Alban Hefin: The Summer Solstice

Some preliminary and exploratory notes-in-process by Ovate Padraig on the Christian parallels with Alban Hefin:

The Summer Festa of Alban Hefin or the Summer Solstice is perhaps the most visible and well known of Druidry's celebrations. The lamentable controversies over Stonehenge serve to arouse the public's awareness, even if briefly each year. Christian parallels seem to fall into two categories: St. John the Baptist and Pentecost.

St. John the Baptist

Throughout much of Europe, the Fires of the Celtic Midsummer's Day have easily been transmuted into the Bonfires of "St. John's Eve," since in both the Byzantine and Latin Christian calendars, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (the Forerunner) is celebrated on June 24.1 The modern-day Irish customs are one example of this, and it is one of the most wide-spread feasts of Europe. The name John is a Hebrew derivation meaning "God's gracious gift."

John the Baptist is an "antitype" of The Christ, in Christian theology the last of a long line of Forerunners. His Conception and Birth are the solar complement to Christ's: Fall Equinox to Summer Solstice for John, and Spring Equinox to Winter Solstice for Christ. 

Some groups have read into the Gospels and subsequent history a rivalry between the followers of these two Cousins. Be that as it may, for our purposes here, these Christian and Druid Solar complementarities would suggest not rivalry, but partnership in the cosmic and yearly cycle revealing not only the cyclic nature of reality, but also its interlocking and interdependent qualities. The Light and the Dark, the Prophet and the Messiah, these are all part of an interlocking Solar dance.

Why would the ancient Christian mystics creating their calendar situate St. John's Birth at the Summer Solstice? There may be a few clues gleaned from meditation on his life and words. 

There is little doubt that the picture painted of John from the Four canonical Gospels is one of a man endowed with the full force of the Fiery energy of the Sun at its apogee. His charismatic preaching galvanized thousands of followers, calling for a rebirth by return to the mystic womb (immersion in water). 

As part of this mystic initiation, John preached "metanoia," usually mistranslated "repentance." Metanoia in Greek does not mean being sorry for being "bad." It means bringing about a change of nous (inner mind / heart / soul ), that part of ourselves that is open to "intuition," the voice of "the teacher within." 

As practitioners of true inner and practical mysticism and alchemy know, the transformations which prepare the aspirant involve all the parts of the person, body, soul and spirit. John was urging the people to begin this transformation, because "the Kingdom of God is at hand," that is, the full identification and incorporation with the Incarnate Solar Logos in The Christ to which each person and the whole Cosmos is invited as part of spiritual evolution.

When the Forerunner and the Logos meet at the Jordan for Christ's Baptism (January 6), all of the elements are present, earth, air, fire and water, as the most important insight of Christianity is revealed: the Divine Trinity, unity in diversity. To be united does not mean uniformity or the obliteration of diversity.

John's fearlessness climaxed in his denunciation of Herod and his beheading, spectacularized by later dramatists. There is no question that John is a Solar Hero, but his famous dictum ("I must decrease so that He may increase" -- John 3:30) has been distorted and misunderstood when examined only on the exoteric level, to mean that I have to give up who I am, or what makes me, me, in order to be Holy or good. The Druid solar parallels reveal the inner meaning of John's statement in two ways.

First, if we look at the people who seem to have most thoroughly imitated the Divine in this Kenosis, "self-emptying," John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, the Apostles, they are, far from being "Jesus-clones," strikingly independent and clearly drawn personalities, each revealing the Divine through their distinctive personalities. 

The Mystery of the Transfiguration (August 6 -- which we will examine at more depth in connection with Lughnasadh) reveals that the Divine shines through our individual and diverse personalities, not obliterating them, and actually "needs" that diverse to fully reveal its infinite beauty. This certainly is true of all of the universe, not just humans, although humans seem to have a unique role in working with the other kingdoms (Faerie, plants, animals, mineral, etc.) to make this more apparent.

Thus, in this first instance, John's statement is a Solar message that the One Life, which is mediated on many levels by the Sun, shines through all beings, not destroying them, but empowering them to be exactly and thoroughly themselves. The Sun's energies, flowing from the One Center through the Solar Disk, manifested as both physical and metaphysical, feed redwoods and dolphins, humans and Faeries, minerals and wave-forms. 

Second, when John's words "I must decrease so that He may increase" are seen in the context of the annual Solar journey, the Druid year gives them clearer meaning. At John's Nativity (Solar Solstice), the Sun reaches its strongest point in our earthly cycle, but it also begins its decline. The days begin to gradually get shorter after the Summer Solstice. This year's sun must decrease so that the cycle may continue and "he," the New Year's sun to be born at the Shortest Day of the Year -- Winter Solstice (& Christmas) -- may increase. 

