Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Summer has become intolerable for me. It is just too damn hot and I am miserable, sweaty and cranky, much of the time. But when my little pooch Poppy starts panting in the heat, her little pink tongue drooping out of her open mouth, I know the Dog Days of Summer have arrived.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is sizzling at its most intense right now. This is the horrid weather when, according to Noel Coward, only “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid day sun.”

The term “dog days” was coined by the ancient Romans, who called these hot and humid days caniculares dies or “days of the dogs” after the star Sirius, Canis Majoris, the “Greater Dog,” which is one of the hunting dogs of Orion, the Hunter in the constellation that bears his name. The ancient Egyptians named Sirius the “dog star” after their god Osiris, who was often depicted as having the head of a dog.

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. In fact, it is so bright that it was once thought that it produced heat. In the summer, Sirius rises and sets with the sun, and beginning in July, the two stars are in conjunction. In the latitude of the Mediterranean region, this period coincided with sweltering days that were plagued with disease and discomfort.

The Dog Days are officially counted as 20 starting days before the conjunction and continuing to 20 days afterward which spans July and August, which are hottest and muggiest part of the season. The ancients believed that the heat from Sirius added to the heat of the sun during this period of conjunction, created a stretch of especially hot and sultry weather. Hence, Dog Days.

The conjunction of Sirius with the sun varies somewhat with latitude. And the “precession of the equinoxes” (a gradual drifting of the constellations over time) means that the constellations today are not in exactly the same place in the sky as they were in ancient Egypt and Rome. Today, the Dog Days occur during the period between July 3 and August 11.

Although the Dog Days are certainly the warmest period of the summer, the heat is not due to the added radiation from a far-away star, regardless of its brightness. Nor is summer’s heat in the Northern Hemisphere caused by our proximity to the sun. Earth is actually furthest away from the solar heat lamp in summer. But, because of the tilt of its axis in relation to the sun, we are blasted by a direct hit of fiery heat.

As I write this, the heat index is upward of 115 degrees. This summer is especially bad, with extreme heat waves sweeping much of North America. Our tempers are on boil and even the most innocuous disturbance is enough to send us over the emotional edge.

The entire planet is heating up right now. Literally. Global warming is playing havoc with weather patterns, which in turn, affects all plant and animal life. The debate about the greenhouse effect is also revved up to high.

In fact, all disagreements are reaching a boiling point, as is evidenced by the ever increasing and escalating geo-religious-cultural-political-economic conflicts around the globe. The world seems to be populated by a pack of wild rabid dogs fighting over scraps.

Time out!

Cool down!

Let us turn our attention to positive solutions and focus our thoughts and actions toward creating peace. Peace of Mind. Peace of
Heart. Peace on Earth. There is still a chance for peace.

With best blessings for keeping it cool,

xxQMD

Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Queen’s Chronicles: LAMMAS BLESSINGS OF BREAD

August 2 is the exact halfway point of summer. The Summer Cross-Quarter Day was celebrated by the Saxons as Hlaf Mass, “Feast of Bread,” and by the Celts as Lughnasadh, Commemoration of Lugh. Lugh was the grain god, son of Mother Earth. Every August he was sacrificed with the reaping of the corn only to be born again in the new shoots of spring exactly as the Egyptian, Osiris, had
been. At the moment of death, according to Egyptian scriptures, a person is also a kernel of grain, “which falls into the earth in order to draw from her bosom a new life.”

Loaf Mass and Lugh Mass evolved into Lammas, the Druid corn feast, one of the four cornerstone festivals around which their year revolved. When the Church adopted, co-opted, Lammas, it was referred to as Lamb's Mass in commemoration of St. Peter in Chains, and the practice of the offering of the first fruits on the altar remained exactly the same.

Traditional celebrations of the first corn were observed on August 1 or 2 in many cultures. Named for Juno Augusta of Rome, August was particularly sacred to the Goddess Who Gives All Life and Feeds It, Too. It was considered for this reason an especially propitious time to be born. To this day, when a Scot says that someone was born in
August, it is a compliment in praise of skilled accomplishment, with absolutely no bearing on the person's actual birthday.

The Midsummer Cross-Quarter Day is the only one of the four, which is not still actively celebrated in our contemporary culture. Midsummer is celebrated in Europe, but there it refers to June 21, the first day of summer and not the middle at all. Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” actually takes place on the Summer Solstice.

The only living vestige of Lammas in the United Stated is a rural holiday called Second Planting. But unless you read the Farmer's Almanac or belong to the Grange or 4H Clubs, you would have no reason to hear about it. It is celebrated exactly as Midsummer has always been celebrated. The first grain is harvested, threshed, milled, baked into bread and cake, and then shared in community. After a night of feasting and dancing, work starts again at first light planting the second crop of summer wheat, which will the mature by the fall harvest.

How can we, separated from the agricultural process by city and century, appreciate the atmosphere of the season which surrounds us, but which we cannot see? What is the Goddess of Good Grain to us of the boulangerie? The patisserie? We who buy our grain in bags, in boxes, premixed, pre-measured, prepackaged, prepared; sown, grown, harvested, hulled, milled, by someone else, somewhere else. How can we identify with the earth values taught by Terra Mater during this time of year from where we are held captive in the synthetic heart of the pop tart culture which claims us?

Well, we can behave, as they say, as if we were born in August. We can, in fact, become august — wise and generous and gloriously noble, each in our own chosen paths. We can hone our skills as the tenders of Mother Earth. We can hoe our row. We can carry our load. We can break bread together. We can feed the hungry.

We reap what we sow.

With best blessings of bountiful bread,

xxQMD

For a more detailed explanation, refer to my book, Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles and Celebrations. It is available on my website, www.donnahenes.net