Frau Holle and her Feather Bed of Winter

I find I want to pull this post out every December, along with one on Father Christmas, so I'm going to indulge myself again.   I love Frau Holle........if you've encountered it before, please indulge me..........

One of the  Goddesses that reflects the flux of seasonal cycles, and belongs truly to Winter,  is the Nordic  Frau Holle. Holle has very ancient origins indeed, and may have been a prehistoric, a pre-Christian  Weaver Goddess, a Spinner of fate. 

Mother  Holle is very much associated with Yule, and with the warmth of hearth and home, especially in the winter.   Also known as Holda or Hulda, she is a manifestation of the Pagan  triple goddess,  embodying the passages of life through birth to death, in both light and dark. In some early  myths, she is "the ash girl", her face half black with soot and half white.  

This remarkable metaphor  comes from a story of how,  in order to marry the God of Winter she had to come to him neither naked nor clothed, and neither in light or darkness (thus, both the "White Goddess"  and the "Dark Goddess").   Like Persephone, who becomes the Queen of both death and spring,   Holle (perhaps, fittingly, related to words like  "Holy", "wholly",  and "whole"?)  in old age  is Winter's Queen, and encompasses the Circle of dualities. 

As old Mother Holle/Holda, it was believed that  she brought  soft snow to put the world to bed.     Mother Holda is the source of  the  "Mother Goose"  legends, because the snow flies when she shakes the feathers from her down bed.  In Holland, they still say that 'Dame Holle is shaking her bed'. 


 For anyone who may wonder where the "flying broomsticks" of witches (or Harry Potter) comes from, Dame Holda is probably  the source.  Because of her association with the hearth and home, the Broom was both a symbol as well as a  magical tool.  Folk traditions of "sweeping away evil from the hearth" are found throughout Europe.  As a symbol of the Hearth, it is interesting to see this also transformed into the "vehicle of witches".  In later folktales, Frau Holle becomes a fearsome hag, riding her broom and bringing the storms of winter.

 

"Frau Holle, as she is known in Germany, was called The Queen of the Witches. The brothers Grimm tell a story of step-sisters who both go to visit Frau Holle in the 'nether realms'. They begin their journey to her by falling in a well............Holle's name is linguistically related to the word Halja, which means "covering", and is the ancient Teutonic name for Hel, the Norse land of the dead. Holle is sometimes called the Queen of the Dead, and resides in the 'nether' regions. She possibly lent her name to the country Holland, 'the land of Holle', which is also called the Netherlands because many parts of the country are below sea-level." 

Sandra Kleinschmitt

Holda/Holle/Hel  is thus  both light and dark, young and old, illumination and shadow, living in the "nether world" and the material world.  Spring becoming Summer becoming Winter becoming born again.   Whole.
  
 As the mythologist Joseph Campbell pointed out in many ways throughout his writings, to understand the evolution of myth is to understand many interconnected things, including the evolution of language and religion.  One of my personal images that I often find myself making are  "dual" masks, masks that are half black and half white, or half "underground" and half "above ground vegetation".

"Our Lady of Chaos and Order" (2013)

 I think this reflects my sense of how very important holistic consciousness is, personally and collectively, whether we speak of "shadow work", the coming to terms with the ebbs and flows of self, or the cycles of our Mother Earth, the ebbs and flows of the seasons and the creation/death/rebirth cycle.  Whether microcosm or macrocosm, to try to live within the perspective of  the Whole. 

So who is  Hel, the ashy side of Holle's face, from whose name we get "Hell"?  

Besides being the origin of the word people use daily as a swear word, and millions of Christians have a mighty fear of going to if they don't get baptized or redeemed (and virtually all of them blissfully ignorant of where the  concept originated from).  

Hell  has been used, very effectively,  by the early  church  as a scare tactic to frighten the masses into “righteous” acts. People no longer remember that once "go to Hell" meant, simply,  to die.  To get the real story, we have to go back to the early Nordic peoples with their Triple Mother,  and look this death Goddess in the face.  

