Prunings from the Hedge
Rebirth from Chaos
In the Craft traditions I’ve learned, Samhain marks the point in the year when the Lady retires to the Summerland for the winter, the Wild Hunt ranges abroad, the Holly King becomes the hoary Lord of Misrule and presides over winter celebrations, and the World, that is, the local cosmos, starts to return to its underlying chaos. In the Ogham Tree calendar, as reconstructed by Robert Graves in The White Goddess, most of November lies within the lunar month of the Reed, and has the tag from the Rune of Amergin that proclaims “I am a threatening noise of the sea.” Ngetal, the Reed month, is succeeded by Ruis, the Elder tree month, the tag for which is “I am a wave of the sea,” an alternative reading being “I am a returning wave of the sea.” Ruis ends at Yule, the winter solstice, and the day after Yule is called by Graves ‘the Nameless Day,’ for it lies outside the 364-day lunar year. It is the ‘day’ mentioned in the expression ‘a year and a day.’ The following day begins Beth, the Birch moon of the new year.
In this article I will present an attempt to explain most of this material so it makes sense as a collective whole.
Samhain, October 31st, was the Celtic New Year. Its name means ‘Summer’s end,’ for the Celts recognized only two seasons, summer and winter. The reconstructed Craft traditions I have learned put this together with the calendar of solstitial peoples, who placed the beginning of the new year after the solstice, usually December 20th or 21st. Thus, while at Samhain the veil between the worlds is rent, the actual return of the World to chaos is gradual, extending from October 31st to the day after Yule. This return underlies the celebrations of disorder in December leading up to the night of Yule, when we bid farewell to the Holly King (as the Lord of Misrule), who will be vanquished by the reborn Oak King at midnight. Several confusions need to be cleared up in all of this.
First, as to chaos – this is a condition, not of disorder, but of reality in its primordial state before it is organized by the mind into names and forms, and thus rendered knowable. It is not just something that existed before the creation of our local cosmos and will exist again after its dissolution at the end of the cosmic cycle. It is here all the time. It is right in front of our eyes, as it were, but most of the time we cling to the comfort of the known and find it extremely difficult to let go and face the unknown. Periodically letting go, at least partially, and facing the unknown that surrounds us and that we ourselves are, is a renewing experience. This is what witches attempt on the Nameless Day, after working up to it through the Reed and Elder moons. In doing so, we are imitating, on our small level, what the Gods and the World are doing at this season. If we participate in this renewal, we will emerge in the New Year refreshed throughout our minds and bodies. Thus, the parties and ritual reversals of December (as in the ancient Saturnalia) have a serious purpose as well as being for fun.
The World, our local cosmos, needs some explanation next. The Pagan picture of the cosmos is the World Tree (in some traditions, a world pillar or mountain). This does not contradict modern science, for the World Tree is actually a map of consciousness. Many of us are familiar from yoga books with the diagram of the body and its seven chakras located along the spine, and the three subtle channels (ida, sushumna, pingala) twining through them from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. At each chakra one perceives a different world. This was also depicted in the Irminsul, the sacred tower of the Saxons, destroyed by Charlemagne. The World Tree represents the same reality as the picture of the yogi and his or her seven chakras, and the reality explored by modern astronomers is concerned with the view obtained through only one of the chakras.
Each of us views the universe through the lens of the chakra we habitually inhabit. This is true of all sentient beings, all the way up to and including the Gods. Thus, to say that the World is renewed by returning to chaos is to really make a statement about the consciousness of beings perceiving the World, or that portion of it open to their vision. As the World Tree represents the possibilities for perceiving the universe from the earth, the cosmos so represented is local in character. Sentient beings living in the Andromeda galaxy with the same potential for exploring different levels of consciousness have their own World Tree.
The lunar month falling between October 28th and November 24th is assigned by Robert Graves, somewhat tentatively, to the reed. The reed becomes ready for cutting in November, and was used by the Celts to thatch their houses. As it is hollow, it was regarded as providing a passage for spirits and the dead from the Underworld to our own Middle-earth (Middle-earth because it is perceived through the middle chakra of the spine, thus resting on the midmost branch of the World Tree). Through the piping of the reeds one could hear the approach of the spirits of winter.
The Rune of Amergin tag associated with Ngetal is “I am a threatening noise of the sea.” This refers locally to western Ireland, when the crashing waves of the Atlantic filled the hearts of the Gaels of Connaught with terror at this time of year. These harbingers of winter assailed their sense of security and increased their fear of the unknown, of what hardships winter might bring.
The Rune or Song of Amergin exists in many versions. It is perhaps the oldest piece of Gaelic writing, and was purportedly the challenge thrown out by Amergin, the chief Druid of the invading Milesians, to his counterpart among the indigenous people of Ireland, the Tuatha de Danaan. Graves arranged the different lines of the Rune to accord with the Ogham Tree calendar, which he set in the order of the trees’ blossoming in the Irish climate, an order which also fit that of the initial letters of the trees’ names in the Ogham alphabet.
November was given to the first phase of the return to chaos, of the known to the unknown. In this phase, the unknown is approaching like ocean waves, and one feels oneself isolated on a small isle in the midst of the sea. Everything on the isle is known and familiar, including oneself, but the waves of the unknown are marshaling an assault that threatens to inundate what remains of land underfoot.
Ngetal is succeeded by Ruis, the Elder month. The elder, according to Graves,
“…is a waterside tree associated with witches, which keeps its fruit well into December…in Ireland elder sticks, rather than ashen ones, are used by witches as magic horses. Although the flowers and inner bark of the elder have always been famous for their therapeutic qualities, the scent of an elder plantation was formerly held to cause death and disease.” (Graves, p. 185)
And earlier (p. 40) he remarks that the elder is a notoriously bad wood for fuel.
The elder-tree thus serves as a symbol for something that has healing effects but which is very unpleasant to confront. The Rune of Amergin tag for Ruis is, as mentioned, “I am a wave of the sea,” or “I am a returning wave of the sea.” Putting this image together with the one of Ngetal, we see that the encroaching sea has now overwhelmed the little island of the known, and the observer has become one with the waters. From being a last remnant of the known, one has come to perceive oneself as equally unknown, part of the total mystery of this moment of existence. This is not an experience of the meaninglessness of life, for that still posits two entities, meaning and life, that fail to come together. This is rather the realization that names and forms are only relatively real, and meaning fails, in the final analysis, to explain this moment of existence. In the novel Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre expressed this realization negatively with the words “I am the Thing.” (Sartre, p. 134) But there was still an element of resistance in that insight. His hero Roquentin is drowning but has not let go of the known and returned to the sea as one of its mysterious waves. He still clings to his negative reactions as things known. He is still choking on the elder-smoke.
Speaking from my own experience, the return to chaos, in its culminating moment, lasts only a few seconds, for it is the strongest and, in a non-negative sense, most terrifying of experiences. It is like waking up to find oneself at the edge of a windswept cliff. One cannot help but step back. But the moment at the cliff’s edge will be remembered all one’s life, with renewed vigor.
Graves assigns the Rune of Amergin tag “Who but I knows the secret of the unhewn dolmen?” to the Nameless Day. Dolmens were erected on burial mounds of heroes. The name of the hero was hewn in the dolmen. This dolmen, erected above my grave, has no name, because I have lost my name and form in chaos. The secret I know is the secret of rebirth, for I emerge from chaos reborn, with the Gods and the World, to start life afresh in the New Year.
Bibliography
GRAVES, Robert, The White Goddess; A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, New York, Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 27th printing, 1993.
SARTRE, Jean-Paul, Nausea, New York, New Directions, 1964.