Subsequent to Yuletide and the Midwinter Solstice in December, we speedily enter the start of another year with the icy month of January.
Manufactured calendars (those based on spurious religious fables rather than exclusively on natural cycles) have recurrently changed over the fleeting centuries. Long ago, the bucolic, pre-Christian, Celtic folk regarded the time that we now call Halloween, in October, as the end of summer and beginning of winter. It marked the start of their New Year.
When we dismiss the artificial calendar and take a long hard look at nature's changing moods this old system of time calculation makes a great deal of sense.
At the commencement of the modern New Year celebrations, many trees have now started to produce swelling buds and migrant fish like salmon and sea trout have long since spawned in moorland streams.
Mother Nature rejoices her own
New Year just like the Celts did, several months before today's more haphazard
occasion. Some birds are also now starting their courtship displays and
thinking about nesting, if the weather is kind.
Numerous parts of our contemporary
culture are sparsely based on the vast wisdom of our primordial Pagan
ancestors. Alternatively, confrontational religious fundamentalists, enthusiastic
to expand a platform for their narrow-minded, sectarian worldview often try to repudiate
this fact. Their re-hashed adaptation (Jesus) of the ancient Sun god myth fits crudely
into the natural, agricultural, Pagan calendar that the ancients interpreted so
well via mythological thesis.
Our Pagan ancestors lived adjacent
to and in great synchronisation with our planet; whilst today’s self-satisfied religious
church missionaries have sought to transmute all rural aspects of the natural
calendar into false occasions to worship their latest and clearly most counterfeit
Sun god adaptation.
Primordial
god of the New Year
January receives its appellation
from the impressive old Roman god of doorways/new ventures, ‘Janus.’
Janus was customarily portrayed in classical art with two heads, or faces; one looking to the past, whereas the second observed the future.
Various ancient scholars have supposed that this god presided over the inauguration and termination of the Sun's travel though the daily sky. As the Sun opens each day so does it close it and it was the same with Janus. Some authors pronounced him as the son of Apollo and so great was his magnitude that his name was routinely invoked before all others.
In ceremonies all prayers went by him first, due to his esteemed position and link with the opening of doorways. Janus therefore lends his name to the New Year's beginning and like us he looks poignantly back at the past, then onto the revitalising future ahead.
Janus indicates that we - stay true to a sincere path, stand powerfully against all pretenders and our dreams and aspirations may indeed come true in the year ahead.
Hail Janus; great Lord of New Beginnings. Bestow your blessings of balance. May your wisdom to evoke the past, exist in the present and look towards the future shine through me.
Hail Fortuna; Lady of the Wheel of Fate, bestow your favours. Teach me to understand whatever you give in a greater light.
Victoria; Sister of Strength and Valour, be at my side in times of conflict. Teach me to recognise that which is great.
Hail Jupiter; Lord of the gods, advise me in ways of justice and proper action.
Mars; Guardian of the Sword and Shield, direct my hand in times of stress so that I may hold fast and not waver from my path.
Mercury; Lord of Travellers, protect me on my journey through this thing we call life.
Pluto; Keeper of the Infernal Regions, forever remind me that without pure darkness there can be no sacred light.
Concordia, good Matron of Peace; may your radiance and innermost harmony touch all corners of a troubled world bringing balance where most needed.
So mote it be.
Happy New Year folks...
Various ancient scholars have supposed that this god presided over the inauguration and termination of the Sun's travel though the daily sky. As the Sun opens each day so does it close it and it was the same with Janus. Some authors pronounced him as the son of Apollo and so great was his magnitude that his name was routinely invoked before all others.
In ceremonies all prayers went by him first, due to his esteemed position and link with the opening of doorways. Janus therefore lends his name to the New Year's beginning and like us he looks poignantly back at the past, then onto the revitalising future ahead.
Janus indicates that we - stay true to a sincere path, stand powerfully against all pretenders and our dreams and aspirations may indeed come true in the year ahead.
Hail Janus; great Lord of New Beginnings. Bestow your blessings of balance. May your wisdom to evoke the past, exist in the present and look towards the future shine through me.
Hail Fortuna; Lady of the Wheel of Fate, bestow your favours. Teach me to understand whatever you give in a greater light.
Victoria; Sister of Strength and Valour, be at my side in times of conflict. Teach me to recognise that which is great.
Hail Jupiter; Lord of the gods, advise me in ways of justice and proper action.
Mars; Guardian of the Sword and Shield, direct my hand in times of stress so that I may hold fast and not waver from my path.
Mercury; Lord of Travellers, protect me on my journey through this thing we call life.
Pluto; Keeper of the Infernal Regions, forever remind me that without pure darkness there can be no sacred light.
Concordia, good Matron of Peace; may your radiance and innermost harmony touch all corners of a troubled world bringing balance where most needed.
So mote it be.
Pat Regan ©
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