"Hel" by Susan Seddon Boulet

Hel has a realm in the netherworld or the underworld (and the idea of underworld, or womb/tomb Goddesses is very ancient indeed, going back to the Paleolithic).  She is the ruler of that underworld country  to which souls who have not died in battle will depart. As thanks for making Her ruler of the netherworld, Hel makes a gift to Odin. She gives him two ravens, Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory).  In Nordic mythology Ravens are messengers between this realm and the next, psychopomps that can open pathways.  

 Johannes Gehrts

The name of Her realm is Helheim, and perhaps like Maat of Egypt, Hel is the judge of each soul that enters her realm.   Those who were cruel and evil in life must endure a place of icy cold (a fate that the  people of ancient Scandinavia  found much worse, I imagine, than a  lake of fire). Unlike the Christian concept of Hell as a place of eternal damnation and punishment, Helheim also served as the shelter (womb of regeneration) for  souls waiting to be reincarnated. 

"Hel watches over those who died peacefully of old age or illness. She cares for children and women who die in childbirth.  She guides those souls who do not choose the path of war through the circle of death to rebirth."

 Rowen Saille of the Order of the White Moon

Like Persephone, who is both Spring and Hades, Hel as the dark side of Holle governs  the underworld or invisible realm. In magic, like Hecate, she is a pathfinder  where the  veil between worlds is thin.

"Magic is the art of changing consciousness  at will."

 ............ Starhawk

 Seidhr [SAY-theer] or Nordic shamans called upon Hel's protection, and in doing so they  wore  "the helkappe", a magic mask, to render them invisible and enable them to pass through the gateway into the realm of death and spirit.  The Helkappe was a mask,  thus understood as a transformative, liminal tool that enabled one to  transit between the seeming dualities of life..........and like masks and sacred drums  throughout the world's traditions, it was infused with shamanic power.  

To take the wisdom of this  metaphor further, to thus wear a mask  as a psychic  tool was to  engage consciously with the continual flux of personae - young/old, dark/light, good/bad, male/female.   This is the realm of the soul, beyond duality, beyond time.  Wearing the "Helkappe", in whatever way one may imagine such a mask........enables one to enter both realms.

A wonderful commentary on Holle/Hel come from the   Goddess Inspired  Blog  by Silvestra, who has helped me to understand the  non-duality of this myth, and it's unfathomably ancient origins.  Rather than me try to paraphrase her, I take the liberty of copying the article here, and provide the link to her Blog below.


"Mother Holle  started off Her existence as the Goddess of Death and Regeneration. During the Neolithic in what Marija Gimbutas termed Old Europe people believed in the cyclical nature of all existence. Every ending was understood to be the beginning of a new chapter. Death, rather than being the final end, was seen as a resting stage prior to new life. Just as seeds rest deep undergound during the cold winter months waiting to sprit up as a seedling in spring, so were the dead seen as having returned to the Goddess’ dark womb to await renewal and rebirth.

The Goddess of Death and Regeneration was associated with winter and the colour white. Small stiff white Goddess figurines with small breasts and exaggerated pubic triangles were placed alongside the dead in order for Her to accompany the person on her or his journey of renewal. The Goddess of Death and Regeneration was not feared or seen as being evil, but instead was considered to be benevolent and generous.

                       Mandorla of the Spinning Goddess (1982)  by Judith Anderson

“She holds dominion over death, the cold darkness of winter, caves, graves and tombs in the earth….but also receives the fertile seed, the light of midwinter, the fertilized egg, which transforms the tomb into a womb for the gestation of new life.”..... Marija Gimbutas 

Old white-haired Mother Holle and Her underground realm are one interpretation of this aspect of the Goddess. In the fairy tale Mother Holle is described as being kind and generous and very just. She lives at the bottom of a well. The well itself can be interpreted as being the birth canal leading to Her dark underground womb...........Mother Holle is described as having ugly big teeth, a big nose and a flat foot. The latter shows her love for weaving or spinning, another sacred act associated with the Goddess: She is the Life Weaver, the Spinner of Destiny and Fate.

Mother Holle was known all across the Germanic world. She was called Holle in Germany, Hel or Hella in Scandinavia and Holde on the British Isles. She is the origin for the word hell and its German variant Hölle, as well as words such as holy and holding in English and Höhle (= cave) in German.