In this way, the necessary flow of the circle is affirmed, not through a slavish self-deprecation, but in the necessary and perfectly natural course of life, death and rebirth. In the next essay in this series, dealing with our August Festa of Lughnasadh, the concept of willing self-sacrifice will be unfolded. 

Pentecost

Although the most obvious parallel with Alban Hefin must certainly be St. John as we have discussed above, the parallels with Pentecost, in the usual course of things a much more important Christian festival than St. John's Nativity must not be overlooked.

The coincidence of the Summer Solstice and Pentecost is hidden in the Western Churches, since the Easter - Pentecost cycle is adjusted to earlier in the year, but for Eastern Christians, Pentecost is often in the midst of June (e.g. in 2002, Pascha  / Easter will be on May 5, and Pentecost fifty days later on June 23 ). As I suggested in the earlier essays on Alban Eilir and Bealteinne, I believe this later arrangement was the esoteric intent of the Council of Nicaea in insisting that Pascha / Easter take place only after the Spring Equinox and Passover festivals have been completed. 

The examination of the Alban Hefin and Pentecost parallels will take many years, but here are some suggestions for avenues of exploration. 

First, Pentecost is the first outpouring of the completion of the work of the Incarnation of Christ, just as the Summer Solstice is the high point of the new sun born at Winter Solstice. But this climax is not an end of the cycle, but sows the seeds of fire in the Disciples, so that further works of the Spirit may be accomplished, further cycles begun. How this sowing can take place will be revealed at the end of the Byzantine Church year in August, corresponding to the Festa of Lughnasadh. 

Second, Pentecost is the Feast of the Holy Spirit par excellence, the very indwelling Person of the Trinity who is God-within-us, the "God of our Hearts." In this way, it is the celebration of the fact that the Sun outside of us is the same as the Divine Life at the very center of our beings, as The Christ promised "a spring of living water which will well up within." 

The Western Churches image this Spirit - Sun connection by the use of Red Vestments for Pentecost, a southern and solar color, but this usage is relatively late. The more ancient Vesture in the West, and the continuous color for Pentecost Vestments in the Byzantine Christian East, is Green. In the West, this survives as the standard color for all of the "Sundays after Pentecost."

Interestingly enough, the "heraldic color" of Bishops is green in both East and West. On the heraldic coats of arms of Bishops, the hat and cord are green, even though the modern Western choir dress of Bishops is red. According to Christian practice and teaching, Bishops should be persons who open themselves to the Holy Spirit for the benefit of the whole community which they serve.

Why Green? It may very well be that once again, esoteric Christianity -- in accord with Druidry -- strives to emphasize that the power of the Son / Sun does not transform us into automata of Himself. The Sun does not cause earthly nature to become yellow or red (its own colors), but rather, Green is the color associated with  new and verdant life springing up through an individual incorporation of the Sun's energy. 

In this way, the Green color of Pentecost, and the customary strewing of our Byzantine Christian Temples with greenery (certainly also connected to the Hebrew Pentecost, the Festival of Booths) reveals the result of the Holy Spirit's solar action in both the external and internal worlds. 

There is another, quite fascinating connection of the Holy Spirit with green and emerald which emerges from the comparative studies of Henry Corbin 2 and Christian Rebisse 3 which is summarized and discussed in the next few paragraphs:

In both Western esoteric imagery and Islamic mysticism, the color green and the Emerald are emblematic of the highest achievement of spirituality and the heart of the "Other world." Discussing the teachings of the Iranian Shi'ite Platonist Shihaboddin Yahya Sohravardi (1155-1191) and their parallels, Rebisse points out that the dimension of experience wherein the mystics encounter the Divine is the place which

". . . plays the role of mediator between the world of forms and the world of pure essences. It is designated as being the "Eighth Climate," the Land of the Cities of Emerald," or Hurqalya. Sohravardi speaks of it as being the world that the spiritual pilgrim encounters in his mystical experiences. To describe the process of raising the soul toward this level of awareness, Iranian symbology talks about climbing the mountain of Qaf. This involves a cosmic mountain whose summit is none other than the most elevated center of man's psyche. On this summit, one finds the emerald rock which tints the heavenly vault green. 

