| FOGS News Volume XV number 1 mid-winter 2004 |
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| Sine umbra nihil |
| Well-wishing for a new year is what we do in the Northeast when the calendar points to January. It was always so. |
| Or was it? In Gregorian, we count this 2004.It is already 5764 Jewish time.In a month it will be the year of the |
| Monkey; on February 22 Islam moves into 1425. For Sikhs, new year (536) comes just before vernal equinox |
| when Hindus (2061) and Persians (1383)celebrate, just as we used to before the Julian calendar adjusted new |
| year from March to January. Ethiopia still runs on the Julian calendar, which served most of the western world |
| until 1752 or thereabouts, depending on one's allegiance. Russia was slow to make the change, but that is no |
| surprise to the Clavie Crew of Burghead (Moray) or to the fireball-swingers of Stonehaven, Kincardineshire. |
| They still run on Julian time. In Burghead, lighting the eternal fire and carrying it round the town re-enacts the |
| celebration of the return of new light after the longest night - the dark of our title, without which we have |
| 'nothing'. To the Clavie King and torch-bearers of Burghead, this is Aul' 'Eel, pre-Christian Yule or winter |
| solstice. Yule becomes interchangeable with Christmas south of the border but Scotland has held to its pagan |
| festival of Hogmanay, itself a testimony to and turning point in that Roman calendar: on this night Steenhivers |
| have a street party to end all street parties. Whereas Burghead (annually January 11) only spills combustible |
| materials over the shoulders of Clavie-bearers, Stonehaven delights in spinning fire in clumps into the unwary |
| crowd. . When Scotland changed calendars in 1752, there was much misunderstanding in the country districts |
| - the loss of 11 days seen as having robbed them of important events. At that time, clavie-burning and local |
| celebrations to mark the return of the light after winter were commonplace in all the northern and northeastern |
| ports. Now only two remain holding to tradition from an earlier time, Burghead most precisely still counting its |
| lost 11 days. Fire for the clavie is ritually kindled from a peat ember - no match is used. Clavie king and crew |
| dispense flaming brands from burning tar-barrel as tokens of abundance to important burghers,publican included! |
| They circle the town sunwise and the final free-for-all happens after the clavie has been fixed to its fire-altar, the |
| doorie, on a rib of the old Pictish ramparted stronghold, and left to die. Julian indeed. |
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| Yggdrasil: the world tree |
| Every culture, beginning with the Polynesians, had its 'world tree', a great being of life and knowledge which |
| connected through its forever-turning axis the heavens, earth and the nether realms. It is to Norse myth that |
| we owe a debt for transmitting the name Yggdrasil: an ash, at whose 3 roots were sacred fountains 'of |
| wondrous virtue', and in whose branches sit an eagle (international symbol of visionary power), a squirrel |
| (symbolic of activity and preparedness), and four stags (innocence and return to wilderness). In original state |
| of grace the world and the heavens, time and space were one, held in hologram by this great turning spindle, |
| but then chaos intervened. In Scandinavia, this great gyroscope or 'mill' was thrown into the deep, now forever |
| grinding sand and stones, creating whirlpools and hurricanes. Greek Kronos/Chronos the Titan, child of heaven |
| and earth (Ouranos & Gaia), after emasculating his father and throwing the great pole into the sea, became father |
| father of the gods. Romans separated the two into Saturn and Time, but the original dual concept was intentional. |
| It was left to subsequent generations who believed their ancestors to have been gods, to try to make sense of a |
| universe spinning progressively out of kilter, a fact seen in the Greek 'royal science' of astronomy in the steady |
| precession of the equinoxes: a cosmic mill forever churning stars which no longer return to their 'right time'. The |
| tree had been uprooted by giants and only heroes with like powers might replicate the act. In Finland and India, |
| it is called a mill (Sampo, Sanskrit skambha ), in England it is an oak or mythic Excalibur extracted only by a 'true' |
| prince. In NE Scotland until at least 1945, sacred wells were still complemented by the presence of an ash, though |
| uprooting it appears not to be part of the legend until the coming of bulldozers in modern development. That aside, |
| if the discovery of 'Seahenge' last year off the E Anglian coast connects us to our ancestors at all, it is through the |
| ritual of a massive oak, carefully-placed upside-down, huge roots exposed to the heavens, within a (sacred) |
| precinct of guardian tree-stumps at a place where earth and ocean meet. Might we not be seeing some vestige |
| of that ancient rite conceived by man to right his Universe and return it to that golden age (Virgil's saturnia regna) |
| before the fall, when time was eternal and heaven-and-earth were one. |
| ©MCN2004 |
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| Winter Wonders |
| Several years occur when midwinter full moon does not completely tie in with solstitial sunset: 2003 was one |
| of those years. Full moonrise nevertheless was an impressive sight at two recumbent stone circles on either side |
| of the Garioch plain: at Easter Aquhorthies (NJ733 208) and the Barra RSC (older country name for Bourtie, |
| NJ801 249) where FOGS stalwarts braved the winter's first storm to witness a lunar prelude to the darkest days. |
| On December 8th, nearly two weeks before the shortest day, the full moon rose, regular as a cosmic clock, at |
| the moment of sunset over the whitened slope of Crocker hill (compare our solar eclipse point in June n/l XVI-2). |
| It is the same point for each circle, as both appear to be aligned on this double axis of solstitial summer sun and |
| winter moon. While the sunset is obscured at Aquhorthies by the lie of the land, it has full view of rising moon. In |
| contrast at Barra, sunset is fully visible over Mt. Keen (at latitude 57º this is 223º), but moonrise takes another |
| five minutes to materialize on the Crocker (at 43º or NNE). There may be another link between the two RSCs |
| which time forgot. From the Aquhorthies recumbent the view towards Barra and moonrise is over the huge |
| red-jasper sentinel at the modern 'entrance' - not a large leap in imagination connecting its fiery red with dying |
| sun. What has not previously been noted is the presence of pink quartz in a NNE vector-like scatter in the two |
| fields leading from the Barra circle upslope to the 'moonrise' rock (the 'Bellman', also sunrise rock in our |
| previously noted summer n/l) at 600 ft/185m. Barra has substantial quantities of white quartz ringing it in all other |
| directions, but the NNE scatter is decidedly more pink: a synchronicity perhaps unnoticed by many of us but not |
| without apparent significance to the circle-builders. |
| ©2003MCYoungblood |
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| Sacred Journey |
| Lawrence Main, peripatetic extraordinaire, is making a sacred journey throughout Britain. He plans to spend |
| three nights on Bennachie in Aberdeenshire as part of his communion with the earth, thanking the Mither for her |
| part in holding a vision of what this ancient stronghold and Pictish kingdom meant to its people. We do not |
| publish his dates, for privacy, but wish him well on his pilgrimage. |
