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

The Queen’s Chronicles: April Fool’s Day

People everywhere seem to have regarded themselves as sufficiently ridiculous as to require some serious comeuppance, judging by the universality of Festivals of Fools. The special Fool Days are dedicated to a ritualized recognition of our all-too-human folly. On Days of the Fool there are no intermediary clowns. Everybody gets to play the fool.

Within this ceremonial context, we can act out an upside-down idiot reality with absolute impunity. We are free to tease and taunt, safely flaunt our fatuous fate. This comic relief, this unrestrained retreat from seriousness, serves as a safety valve for society. It allows for the cathartic release of emotion, tension, anxiety, and the diffusion of disappointments and dangerous resentments.

Archaic definitions for fool include “imbecile, idiot, mentally defective, silly, stupid, devoid of wisdom.” “Fool” is from the Latin, follis, which means, “bellows, ball filled with air.” As in, wind bag. Airhead. Buffoon is related to the Italian, buffare, “to puff.” There is an airy quality implied in the language, which describes a fool — an incredible lightness of movement, of the moment, of being. A new way of seeing, which dissolves the solidity of the so-called real world. There is a Yiddish proverb that says, “The complete fool is half prophet.”

In Scotland, November 8, is kept as Dunce Day. This Fool’s Day was named after Duns Scotus, a ninth century scholar who created a cone-shaped hat to energize the brain of his foolish students. The first Tuesday in May is the Fool’s Fair in Wales. Awa Odori, A Fool Dance is staged annually in Japan, while the Russians celebrate the Day of St. Basil the Fool of Moscow. Fashing, or Fastnacht, is a raucous two-day Feast of Fools that precedes the pre-Lenten carnival in Austria. Purim, the Jewish Feast of Esther, is celebrated with an atmosphere of exuberance, a joyous, boisterous mocking of tradition and decorum, when it is customary, on this one day only, to drink to giddy excess.

The Hindu holiday of spring fools is Holi, celebrated as a high-spirited fire festival, which proclaims the death of Winter and the onset of spring fever. For five days there is utter relaxation of the accepted rules of behavior. Lewdness prevails. People spray each other in the streets with powdered color pigments. There is a ribald shift in the normal relations among the castes and between the sexes, which often degenerates into mudslinging and public beatings of men by women.

Most of Europe and North America celebrate the Fool on April 1st. In Scotland, April 1 is known as Huntigowok. In Fife, a peninsula north of Edinburgh, the foolishness continues on April, 2, Taily Day, when the fun is limited to the immediate area of the backside. An entire day dedicated to buttocks jokes and “kick me” signs.

In France, the Fools Festival is Poisson d'Avril, “April Fish.” Is this a reference to the sun's leaving the constellation Pisces? Because April fish are easy to catch? Or, perhaps, a symbol of the meatless Lenten month? Here, too, people concentrate on each other’s ass ends. The idea of the day is to surreptitiously pin paper fish on the backsides of the unsuspecting. Unsigned joke cards decorated with fish are also exchanged.

So why April Fools' Day? Because April weather is so capricious? Because in April we are like a kindergarten class of hyperactive puppies exploding out of winter into recess? Or, as they say in Indiana, "April is the cruelest month?" Holi and Purim are celebrated near the Spring Equinox, as were the Roman holiday Hilaria and also the vernal festival for the Celtic God of Mirth.

Perhaps these spring high jinx were the true precedents of April Fool’s Day, but the official story goes: Until the Middle Ages, New Year was celebrated in Europe beginning on March 25, the approximate Vernal Equinox and lasting eight days until April 1 when festivities culminated in a day of visiting and gift exchange. Then in 1582, the new Gregorian calendar was adopted and New Year’s Day was suddenly changed and officially established as January 1. Those folks who forgot the change or who insisted on maintaining the old traditions were called April Fools. They were gifted with joke presents and sent on fool's errands.

Today, we silly so and so’s who putter with nature, who foolishly toy with the elements and fool with the future could stand a strict Trickster talking-to. A little comical self-critique is most certainly called for about now. A good swift kick in the perspective is what we need. The stakes are enormous. The joker is wild. We can no longer afford to play the fool.

With blessings of serious fun,

xxQMD

The Queen’s Chronicles: OUT WITH THE OLD, BLESS THE NEW

When Kate Clinton invited me to conduct the purification ceremony at a public event she organized for the eve of the inauguration called, Sage the White House, I was delighted. Certainly, after eight long years of dirty deals, dirty politics, dirty wars and dirty little secrets our country was in need of a deep cleansing. And I have a lot of experience as a public blesser.

But focusing our purification intention on the White House was too narrow, I thought. So I was pleased when we were forced to relocate the event to Dupont Circle. This way, we could direct our energy out in a complete circle. We can’t just focus on the president. What about Congress? What about the courts? What about Wall Street?

And most importantly, what about us? We have been culpable, too. We let it all happen through our complacent co-operation. Me might not have approved of what was going on, but what did we do about? We did protest the Iraq war, but where was the mass outrage as one by one our constitutional rights were revoked?

Who among us did not shop and enjoy the lucrative, good times? We need to remember that in a democracy we have not only the right, but also the responsibility to comment on the conduct and ethos of our nation — vociferously, if we have to.

So my ritual was about releasing all that we do not wish to take with us into this new era that we are now beginning — our attitudes and values, our culpability and our laziness, as well as the ill deeds of our government. Once we let all the negativity go, it was important to cleanse the toxic residue that it can leave behind. And then once the atmosphere was cleared and purified, we called in all our good qualities and intentions for a positive change for the good of all.

We accomplished all that in a big way. Nearly a thousand souls gathered at Dupont Circle in Washington, DC to participate in the Inauguration Purification Ritual.

Inauguration Purification Ritual Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1tkLlf5MXE&feature=channel_page

Inauguration Purification Ritual Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TudynPUgnpc&feature=channel

We now have a fresh start. This time, may we step into the fray and involve ourselves, not only in discussions and complaints about our problems, but also in search of creative solutions to them.

With blessings of peace, sanity and sustainability,

xxQMD

House Blessing with Mama Donna Henes

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