The Scandinavian Goddess Hel is probably the most widely known version of Mother Holle as Goddess, although by the time the Indo-European Norse wrote down their religious beliefs, Hel was no longer the benevolent Regeneratrix of the Neolithic. She had become the dreaded Queen of the Dead.

As was the case during the Neolithic, Hel’s realm Nifhelheim also lies below the earth at the root of the World Tree. Incidentally the bottom of the World Tree is also home to the three Norns, Weavers of Destiny. While, as said above, originally the Goddess of Death and Regeneration was also the Weaver of Fate and Fortune, later beliefs separate Her more and more into Her various aspects. 

 Despite being feared by the Norse as the dreaded Hag of Death, Hel has Her benevolent roots hidden in plane sight. Being linked to the earth, She is one of the old Vanir Earth Goddesses, Vanir meaning “the Giving One”.

In Central Europe Mother Holle also evolved over time. Instead of becoming the Goddess of the Underworld, though, She became the Queen of Elves and the Mistress of Witches. Her character was actually very similar to that of Greek Hekate, the old Crone who roams the world with Her fearsome dogs.   Around 900CE Frau Holle had become an old weather hag who was said to ride in on Her broom stick bringing with Her whirlwinds and snowfall. Her life-giving generous nature was retained more in Germany than in Scandinavia, as even during Christian times She was seen as bringing life to the land causing growth, abundance and good fortune."

 http://goddessinspired.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/mother-holle-the-germanic-goddess-of-death-and-renewal-weaver-of-fate-and-fortune

The Curse of the Morrigan

 

I wrote this for a performance 15 or 20 years ago, and I still think it may be the finest poem I ever wrote, because I sometimes think She Herself was there with me when I wrote it.  It honestly was a moment when I felt like I was a channel for a voice greater than my own.  I never told anyone that before, but feel I should now.  It was a gift.

I love it because the Morrigan, Celtic  Goddess of Justice, and honorable Battle, and honorable Lamentation,  speaks in the poem with the circular and expanded  wisdom of a Goddess, the one who  speaks far from the limited view of  "revenge" and "consequences", but speaks rather from the wide spiral  perspective of the evolution of the soul.  

I also love the poem  because I think it's so important now to open a way for the Warrior Goddesses, for the Morrigan, to come into our hearts and into our world, before too much, far, far too much, is lost.  The next human evolution, I truly believe, is one of empathy, which to me means living within the Circle of life, feeling and sensing our connections on every level.   We see the cycles, we see the ripples, we see, and gain the  capacity to Circle, and Circle, and Circle, until, at last, we 

"find our faces before we were born,

and drink from deep, deep waters."

 

The CURSE OF THE MORRIGAN

 
You who bring suffering to children: 

May you look into the sweetest, most open eyes, and howl the loss of your own innocence.

You who ridicule the poor, the grieving, the lost, the fallen, the inarticulate, the wounded children in grown-up bodies:  

 May you look into each face, and see a mirror.  May all your cleverness fall into the abyss of your speechless grief, your secret hunger,  may you look into that black hole with no name, and find....the most tender touch in the darkest night, the hand that reaches out.  May you take that hand.  May you walk all your circles home at last, and coming home, know where you are.

You tree-killers, you  wasters:

 May you breathe the bitter dust, may you thirst, may you walk hungry in the wastelands,  the barren places you have made.  And when you cannot walk one step further,  may you see at your foot a single blade of grass, green, defiantly green.  And may you be remade by it's generosity.

And those who are greedy in a time of famine: 

 May you be emptied out, may your hearts break not in half, but wide open in a thousand places,  and may the waters of the world pour from each crevice, washing you clean.

Those who mistake power for love: 

 May you know true loneliness.  And when you think your loneliness will drive you mad, when you know you cannot bear it one more hour,  may a line be cast to you,  one shining, light woven strand of the Great Web glistening in the dark.  And may you hold on for dear life.

Those passive ones, those ones who force others to shape them, and then complain
if it's not to your liking: 

May you find yourself in the hard place with your back against the wall.  And may you rage, rage until you find your will.  And may you learn to shape yourself.

