Tag: cybele

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Birthday Of The Sun December 25th

The First Day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Nebra Sun disc from Stonehenge Exhibition British Museum
Nebra Sun disc from Stonehenge Exhibition British Museum (photo Kevin Flude) The Disc shows the Sun, the Moon, the Pleides, and illustrates the Summer and Winter Solstice movements of the Sun.

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

On the 25th December were born Jesus, Mithras, Attis, Saturn, Apollo, and the Invincible Sun.

The Sun Gods have quite a complicated interrelationship. Zeus, and Apollo are both also considered to be Sun Gods. Apollo is particularly interrelated to Helios, the Greek God who drives the Chariot that carries the Sun across the skies every day. The Romans had a God called Sol who some say was a deity who declined to be of minor importance, until the transexual Emperor Elagabalas and then Aurelian in 274 AD revived the cult. Sol Invictus was the focus of Constantine the Great, and has been suggested as a response of the Romans to a trend towards monotheism in the later Roman period. Sol for Constantine was a gateway God to Christianity.

It is also notable that early worship of Jesus is full of solar metaphors, Jesus being, for example, the light of the world. Churches are also virtually all orientated East West, aligned with the rising and setting suns. The Altar is always at the East End, and effigies on tombs face the East.

Did the Celts have a sun-god? Belenos is a contender, but linguists are proposing his name does not come from words meaning bright but from strong. The God Lugh’s name is suggested to mean ‘shining’ but his attributes are more of a warrior than a sun god. Taranis is probably the best candidate, but he is more of a sky or thunder god than specifically a sun god. However, his symbol is a wheel and the wheel is symbolic of the turning of the year.

The Golden Wheel from Haute Marne in France

The Golden Wheel from Haute Marne in France, (Public Domain, Wikipedia)

His 8 spoked wheel is said to be symbolic of the Sun and it represents the division of the year by the 4 quarterly sun festivals (Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox) and the 4 cross-quarter festivals, (Samhain or Halloween, Imbolc or Candlemas, Beltane or May Day, Lughnasa or Harvest Festival).

December 25th is a few days after our reckoning of the Solstice but it was the date of the Roman Solstice.

Christmas Cake

Today, you might be tucking into a Christmas Cake (originally eaten on Twelfth Night). Now, I know many Americans have a bizarre belief that fruit cake is the cake of the devil, something you receive as a gift and give away to someone else, as most Americans hate it. More fool them for missing out on one of the delights of the Christmas period, that and cold turkey sandwiches. Christmas Cake is made on stir up Sunday, the last Sunday in November, to let the ingredients develop their flavour. They are then covered with marzipan and decorative icing.

19th Century Christmas Cake, generally now the icing continues down the side of the cake.

In Germany, they also eat a fruit bread called Stollen or Weihnachtsstollen. The tradition is said to have been started in the 15th Century, when the Pope gave dispensation to allow the use of butter in the fasting period of Advent. The Germans had to use oil to replace the banned butter, but they could only make oil from turnips, so eventually the Pope allowed the use of butter, with which they made bread with added dried fruits.

Stollen By Gürgi – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3720379

In Italy, they eat Panettone, a fruit bread/cake. It is a sourdough, and a cross between a brioche and a cake. It often comes in a beautiful decorative tin, and is delicious. The centre of panettone production is Milan and this year is the 200th Anniversary of Milan’s famous Marchesi 1824 which makes artisanal Panettone from ‘fine ingredients such as six-crown sultanas, naturally candied fruit, Bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, Italian honey and eggs from free-range hens, blended in a slow-rising dough with the exclusive use of Marchesi 1824 sourdough starter‘. Thank you, Mara from Milan, for the heads-up.

Screen shot from website – does not click through to sales!

Which is best? The only way to find out is to eat several slices of each. America, you don’t know what you are missing.

For stir up sunday see the second half of this post of mine.

Stir Up Sunday! November 26th

First Published 24th December 2022, Republished 25th December 2023, 2024

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Ovid abandons the ‘Fasti’ Ovid June 30th

OVID 19TH CENTURY ENGRAVING BY j w cOK
OVID 19TH CENTURY ENGRAVING BY J W COOK

Ovid says about the 16th February, ‘Next day is vacant.’ This is surprisingly encouraging to me because I have found it hard work finding something to say about some days. You can fill in with generalities, but the specific feels so much better. But. if Ovid can just say nought happened, then that is good enough for me. If you want to read Ovid’s almanac of the year, the ‘Fasti’, for yourself, this is the translation I am using.

Fasti is sadly unfinished because Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō was exiled by the Emperor Augustus when he was halfway through the Fasti. So the last entry is for 30th June where he says: ‘put the last touches to my undertaking’ suggesting he knew he was ending it here.

He was exiled until his death ten years later in Tomis, on the Black Sea. It is not clear exactly why he was exiled, ostensibly it was for the immorality in his book ‘The Art of Love’, but as that was published almost a decade earlier, it seems strange.

Was he involved with a plot against Augustus that saw the Emperor’s own daughter exiled? Her lover was Lullus Antonius, son of Mark Antony. Unlike Julia’s other lovers, he was forced to commit suicide.

But this also happened years before Ovid’s exile, so neither does it make any great sense of the great man’s punishing exile. However, Julia’s daughter was herself exiled closer to the time of Ovid’s exile and her husband, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was executed for treason. Ovid said the reason for his exile was a ‘poem and a mistake’. The nature of that mistake is not recorded but he said the crime was worse than murder and more harmful than poetry.

Here is one of my favourite Ovid quotations. I quote from my own book which you can buy at the link at the bottom of the page.

‘Ovid, writing in Augustus’ reign, provides our guide to the flesh-pots of a Roman town. Here he recommends how the aspiring male should dress for a night out on the town:

Don’t torture your hair, though, with curling-iron: don’t pumice
Your legs into smoothness. Leave that
To Mother Cybele’s votaries, ululating in chorus
With their Phrygian modes. Real men
Shouldn’t primp their good looks …

… Keep pleasantly clean, take exercise, work up an outdoor
Tan; make quite sure that your toga fits
And doesn’t show spots; don’t lace your shoes too tightly,
Or ignore any rusty buckles, or slop
Around in too large a fitting. Don’t let some incompetent barber
Ruin you looks: both hair and beard demand
Expert attention. Keep your nails pared, and dirt-free;
Don’t let those long hairs sprout
In your nostrils, make sure your breath is never offensive.

Avoid the rank male stench
That wrinkles noses. Beyond this is for wanton women –
Or any half-man who wants to attract men.

Ovid, The Art of Love i

The translation is from Green, Peter (Trans) ‘Ovid The Erotic Poems’ Penguin Classics, London 1982‘

Mother Cybele’s votaries were castrati, hence their high pitched voices. Cybele fell in love with Attys, who made her jealous, so Cybele made him mad, whereupon he castrated himself and bled to death. The Mother Goddess had him resurrected body and soul and he enjoyed divine bliss ever after. A Cybelian castration device, dredged out of the Thames, can be seen in the Roman Gallery of the British Museum.’

photo of Castration Device from the River Thames at London Bridge British Museum Photo kevin flude
British Museum Castration Device from the River Thames at London Bridge Photo: K Flude

It’s quoted in In Their Own Words – A Literary Companion To The Origins Of London‘ D A Horizons, 2009.  Kevin Flude

To buy Kindle version click here.  To buy paperback (for £5.99)  email kpflude AT anddidthosefeet.org.uk