WINTER SOLSTICE

It is now the Winter solstice, the night when the sun dies and is reborn: a night of magic, which has more to do with traditional Christmas celebrations than people might like to admit.

Just for tonight the Shaman lives.

Stretch out your hand. Stretch out your hand!

Don’t you have a greeting for me? Today of all days!

Ending and beginning day: the day of death and new birth.

Try - Merry Solstice or Solstice Greetings.

You have forgot me haven’t you? Your children tell tales of me and you laugh behind their backs. But, I tell you your children are wiser than you.

You still don’t remember me do you.

Think back to the very beginning when the long darkness brought hunger to your fireside, a black stranger to live with you – the dull pain of famine.

Think back to the times of the pounding heart, the ache of the chase, the madness of the kill, the smell of blood hot on the snow – the red and the white.

Red and white.

When a dulling eye and the ebb of breath meant an easing of hunger – for a while.

Do you remember me now? Your children draw pictures of me.

An old man in a red suit with a white beard. Easing down the chimney with all they want most in the world.

Lord of the reindeer, keeper of the game, as old as mankind.

I am the Shaman, the Magician, the Priest.

When your heart beats fast in the dead of night, I am there. 

When you whistle or sing in the face of danger, I call the tune. 

I am your ancestor and your child.  I am your guest tonight and you will be mine!

Here is my invitation to your house – a green tree from the northern forests, See – some things you do remember. An evergreen tree hung with lights and mirrors, sparkling gold like the glimmer of Solstice fires through the forest branches.

Today is the day of endings and beginnings; of death and rebirth. 

The birth of the sun – the Solstice.

Come with me, back to the very beginnings Stetch out over a thousand generations

Come and understand once more.

“The holly and the ivy”  - the running of the deer -the rising of the sun

A song in praise of the woods and forests. – The beasts and the seasons. 

And then one day the Christ people came, turning their backs on what is and demanding what should be, as if they were lords of it all.  They took that song and made it their own, just as they took my Solstice festival for their own.

The Sun.  The birth of a Sun as it always was, for as long as mankind has gaped at the sky, questioned the light and the darkness.

Birth of a son.  Birth of a boy child. Their festival is a trick of words. A fashion of the last few seconds of the history of man.  But while they try to drive me back into the shadows before their newborn godling, the Christ people still fear me.  The Shaman was their ancestor too, the blood on the snow. So, they tried to tame me, contain me, cage me, turn me into a tale for little children. A bringer of gifts, a driver of reindeer, an old man from the north with a white beard and a little magic. But their children were wiser than they; in their turn they remember the Solstice fire.

O day spring of brightness of light everlasting and son of righteousness.

Come and enlighten him that sitteth in darkness and the shadow of death.

Lighten the world and cast out the darkness of the spirit.

Do you remember me now? Are the old memories stirring?

Pass as the Shaman  passes as a thought in a dream.

Pass with me to the edge of the forests - pass to the edge of the wind scarred plain

Back to the very beginning when the ice drew back, the bare earth swelled and the hunter strode over it to the north. Smell the chill on the wind. Black winter is here too.

The red and white bridge is ahead – agaric, the Shaman’s mushroom – crossing to the spirit world.  Eat.  Soon you will see the Magician’s reindeer fly again, skimming the snow. Speckled deer, riding to the north winds, pulling a sleigh with an old man in a red coat bringing gifts.

The dark forest presses on each side. The ice casts an iron band round your chest, snatching breath. But there ahead is fire, Solstice fire. Mid-winter blesses you, the festival of over-heating.

Look beyond the fire to the shadows.  Do you see old people, near ghosts, sitting, waiting for the cold to take them?  This is the real Midwinter; a time for hunger, when the old set themselves to die, to lighten the load on the rest.

In the summer, fattening time, the reindeer moved in herds on the plains and we hunters followed, killing for our people.  Food in our bellies.  That was a fine time.  Sun hot grassland, and the grouse so plump and slow they could hardly rise away from our arrows.  But winter’s never far away.  It soon blew down from the mountain top, bringing the night spirits to live with us.  If you listen you will hear the long dead howling in the forests.

Kindle the fire – heat to heat, light to light.  Give back fire to the Sun at midwinter.  Bring new fire to each home, a burning log from the forest. Fire to ease the birth pangs of the Sun.

The stones of the earth remember a time when the Sun did not return to them from the darkness.  Then, ravenous ice engulfed the land bringing nothing but stark, white silence.  The very mountains were split and milled to sand.  What chance had the hunters and their people?  For this reason they make a gift of flame to the Sun at midwinter so that it will return to them.

Red flame and white ash. Red and white. Solstice fire.

A red deer comes over the hill

Shoot your arrows, as you will

The deer will stand there still.