"This is where the Holy Spirit, the Angel of humanity, resides. Among Sufis, the emerald is the symbol of the cosmic soul. It is also amazing to find a similar concept among Christian Qabalists. For instance, when discussing the soul of the world, Johannes Pistorius, in De Artis cabbalisticae (1587), talks about the "green line" of the last heaven. This concept is also found in the Cabala Denudata4 of Knorr von Rosenroth (1677).5

Emerald has for many ages been the symbol of the deepest spiritual experience for Western hermeticists, embodied in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which leads those who enter into its mysteries (by delving into their own deepest being) to a full identification with the One Life at the center of all that is. It is the paradox ennuciated by The Christ who promised the Holy Spirit Who would "well up within you as a fountain of living water." 

Shi'ite mystics await an eschatological age when the Hidden Imam who lives upon the Green Island will reveal a new order. The western Christian mystic Joachim of Fiore (12th C) preached that spiritual history was divided into three epochs, that of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He taught that the third age, that of the Holy Spirit, was upon us, when the Church of Peter would be superceded by the Church of John, and the era of the Holy Spirit. 

This is embodied in the German versions of the Grail legend: 

"Wolfram von Eschenbach developed in Germany the idea of a knighthood common to Christianity and Islam. His Parzival, which Richard Wagner made into Parsifal, is derived from an Arab text that Kyot le Provençal had obtained in Toledo. This version of the Grail legend is of Iranian origin.6 It is amazing to realize that the Grail in Parzival is a precious stone upon which the dove of the Holy Spirit descended. One tradition states that it involves an emerald in which the chalice of the Grail has been engraved." 7 

Thus the achieving of the Grail moves the individual from the Age of the Son to the Age of the Holy Spirit, from the Church of Peter to the Church of John, and moves him / her and the whole world from the manifest realm of the senses to the interior realm of the Spirit. All of this shimmers in shades of Green, the fruition of Work of the Sun, of the Christ-Logos-Sophia in the apparent and spiritual realms. 

There seems to be ample evidence, then, that Green is an appropriate mystical complement to solar red at this Summer Solstice and Pentecostal celebration of the Great Work of the Sun in mystical Alchemy.

In the Byzantine calendar, the first two Sundays after Pentecost are respectively, All Saints and All Saints of the Local Church. Again, this is a way of celebrating the results of the Spirit's indwelling, as was forecast Liturgically by the Sunday before Pentecost, commemorating the First Council of Nicaea. In many Western European countries as well (e.g. Portugal), the Monday of Pentecost Week is a day of particular celebration. 

This continuation of the Spirit's work in the Saints, both worldwide and local, is another affirmation of the necessity of diverse Icons of the Infinite One Life of the Triune God in Whose image the Cosmos is crafted. The exuberant and solemn celebrations of the Summer Solstice which commemorate and reinvigorate our connection in the flow of the divine energy from above to below through us, are complemented by this same theme at Pentecost. In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Byzantine Christians pray "Give unto us the precious and holy Body and Blood of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, and through us, to all the people." The Saint is seen as a conduit of Divinity, for all the world.

Third, at Alban Hefin, in the light of the full Light of Summer, all is made clear. At the "Kneeling Prayers" of the Vespers of Pentecost afternoon in the Byzantine Tradition, the whole Baptismal catechesis which has been acted out during the celebrations of the Paschal Sundays is recapitulated. In the midst of these prayers are clearly enunciated the inner Christian teachings of apocatastasis (universal Divinization / Deification), and many others. Year after year, century after century these inner truths are proclaimed, but only those who are ready to receive the inner teachings seem to take notice. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It is as if the esoteric Christian mysticism is "hiding in plain sight"!

I am sure that there are many more parallels! Only the years and the Teacher Within will tell!

Notes:

1. As an aside, and to demonstrate the esoteric care taken in the construction of the ancient Christian calendar, we may look at the three pairs of Conception - Nativity feasts: those of St. John the Baptist, Mary the Theotokos and of Christ:

2. Corbin, Henry. Corps spirituel et terre céleste, de l'Iran  mazdéen à l'Iran shi'ite (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1979): Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth;  L'Homme et son Ange (Paris: Fayard, 1983); L'Homme  de Lumière dans le soufisme iranien: The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism; (Paris: Présence, 1971); and En Islam Iranien (Paris).

3. Rebisse, Christian. "Rosicrucian History from its Origins to the Present. Part VI: The Emerald Land," in Rosicrucian Digest 79:2 (2001), 2-8.

4. See Antoine Faivre , Les conférences de Lyons (Braine-le-Comte, France: éd. Du Baucens, 1975), 118-120.

5. Rebisse, Christian. Op Cit., 3.

6. See Markale, Jean . Le Graal: The Grail: Uncovering the Celtic Origins of the Sacred Icon. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996), 258-263.

7. Rebisse, Christian. Op Cit., 6.

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