, which is a very different dynamic), reveals the popular vision of the Maid, Matron, and Crone aspects in this festival.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception, on Dec 8th, has some special significance to Americans, as American Catholics see this aspect of St. Mary as the Patron of our country. This would equate her to the Genius and Lares deities as celebrated in Ancient Rome. This feast exists in part due to the revelations of Lourdes confirming the ancient belief.

Again, this feast also celebrates the status of Mary as the supreme avatar of the Deity. Yet here is not even a maiden, but the unborn infant.

Then finally, the wheel returns to Yule.

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This article was written by “Ambrose Hawk” (a pen name) and reprinted for the past ten years with his kind permission.  As of December 2008, I do not have contact information for Ambrose.

Though several people use the name “Ambrose Hawk,” this one is the author of the book, Exploring Scrying.

Well, of course it is.

Just as the Saxon Eostra (or whatever spelling catches your fancy) lent her rabbit and name in English to Pasch, also, the day of Christ’s Mass is actually the festival of the birthday of Mithra. Many of the honorifics bestowed on Mother Mary [...]]]> Isn’t that Star of Bethlehem a Pentagram?

Well, of course it is.

Just as the Saxon Eostra (or whatever spelling catches your fancy) lent her rabbit and name in English to Pasch, also, the day of Christ’s Mass is actually the festival of the birthday of Mithra. Many of the honorifics bestowed on Mother Mary were originally those of pagan goddesses, and St. Brigid arose from the desire to anoint the stories and virtues of the old Celtic Goddess.

Far from shocking the Christian, these facts should affirm to him or her that there is, in truth, only one Deity to whom all paths which are followed in love and in humble sincerity must lead.

The adoption of the Pentagram for the Star of David is a good example of the deliberate processes in which the old Christian denominations appropriate those things that they like from the cultures they encounter. In their minds, they have many imperative reasons for doing so.

Put simply, if there is only one Deity then any attempt by anyone to communicate with that Deity should result in conversations that other folks also seeking the Deity could recognize.

The Master spoke of this in part when He mentioned “other sheep in other flocks” during the Good Shepherd discourse. As is written in Philippians 2:13 – “It is God, for His own loving purpose, Who puts both the will and the action into you (to do good).”

For us who follow the path of Earth Spirituality, this is the manifestation of the Goddess in Her nurturing nature living in and thru us. For as we follow the paths of magical mysticism, we are always brought to greater choices, to either draw down the substance and nature of the Deity into our being or to try to turn away from it to more selfish ends.

The language is different, true, from the Catholic “actual grace” or the Protestant, “living faith;” but an open minded analysis of what the language means leads to the same point.

Because we have experienced the Love of the Goddess, of the Lord and the Lady, of the Primaeval Urge, or whatever your personal vision of the Deity may be (even the classic “Ancient of Days”), we in turn find ourselves desiring to continue not only in that relationship, but to share the benefits of it with others. We want the flowers to bloom in glory, the bees to swim in honey, and all creatures to live in joyful, harmonious abundance.

Again, this is fancy language for discovering how to live as Divine Children in the house and land of a loving God. It is the metamorphosis achieved by turning mystically to the Divine Source of life and existence, the “metanoia”, the conversion, the turning towards the Deity in such a way that we begin to become more obviously like the Deity in our own being As St. John wrote in his first Epistle (I John 4:16), “God is love, and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.”

Further on, John points out that whoever loves the parent, loves the children of that parent too. So we in our turn love the many creatures who each have their own way of showing us some of the sublime and loving hand of the Mother who begot all of them.

So given that if something is showing us this kind of wonder then it must have roots in the Breath of the Deity, it makes sense for Christians to accept it as a sign of the action of that Deity.

Paul did this in Athens, for instance, when he appropriated the altar to “the unknown God” as the starting point of his discourse.

In the same way, he elsewhere appropriated the images of the race and even of the gladiatorial combat for the struggles of the spiritual path.

Again in Philippians he wrote: “Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor, and everything that can be thought virtuous and worthy of praise (Phil 4:8).”

What does all this have to do with the Star of Bethlehem?

Centuries before Christ, the Greek philosophers began realizing that their myths on the surface simply were not adequate stories to account for the depth of responses that religious experience created.

So they sought within their myths for the deeper message which revealed the greater Divine forces lived out in the stories of their gods.

They soon came to see these “gods” as faces or aspects of some incomprehensible power which transcended all the stories and began working towards the idea that beneath all the stories, all gods were gods because they revealed to us ways in which we could relate with, communicate with, the underlying Source.

One of the tools which they found very symbolic of this process and reality was mathematics. Indeed, in the field of geometry they became giants whose work in many ways has never been surpassed.

One of these mathematician philosophers, Pythagoras, was studying the pentagram, an already ancient sacred symbol. He discovered that if one is to join the corners of the interior pentagon across the middle of the figure, a new pentagram would be created.

Then he noticed that if you not only joined the tips of the star together into a pentagon, but continued the lines further another new pentagram would be created.

Theoretically, this process could be repeated infinitely!

Now Pythagoras was a religious leader as well, he or his followers made many discoveries just now being “rediscovered” in the fields of color therapy, aroma therapy, and music therapy. They also made a large number other great discoveries in geometry. Remember, however, that they were conducting this research to discover more about the nature of Deity and their spiritual place in the cosmos.