And you who delight in exploiting others, imagining that you are better than they are:

May you wake up in a strange land as naked as the day you were born and thrice as raw.  May you look into the eyes of any other soul, in your radiant need and terrible vulnerability. 

May you know your Self.  And may you be blessed by that communion.

And may you love well, thrice and thrice and thrice, 

and again and again and again, 

may you find your face before you were born.  

And may you drink from deep, deep waters.

Pagan Poems............

Catechism for a Witch’s Child

When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird’s wing

tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open spilling
streams of molten ice to earth

and tell them how you drink
a holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother who never taught you
death was life’s reward

but who believed in the earth
and the sun
and a million, million light years
of being

©  1986 J.L.Stanley

From "Labyrinth Poems by J.L. Stanley"

GOING WODWO

SHEDDING MY SHIRT, my book, 
my coat, my life,

leaving them empty husks 
and fallen leaves

going in search of food
and for a spring

of sweet water.

I'll find a tree as wide a ten fat men,

clear water rilling over its grey roots,

berries I'll find, 
and crab apples and nuts,

and call it home.

I'll tell the wind my name,
and no one else.

True madness takes
or leaves us in the wood

halfway through all our lives. 
My skin will be my face now.

I must be nuts. 
Sense left with shoes and house,

my guts are cramped. 
I'll stumble through the green

back to my roots, and to leaves, and thorns, and buds,

and shiver.

I'll leave the way of words 

to walk the wood.

I'll be the forest's man, 
and greet the sun.

And feel the silence blossom on my tongue

like language.




By Neil Gaiman

The Green Man

I walked among the trees
I wore the mask of the deer

remember me,
try to remember
I am that laughing man
with eyes like leaves

When you think that winter will never end
You will feel my breath, warm at your neck.

I will rise in the grass, a vine caressing your foot.
I am the blue eye of a crocus 
  opening in the snow
  a trickle of water, a calling bird,
  a shaft of light among the trees.

You will hear me singing
among the green groves of memory,
the shining leaves of tomorrow.

I'll come
with daisies in my hands,
we'll dance among the sycamores
once more



by Lauren Raine

  EARTH, WIND, FIRE AND WATER

Stone, speak to me.
My mayfly voice flickers,
flares, goes out.
I am listening.

Where are your roots?
What secret waters that vein and course
the darkness, humming of distance
and falling years, of bones,
and pottery shards, fossils played out,
smoothed by waters past memory or telling?

Stone, you will be my teacher.

Hawk, speak to me.
From your flight I learn of narrow vision,
the blindness of small creeping things.
Fly high, seer, dance an incantation
for the far journey.

What flickering shadows
do you see, in this, and the other world?
Far seer wings without mercy,
hope, or pride calling vision.

Hawk, you will be my teacher.

Fire, speak to me.
I am listening. Enter me, burn in me
and teach me to burn.

Illuminate the shadows pressing
into this careful house of sticks I have built.
Burn away what is no longer useful.
Burn me empty and full, teach my feet
to dance the changing way.
Fill my blazing hands with shaping,
my heart with the heat of love.

Fire, you will be my teacher.

Raindrops fall,
from the branch of a black oak tree
their Telling is many and one.
Rain, speak to me. I am listening.

You are a multitude, your story grows
in the telling of stream, river.
Each thirsty mouth opens as you pass
into the mouth of the ocean, singing

I hold this Song to me. It is not my own.
I am a part of it.

Rain, you will be my teacher.

The Masks of the Goddess - New Website

I've begun to make a new Collection of Masks of the Goddess, and so, had a lot of fun making a new website for the Project: 

www.masksofthegoddess.com

Gratitude and Thanks Giving

 "You think this is just another day in your life, but its not just another day.  It's the one day in your life that is given to you.  Its given to you, it's a gift,  the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.......

Look at the faces of the people you meet.  Each face has a unique story, a story that you could never fully fathom.  And not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors is there.  And in this present moment, in this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here......"

