The seventh tree is
the oak, the tree of
Zeus, Juppiter,
Hercules, The Dagda
(the chief of the
elder Irish gods),
Thor, and all the
other Thundergods,
Jehovah in so far as
he was 'El', and
Allah. The royalty
of the oak-tree
needs no enlarging
upon: most people
are familiar with
the argument of Sir
James Frazer's
Golden Bough,
which concerns the
human sacrifice of
the oak-king of Nemi
on Midsummer Day.
The fuel of the
midsummer fires is
always oak, the fire
of Vesta at Rome was
fed with oak, and
the need-fire is
always kindled in an
oak-log.
When Gwion writes in
the Câd Goddeu,
'Stout Guardian of
the door, His name
in every tongue', he
is saying that doors
are customarily made
of oak as the
strongest and
toughest wood and
that 'Duir', the
Beth-Luis-Nion name
for 'Oak', means
'door' in many
European languages
including Old
Goidelic dorus,
Latin foris,
Greek thura,
and German tür,
all derived from the
Sanskrit Dwr,
and that Daleth,
the Hebrew letter D,
means 'Door' - the
'l' being originally
an 'r'.
Midsummer is the
flowering season of
the oak, which is
the tree of
endurance and
triumph, and like
the ash is said to
'court the lightning
flash'. Its roots
are believed to
extend as deep
underground as its
branches rise in the
air - Virgil
mentions this -
which makes it
emblematic of a god
whose law runs both
in Heaven and in the
Underworld ... The
month, which takes
its name from
Juppiter the
oak-god, begins on
June 10th and ends
of July 7th. Midway
comes St. John's
Day, June 24th, the
day on which the
oak-king was
sacrificially burned
alive. The Celtic
year was divided
into two halves with
the second half
beginning in July,
apparently after a
seven-day wake, or
funeral feast, in
the oak-king's
honour.
Sir James Frazer,
like Gwion, has
pointed out the
similarity of 'door'
words in all
Indo-European
languages and shown
Janus to be a 'stout
guardian of the
door' with his head
pointing in both
directions. As
usual, however, he
does not press his
argument far enough.
Duir as the god of
the oak month looks
both ways because
his post is at the
turn of the year;
which identifies him
with the Oak-god
Hercules who became
the door-keeper of
the Gods after his
death. He is
probably also to be
identified with the
British god Llyr of
Lludd or Nudd, a god
of the sea - i.e. a
god of a sea-faring
Bronze Age people -
who was the 'father'
of Creiddylad
(Cordelia) an aspect
of the White
Goddess; for
according to
Geoffrey of Monmouth
the grave of Llyr at
Leicester was in a
vault built in
honour of Janus.
Geoffrey writes:
Cordelia obtaining
the government of
the Kingdom buried
her father in a
certain vault which
she ordered to be
made for him under
the river Sore in
Leicester
(Leircester) and
which had been built
originally under the
ground in honour of
the god Janus.
And here all the
workmen of the city,
upon the anniversary
solemnity of that
festival, used to
begin their yearly
labours.
Since Llyr was a
pre-Roman God this
amounts to saying
that he was
two-headed, like
Janus, and the
patron of the New
Year; but the Celtic
year began in the
summer, not in the
winter. Geoffrey
does not date the
mourning festival
but it is likely to
have originally
taken place at the
end of June ... What
I take for a
reference to Llyr as
Janus occurs in the
closing paragraph of
Merlin's prophecy to
the heathen King
Vortigern and his
Druids, recorded by
Geoffrey of
Monmouth:
After this Janus
shall never have
priests again. His
door will be shut
and remain concealed
in Ariadne's
crannies.
In other words, the
ancient Druidic
religion based on
the oak-cult will be
swept away by
Christianity and the
door - the god Llyr
- will languish
forgotten in the
Castle of Arianrhod,
the Corona
Borealis. This
helps us to
understand the
relationship at Rome
of Janus and the
White Goddess Cardea
who is ... the
Goddess of Hinges
who came to Rome
from Alba Longa. She
was the hinge on
which the year swung
- the ancient Latin,
not the Etruscan
year - and her
importance as such
is recorded in the
Latin adjective
cardinalis - as
we say in English
'of cardinal
importance - which
was also applied to
the four main winds;
for winds were
considered as under
the sole direction
of the Great Goddess
until Classical
times.
As Cardea she ruled
over the Celestial
Hinge at the back of
the North Wind
around which, as
Varro explains in
his De Re Rustica,
the mill-stone of
the Universe
revolves. This
conception appears
most plainly in the
Norse Edda,
where the giantesses
Fenja and Menja, who
turn the monstrous
mill-stone Grotte in
the cold polar
night, stand for the
White Goddess in her
complementary moods
of creation and
destruction.
Elsewhere in Norse
mythology the
Goddess is
nine-fold: the nine
giantesses who were
joint-mothers of the
hero Rig, alias
Heimdall, the
inventor of the
Norse social system,
similarly turned the
cosmic mill.
Janus was perhaps
not originally
double-headed: he
may have borrowed
this peculiarity
from the Goddess
herself who at the
Carmentalia, the
Carmenta Festival in
early January, was
addressed by her
celebrants as
'Postvorta' and
'Antevorta' - 'she
who looks both back
and forward'.
However, a Janus
with long hair and
wings appear on an
early stater of
Mellos, a Cretan
colony at Cilicia.
He is identified
with the solar hero
Talus, and a bull's
head appears on the
same coin. In
similar coins of the
late fifth century
B.C. he holds an
eight-rayed disc in
his hand and has a
spiral of
immortality
sprouting from his
double head.
Here at last I can
complete my argument
about Arianrhod's
Castle and the
'whirling round
without motion
between three
elements'. The
sacred oak-king was
killed at midsummer
and translated to
the Corona Borealis,
presided over by the
White Goddess, which
was then just
dipping over the
Northern horizon.
But from the song
ascribed by
Apollonius Rhodius
to Orpheus, we know
that the Queen of
the Circling
Universe, Eurynome,
alias Cardea,
was identical with
Rhea of Crete; thus
Rhea lived at the
axle of the mill,
whirling around
without motion, as
well as on the
Galaxy. This
suggests that in a
later mythological
tradition the sacred
king went to serve
her at the Mill, not
in the Castle, for
Samson after his
blinding and
enervation turned a
mill in Delilah's
prison-house.
Another name for the
Goddess of the Mill
was Artemis
Calliste, or
Callisto ('Most
Beautiful'), to whom
the she-bear was
sacred in Arcadia;
and in Athens at the
festival of Artemis
Brauronia, a girl of
ten years old and a
girl of five,
dressed in
saffron-yellow robes
in honour of the
moon, played the
part of sacred
bears. The Great
She-bear and Little
She-bear are still
the names of the two
constellations that
turn the mill
around. In Greek the
Great Bear Callisto
was also called
Helice, which
means both 'that
which turns' and
'willow-branch' - a
reminder that the
willow was sacred to
the same Goddess ... |