Dionysus versus the Crucified
For the past seven years I’ve celebrated Samhain After all, my life started in the Autumn ( yes I’m a Virgo - hadn’t you guessed?) and the tradition seems to have continued with all momentous life changes occurring around the slipstream of October into November so it seems to make so much more sense to start the year now.
When I lived near to her, J and I used to spend days poring over recipe books, preparing food, outfits and decorations that were symbolic of what we wanted to attract into our lives during the New Year. We’d clean our apartments from top to bottom (housecleaning gets in everywhere) and cleanse them with smoke, spread salt in front of all doors and windows to prevent evil spirits from entering and then light candles and hang the traditional jack lanterns - to guide our ancestors to us and ask for their support and guidance in the coming year.
Although I’m the last person to have anything to do with all this ‘happy-clappy-lets-resurrect-a few-rites-go-at-them-half-cocked-and-pretend-that-we’re-part-of-a-deeper-mystery’ new age stuff, the whole ritual of purification, preparation and contemplation which we undertook really focused the mind to get on and accomplish something in the next twelve months. Maybe that was only because we imbued it with a sense of solemnity and worth by making it our tradition, maybe it’s because Samahin is part of a deeper and older religion that we were tapping into. I think that it worked for me because celebrating this festival didn’t leave my future in the hands of a higher power, there’s nothing left to destiny or fate. It was simply taking a day to contemplate where I was and where I wanted to be.
I’m very intolerant of religion. ( Isn’t that a surprise - I’m intolerant of most things!) Its not that I despise, disparage or dislike anyone for the faith that they follow - all gods/goddesses (whatever - please insert most PC definition there) are one and if your faith sustains and encourages you, then you can worship your cooker if that’s what makes you happy. However the hierarchical structure of the majority of organised religion seems to me to be designed in order to place a barrier between yourself and your God. (In the main I’m talking about Western based faiths here, my knowledge of other faiths being too sketchy to sound off with any degree of certainty.) Is a priest/vicar really any holier than a lay person? After all they’re human too and being human they’re prone to the same “vices” that we are. Yet it was religion which created the concept of vice in the first place. I’m with “>Nietzsche on this one - the priest is a triumph of the slave over the master. To me the idea of having a ‘God’- an entity that you worship, that you place above yourself and who will sit in judgment upon you, is repulsive.
I could be cliched and blame my dislike of religion on the years spent in a Catholic school, but that’s not the case. The rot (an overwhelming desire to question the why’s and wherefores of a universe and my place in it) set in before I ever went to school. My background was/is a cheerful pantheon of religions: a great-grandfather who went native during his time in India during WW1 and brought back a love of the hindu rituals and beliefs, a grandmother who quite cheerfully managed to combine protestantism and buddism in the same faith (and the statues on the same shelf!), a father who was asked to join a monastery in Tibet when he was 15 (well it beats running away to sea I guess - although, needless to add his mother didn’t let him go, well its a long way from the North East!) a calvinist who converted to catholicism for love (surely a burning offence if ever I heard of one) and a great, great, great etc… ( I’m not sure how many greats actually) grandmother who was burnt as a witch.
So I cut my teeth on Crowley (most kids are given Topsy and Tim but this was the seventies), was sure that communion (which I made only after supreme arguments with my parents but in the end the desire for a white dress and veil won!) was a throwback to the cult of Mithras, gave my RE teacher hell about why the Church left books out of the Bible which the priests were allowed to read but the lay people weren’t, chanted with my grandmother before going to help her with the flowers in the protestant church and tripped merrily to light a candle at our lady’s altar with a catholic family member.
Despite the diversity of beliefs which surrounded me I wasn’t brought up to follow any particular one and I still don’t. Of my family, none but two went to any church and I’m sure they only did so to hold theological arguments with the priests, after all if you live in a small village - who else are you going to discuss the Key of Solomon with? I prefer the more comforting thought of my ancestors, my blood, in a line behind me, supporting me, right down to the hairy spear wielding one at the back. After all I know that they existed (because I knew many of them) and I know that a part of them is in me. Therefore I can draw upon their strength because when you get right down to the double helix, it’s already there.
After all - man is something to be overcome - what have you done to overcome him? or in the words omy favourite proverb - God helps those who helps themselves.