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast

Reviewing  my  threads and remembrances about November and the Day of the Dead, I see that I've failed to note that  November is also the month of Thanksgiving, at least, in the United States.  And pilgrims being greeted by generous, if doomed,  Native Americans with corn and turkeys aside, and things like "black Friday" entirely perverting the point,  there is a perfect cyclical and spiritual rightness to that.  How can we talk about the closing of the year, the final harvest festivals, going "into the dark", as well as honoring our ancestors and beloved dead  ~ without, finally, arriving at GRATITUDE?  In fact, now that I think about it, how can one really look at the experience of being alive without finally arriving at Gratitude?

I was looking for the perfect "Thanksgiving Day" card, and found this perfect video, a brief TED talk by Louie Schwartzberg  followed by the artist's video about Gratitude, which includes his stunning time-lapse photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast.  I wanted to share this as my offering for Thanksgiving day.

Learn more about Louie Schwartzberg  and Moving Art at  www.movingart.com.

http://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ

Signs of Change: U.N. Urges Vegan Diet, and Britain's First Poo Bus

I was quite depressed at that last election, thinking "I'm living just before the Deluge".  But one morning I woke up with the thought, imprinted by helpful guides no doubt:  "Concentrate on the Ark Builders".  And I've been doing that ever since, discovering, all over the place, good news and innovations.  I know I stray from thinking here about mythology ......... but I was delighted to see the U.N. itself urging a vegan diet.  

And how about the methane, waste and sewage driven  "Poo Bus"?  Now that is really something! A bio-bus!  Talk about renewable energy!

I wonder though, would it be, ah, unpleasant if you had to sit behind it in traffic?  Here's the article:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/20/uks-first-poo-bus-hits-the-road

 UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet

Cattle ranch in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The UN says agriculture is on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth. 

Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace HO/Reuters

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.
It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."
Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.
The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts. Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said.   Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."

Both energy and agriculture need to be "decoupled" from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found.  Achim Steiner, the UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UNEP, said: "Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation."

The panel, which drew on numerous studies including the Millennium ecosystem assessment, cites the following pressures on the environment as priorities for governments around the world: climate change, habitat change, wasteful use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilisers, over-exploitation of fisheries, forests and other resources, invasive species, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, lead exposure, urban air pollution and occupational exposure to particulate matter.
Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday.

Re-membering John Barley Corn

Somebody recently asked me about "John Barleycorn", and I found myself reflecting on this so ancient and ubiquitous myth ........ the wonderful  pagan agricultural God who dies and is born again, along with the return of the sun and the return of the barley and the corn and the wheat.  And like Opheus and Dionysis, he even becomes the source of ecstasy, be it beer, or wine, or music.  

John Barleycorn Must Die is a traditional English song - records of its origins go back as far as the 1300s, and it is probably much older than that.    Over time, many variations have arisen, and the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote his own famous version of the story of John Barleycorn. In the 70's, John Renbourne, Traffic**, and Steel eye Span popularized the song, along with many folk artists. 

John Barleycorn is a very prime myth indeed  - the Great King who is sacrificed, dies and is reborn in the agricultural cycle.  The motif is found as the Sumarian Dumuzi, the Shepherd husband of the Goddess Inanna who goes into the underworld for part of the year, and returns to her in the Spring.  The same idea of the dying and reborn King is found with the Egyptian Osiris, who is reborn in the Sun God Horus.

John Barleycorn is the personification of the grain, and the life of the grain from planting to harvest, transformation into beer, and then sowing.  After Barleycorn’s first death he is buried, and laid within the ground.  In midsummer he grows a “long golden beard” and “becomes a man”.  

The song goes on to describe threshing and harvesting. Barleycorn is bailed and taken to the barn. And then the grain is parceled out. Some is taken to the miller to make flour for bread. And some is saved and brewed in a vat to make ale. And some is planted, so that the whole cycle can begin again.  It is likely that versions of John Barleycorn were sung in pre-Christian times, to accompany harvest rituals. Some of these rituals survive to this day in modified form, most famously the sacrifice of the wicker man. These rituals tell the story of the death and rebirth of the god of the grain.