The sun rises as the deer on the hill. Let the Shaman draw on a rock with a white chalk and red ochre let the likeness live.  The raven, the reindeer, the bear and the leaping salmon – let all those we have killed bring their gifts.  Brother reindeer, I am in your debt. You have given me your brown autumn hide to wrap me, my buckskin shoes, my summer tent and sleeping bag, my skin boat that slips across the lake. Your sinews are my thread, your bones my needles, my family eats your tongue, your bone marrow, your unborn fawn.

From the birth of this new Sun to its death next winter, give me all these again. Follow the path I know from fawn birth to ripe.  Cross the river where an arrow with my mark on it can bring you down in the red water.  My gift to you in return is never to kill you without need, and then take only the flesh, bone and hide to leave your spirit free on the plain.  Come to the fire.

And the Shaman’s magic will make it so.  That is his task: to climb down through the smoke hole of the hut with wooden reindeer painted in red ochre, and so make toys of its wild brothers.

And you black soul of Raven. You who share our killings you are our kin you eat our meat and watch over our camps Bran the trickster. Your feathers hang from our flagsticks. Driving the deer into our traps. Deceiving them. Making them afraid of feathers when arrows are ahead. But, Brother Raven do not deceive us like that you know the sun must be born again tonight. Without it’s light you will not find food. Without it’s light your feathers will not dry. Your young will die of cold.

Brother Bear! Welcome. Shadow of death in the Forest. Your claws split open the hunter from head to belly. And yet, your flesh dries on a string in the summer heat outside the hut of the fortunate hunter.

All this the Shaman will promise – as Priest, Keeper of the game, Magician and Midwife to the Sun. 

Don’t forget me. We are one you and I. Hunter and hunted. My gifts to you are the leap, swifter than thought, and the strength to run all day without slackening though the heart is run out of your brain. I wish you the comfort of the pack about you and the wisdom which knows caution but not fear. Come to the fire night brother but not too near.

Brothers of the natural world, and you other silent watchers from the shadow world long dead and unborn, it is the night of the longest darkness, the time of greatest danger.  The solstice fire burns as a sign to the Sun that it must return or we shall be left in the ice of eternal blackness.

None here, O Sun, has forgotten our debt to your warmth and light.

Someone here has failed the trust. There is a law -breaker here who has forgotten the custom.

This is a trick - these things cannot be. This is the world has turned upside-down. Like an image on a lake on a still day. You are wrong Wolf I have seen it! Who speaks?

It is I Bran the Raven. How can you possibly know? Your feet are on the ground and your nose is pressed to the blood trail.

I fly high above your head. High enough to see what’s to come. And I tell you the World will be turned on its head. Raven you are a liar. Just, as always.

How could anyone who lives under the Sun forget the Solstice and the Old Laws?

Are you going to tell them? How to live off the Earth and not in it. How to become its master.

 I tell you. Where they have passed the grass is scorched away and trees die as if withered by a brushfire except that no green shoots follow.

They destroy faster than they can grow.

The cycle of seed and harvest are no longer something to live by, but something to be altered.

The animals are no longer brothers, but slaves.

How could they have forgotten?

Knowledge has made them stupid.

Seeing too much has made them blind.

One thing they are sure of.  That anything simple is a tale for little children.

So our children are keepers of the truth. And your children are wiser than you.

Perhaps they can tell you why every year you set up an evergreen tree from the forest.

Like those about you now. Do you think it is simply to please them that you hang shining Sun images on it! Or is it because in the beginnings of time your Forefathers hung dead sacrifices on the living timber as gifts to the reborn sun. And still you utter the words Yulelog without remembering the burning branch from the forest that brought the Solstice fire to the hearth.

If you forget the very roots of belief - if you forget the earth and its laws. You are lost.

Time is short .The Solstice is nearly upon us - your own world is calling you back.

Shaman will the sun be reborn? This time. This time! But if the trees are killed and the seas are poisoned. Who knows? When clouds can bring death and not life .Who knows?

Shaman you must help. You are the bringer of gifts – The Magician.

What will you have? Remember I cannot guarantee the future One-day a time will come when you wait for a dawn that fails to happen. And you too will grope in the dark like your Ancestor’s did.

What I can give you is your own heritage that you have forgotten. Feel the load on your back. It is the weight of vanished worlds.  A gift and a burden from a thousand generations past.

You cannot lay it down until the last eases it from your shoulders and it passes to your children. You cannot refuse this gift. Thought once though cannot be unthought. Experience cannot be unlearnt. But I promise you the Shaman will always be by your side.

To help you carry it. His magic is in your dreams – Inescapable!

Go now back to your own world. But you will never forget me.

I am the shaman the priest the keeper of the game who some call Father Christmas.

When you see an old man with a white beard wearing a red suit in a sleigh pulled by Reindeer

The chains that bind you to your past will tighten and you will feel again the pounding heart, the ache of the chase, the smell of blood warm on the snow – the red and the white. Blood on the snow. Come to me and you shall see the rebirth of the sun. The glorious Solstice. I am the Shaman. Remember, who some call Father Christmas.

Come to me.

From a Radio 4 Broadcast 1986