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| “Flora”
Mask (2013) |
Happy May Day to all!
Ah, the RITES OF SPRING! I've posted this article before, but I still like it, and felt like sharing previous year's Beltane post once again, for any who may be interested.
May Day was celebrated
everywhere in Britain and Europe with Maypole, flower garlands, May wine and love. The birth of spring on May Day in Elizabethan
England would send villagers into the woods to collect flowers and boughs, and
then they would wait for the sun to rise as it brought the fully opened year
flowering into spring.
A few years back I found myself singing "Lady Godiva", an
old song by Peter and Gordon from the
60's. When I find myself with mental "muszak" that just won’t go away, I’m kind of forced to pay attention. According to legend,
Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse through the streets of Coventry, England,
to ease the tax burden of the citizens imposed by her husband, who agreed to relieve
the toll if she did this. Pulling out my Jungian “Inner Pun” book, I decided that it had something to do
with "Lady God", this being what I get from the word. “Godiva” has both “God” and “Diva or Deva” which
means
divine, shining.
Words
can tell us much about the origins of
things.“Coventry" is
an interesting addendum as well. If you look it up in the dictionary, besides
being a city in England, the actual
definition of the word "coventry" means:
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"the state of being
banished or ostracized (excluded from society by general consent); ie,
"the association should get rid of its elderly members--not by
euthanasia, of course, but by Coventry"**
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Thus, "coventry"
is the opposite of "coven", "covenant", or
"to convene", which means to bring together. So, perhaps
in all of this linguistic trail one can see the way the pagan Rites of Spring
were “ostracized”. A Blog friend, Robur D'Amour, wrote a fascinating article about Lady Godiva, and
commented that the origins of this legend are almost certainly found in the
ride of the May Queen to the sacred tree (Maypole), the "coven tree".
He wrote:
"
A very early spelling, 1050, is Couaentree. I found, by chance, a
reference to Coventry as bring a rebus for 'a coven round a tree'…….. There was
a widespread practice for dancing round a tree on May Eve, which is the
maypole. Perhaps there really was a tree that was used for festivities. The story that Lady Godiva was protesting
against taxes is untrue. Apparently, at the time the procession dates
from, Coventry was a village, and there were no taxes. The procession is
actually a May-Eve fertility procession, many of which are found across Europe.
What happened at Coventry was that there
was a Benedictine monastery there. The monks did not approve of people watching the fertility procession, and
so invented the story about taxes. "1
The origin of the
“peeping Tom” legend also derives from the famous ride of Lady Godiva - the May Queen in all of her glory being, from
a Benedictine point of view, perilous for eyes to see.
The May Queen is the young Goddess Herself, riding to bless the rising
fertility of the land and to meet the May King.
Villagers
celebrating Rites of Spring throughout
Merrie Old England and much of Europe would bear flowers, all the while
capering around the new Maypole. Often
it was only unmarried girls who would be allowed to plant the phallic Maypole
into the fertile Earth, which then would be woven in dance by men and women
with ribbons or twine. Dancers took hold
of the ends in a weaving courtship dance.
A procession led by Jack O' the
Green (a variant of the Green Man), fantastically arrayed with flowers, leaves
and ribbons, might also be part of the celebration. And of course there would be Morris Dancers. Crowned with a garland, the May Queen, no
matter how capricious, was to be obeyed throughout the day's celebrations, and
everyone would vie for the honor of doing her homage.
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| “Guenivere
as the May Queen” by John Collier |
A lovely
ritual with ancient origins in pagan practices of sympathetic
magic. In other words, "the world is waking up and making
love, so we too wake up and make love, and all will bear fruit".
The union of the May Queen with the May King (or the Green Man) probably has its origins in very ancient
traditions of the Sacred Marriage, going back as far as Sumeria and the
marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi. Perhaps,
much farther than that into unknown origins in prehistory.
In ancient
times, the spring ritual union of the King with the priestess (representing the
Earth Mother) was a very significant rite; in later times, even in early Christian
Europe, church morality may have been suspended for Beltane, as couples went
out into the fields to participate in the worlds ripening fertility.
In Italy, Flora was the Roman Goddess of Flowers and
it’s not surprising that her festival was also held on the first day of May.
The May Dance festivals of Europe have many of their origins in the ancient “Feast of Flora”, the ecstatic Roman Rites of
Spring.
This celebration of
the fecundity of Spring has always made the Church nervous. In the late 19th century, May 1 became
associated with the growing labor movement, and since then many countries have
celebrated May Day as International Workers' Day. In 1955, Pope Pius XII
instituted May 1 as the "feast of St. Joseph the Worker" with the
intention of emphasizing the spiritual aspect of labor.
I'm sure the advent
of this secondary meaning to May Day came as a belated relief to the Catholic
Church, along with Lady Godiva's famous ride becoming a folk legend about taxes. For myself, I am happy to see the Pagan origins of May Day,
and the true tale of Lady Godiva, continually re-discovered and re-invented. The re-sacralization of sexuality, in tandem
with the Spring blossoming of the world,
which was the original meaning of May
Day, is truly a Holy Day.
And I am always surprised by how
little most people today know of its origins.
* Robur D’Amour https://www.blogger.com/profile/02966938808921010638
**http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Coventry