  Photo with thanks to  Avalon Revisited

John Barleycorn is, in particular, also the God of Ecstasy - because he provides celebration and ecstasy as the barley becomes the source of beer and the beloved malt whiskey of the Highlands.  The malting and fermentation is also a part of his "life cycle" and divinity. Perhaps one of the most famous "ecstatic"  manifestations of the Wicker Man, his rituals of sacrifice, rebirth, and  celebration is Burning Man, the  festival that happens in Nevada every fall.  Originally associated with the burning of the Wicker Man at the Lammas Harvest Festival by neo-Pagans in the Bay Area, 

it's grown to become a fantastic festival and art event.  I'd be willing to bet however that  many

of the people who attend Burning Man don't know that it began with that in mind...........

Here's an excellent  quote I take from a Druid's Blog called "The Dance of Life" 

about the Wicker Man:

"In English folklore, the folksong representing John Barleycorn as the crop of barley corresponds to the same cyclic nature of planting, growing, harvesting, death and rebirth.  Sir James Frazer cites this tale of John Barleycorn in The Golden Bough as proof that there was a Pagan cult in England that worshiped a god of vegetation, who was then sacrificed to bring fertility to the fields.  It is tempting to see in this  echoes of human sacrifice as portrayed in The Wickerman film (1973), but that is not really what this time is about.  Whilst there was a Celtic ritual of weaving the last sheaf of corn to be harvested into a wicker-like man or woman, it was believed that the Sun 's spirit was trapped in the grain and needed to be set free by fire and so the effigy was burned........In other regions a corn dolly is made of plaited straw from this sheaf, carried to a place of honor at the celebrations and kept until the following spring for good luck."

It's interesting that in Robert Burn's poem, there are "three kings", similar to the kings from the east in the Nativity story.  Early Christians who came to the British Isles (and elsewhere) often absorbed native pagan mythologies and traditional rituals into Christian theology, and the evolution of the Story of Christ is full of such imagery in order to help the natives accept Christianity. Certainly John Barleycorn shares with the Christ Story the ancient, ubiquitous  theme of the death and rebirth of the sacrificed agricultural King. 

I am a great admirer of the wisdom traditions of Gnostic and esoteric Christianity, but I also believe it is necessary to separate the spiritual teachings of Christianity from  the mingling (and  literalization) of earlier  mythologies throughout  in the development of the Church.  For example, I believe the metaphor used to describe Jesus as the "Lamb of God" directly relates to Biblical practices prevalent in his lifetime  of sacrifice of lambs and goats to Yahwah (indeed, the sacrifice of animals was common

thoughout the Roman and Jewish world.)  The later development of  the doctrine that Christ   "died for our sins"   may have some of its origins in the important, and quite ancient,  Semitic Scapegoat Rituals,  wherein the "sins and tribulations" of the tribe were ritually placed on the back of a goat, which was then driven away from the village to literally "carry away the sins" into the desert.

Observing recently a Catholic "Communion" ritual ("This is my Body, This is my Blood") I was impressed by the many layers of mythologies and archaic cultures inherant in that ceremony, still important to so many people today.  And one of those threads may very well originate in the prime agricultural myth of  the dying and reborn God, a long tradition from which John Barleycorn arises re-born  every spring, and is finally "killed" in the fall. 

Ubiquitous indeed!  This same idea is found in variations throughout the Americas, this time with

the story of the Corn Mother (among the Cherokee, Selu) who is killed, dismembered, and reborn in 

the spring.

John Barleycorn
by Robert Burns

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
They took a plough and plough'd him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead. 

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris'd them all.
The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm'd wi' pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober Autumn enter'd mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show'd he began to fail.
His coulour sicken'd more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.
They've taen a weapon, long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then ty'd him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell'd him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn'd him o'er and o'er.
They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.
They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear'd,
They toss'd him to and fro.

They wasted, o'er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us'd him worst of all,
For he crush'd him between two stones.
And they hae taen his very heart's blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
'Twill make your courage rise.
'Twill make a man forget his woe;
'Twill heighten all his joy:
'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,
Tho' the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne'er fail in old Scotland!

** Here's a link to the song being sung in  a 1972 Concert by Traffic 

http://youtu.be/fsIdhSzyx8M

And here is wonderful Steeleye Span:

http://youtu.be/tlL9RCznuU8