For Pythagoras, the Pentagram became the best symbol of the infinite nature of the human spirit – extending forever into both the macrocosm and the microcosm and illustrated perfectly the truths of the elemental balance in his being as well.

Here was a sign showing the intrinsic union of the planes and making alive the fundamental principle, “as above, so below.”

Along comes this mystical Jewish heresy which decides that its message must be true for the whole universe for it to be true for themselves.

In their culture, they already have the concept of the star being the mystical representation of the features of the Divine King, the Divine People, and so forth in the Star of David.

Yes, the Mogen David is a Hexagram. Yet they were deliberately searching for symbols to say that this is something new but also connected to the truth of the ancient heritage.

The Pentagram filled this need perfectly.

It was a star of mystical meaning. Moreover it was the symbol of the perfect human reaching infinitely into all the realms.

How better to encapsulate the mission that they saw Jesus fulfilling? It stated the message of a real man who is also the mystical path to the Eternal Existence. Moreover that in this physical person, embodying the physical elements of the universe, the Transcendent Deity reached into our own bodies as well.

Then there were the five points, already linked to the five elements, the Christians saw this as also good imagery for the five points in which the dissonance and the disorder of our world penetrated into Jesus. Feet, hands, and heart (though in some iconographic representations, the spear is shown thrust thru the crown of thorns to pick up that resonance as well), the five wounds, shown upon the points of the star.

So the Star of Bethlehem in is a pentagram – and holds all the real meaning of the pentagram as well.

Now if the pentagram HAS to be a pagan symbol to you, then perhaps in another strange twist, so the miraculous birth and the opening of the path to perfect union with Deity represented by the story of Jesus should be another pagan symbol (as indeed many parallel stories in other cults reveal).

In the same way, as the birth of Jesus was the birth of the Divine Life among humans, so was the birth of Mithras, the Persian sun god.

Since nobody knows when Jesus was actually born (my personal favorite is the Vernal Equinox – the competing January dates for “old Christmas” arise from various calendar reforms in different places and different times), and since so many Christians were closet Mithraists (the two cults being very similar in certain ways), the Church leaders declared that they would appropriate that feast for themselves (thereby perhaps keeping a few more parishioners in church on that day and out of the sacred grottos).

Indeed, just as Mary blithely assumed the honorific, “Queen of Heaven” which was once the title accorded to Asherah/Ishtar; Jesus was loaded down with the titles of the Solar Deities which his worshipers encountered.

The symbolism of the dying god reborn worked just fine. “Sol Invictus” which was supposed to mean “unconquered Sun” just as easily meant “The Only Unconquered”, and so it went.

Besides, the Mithraic cults used the Star of Bethlehem too already and —– hopefully, you now get the picture.

Santa Claus, the improbable juncture of a Balkan Bishop – Martyr and Father Christmas (old man Yule) of the north, is another story – maybe next year…..

Meanwhile, Seasons’ Greetings!

Your servant, Ambrose Hawk

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Ambrose Hawk is a friend and the author of this article.  For over ten years, articles by Ambrose have been reprinted at CelticMagick.com with his generous permission.

Though several people use the pen name “Ambrose Hawk,” this one is the author of Exploring Scrying.

Other articles by Ambrose appear at other websites, including RealMagick.

As of Dec 2008, I have no current contact information for Ambrose.

An Evocation of the Sun to empower a substance (in this case a jar of honey) with healing virtue

AVE, [...]]]> This is a chant derived from very early Syrian Christians and reworked to be a consecration and charging chant for a jar of honey that I use as a prime ingredient some of my medicines.

An Evocation of the Sun to empower a substance (in this case a jar of honey) with healing virtue

AVE, DOMINUS!
AVE, SOL INVICTUS!
Hail, Sun of Rightousness,
Who shines upon all the land.
Come upon this (honey);
Send your Sacred Fire into it;
Contain it and reveal it in your holy light.
Manifest your rule above the twelve powers,
That this (honey) become the phane
Where your generosity shines upon our desires.

In the name of your great archangel, Abraxas,
Whose hand is stretched out over the primal rays of the Cosmos,
You must enlighten my heart.
Shine upon me that I may share your joy,
That I may percieve your Wisdom.

Thank you, YHWH:
Holy Powerful One,
Holy Immortal One,
Holy Wise and all knowing One.
Hail, bright and shining Star,
For the joyful light you have shone upon me

Kairos, Kyrios!
light of gladness,
light of the aeons,
light of joy,
light of my eyes,
lamp of my body,
YHWH Sabaoth

Give me the sun as a garmet
and the moon for a cloak.
Carry me in the ship of the sun
That I may sail through and over
The tempest of evil.
Assign to me the rulers of the great planets,
Their spirit, their intelligence, their mighty powers,
That I may share in the life of the stars
And be made worthy to behold your face.
As you love me
You must give me your glory of the sun,
You of the great number,
That I be guarded from all evil.

(c) 17 June 1998: Arthur Pigg
Note: text incorporates elements of similar prayers from Syrian Coptic Christians in the 2nd Century

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This article was originally published by Ambrose Hawk at the AMG (A Mystickal Grove) message boards.  It has been reprinted at CelticMagick.com (previously “Celtic Lore and Magic”) for ten years, exactly as it appeared at AMG, and with Ambrose Hawk’s specific permission.

Ambrose Hawk is the pen name of the author of Exploring Scrying.