In the Northern Hemisphere, during the longest days and shortest nights, during the time of the most fecund and rapid growth of plants, particularly food plants, our ancestors would be closely observing the movement of the rising and the setting sun on the horizon. They would observe the apparent standing still or solstice of the sun. Then they would observe the sun's movement on the horizon towards winter, and the re-ascendancy of the darkness.
It would take several days for our ancestors to discern this movement of the sun. And that day, June 24, became Midsummer (the middle of the growing season).
In many traditions it was a magical time when the membranes that separated the world of humans from supernatural realms was stretched thin and became permeable. On the eve of Midsummer Day the realm of the fairies and other mythological beings intersected with the world of humans. On this night the present was no longer separated from the past and the future, making it possible for the dead to return, making it possible to see what was to come. On this night it was possible to slip away from the world of the business-as-usual, the world of waking consciousness.
This is the premise of William Shakespeare's play 'Midsummer Night's Dream'.
June 24th, (the summer solstice holiday that is the flip side of the winter solstice holiday of December 25), and the night or eve of the day also became the time of wild gods of nature who embodied dark, relentless, not-conscious forces of nature.
When Northern Europe was Christianized, June 24 became the feast day of Yohannan the Baptister, (a.k.a.) John the Baptist, who is, essentially, a wild god of nature.
The Baptister was an ascetic desert hermit who lived on locusts and wild honey, during the Roman occupation of Judea. Organized Christianity assigns The Baptister a secondary role to Rabbi Yeshua (a.k.a. Jesus) in the spiritual, political and social movement that swept Roman-occupied Judea 2,000 years ago. And yet, Flavius Josephus, a Jewish/Roman historian who wrote the only surviving historical account of the time of the Jewish uprisings against Roman occupation says it was all about The Baptiser.
During the Roman occupation of Judea the royal family of Israel and the priests of the Temple of Jerusalem collaborated with the hated Roman occupiers and lost their credibility and moral authority. During this time poor, wandering rabbis or teachers, in no way affiliated with traditional spiritual or social authority, arose.
The Baptiser was one of these rabbis. He was the leader of a back-to-nature spiritual movement. When he immersed a fellow Hebrew in the Jordon River, he washed away the taint, the corruption, of Roman slavery and Greco-Roman urban civilization. He preached spiritual renewal in the wilderness as happened during the time of Moses, the time of the deliverance from Egyptian slavery and the 40-year purifying exodus in the wilderness.
The Romans were called 'the new Egyptians".
Yeshua in the first Greek scriptures is called a tekto¯n, long taken to mean “carpenter.” A more accurate translation could be something like stone worker or a day laborer. He could have worked as a laborer in the construction of the grand Greco-Roman city of Sepphoris, whose ruins are near Nazareth.
During his three year ministry as a rabbi Yeshua spoke his doctrine to the Jews living in the Greco-Roman cities. He called for a Gandhi-like, non-violent resistance to the Roman occupation, although many of his followers were armed with swords and the long knives of fishermen.
The Romans didn't understand what the 'kingdom of heaven' was. But they knew that whatever it was - it wasn't the Roman Empire.
When Yeshua led his people into Jerusalem during the observance of Passover, the nationalistic celebration of the Jews victory over Pharaoh and the Egyptians, the rough equivalent of the 4th of July, the Romans, of course, regarded the movement as an uprising against the Roman Empire. And, of course, they mobilized the ultimate instrument of Roman Empire state terrorism - crucifixion.
And yet, according to Josephus the movement that the Romans felt was the greatest threat to their occupation of Judea was The Baptiser’s back-to-nature movement. The Yeshua movement was considered a footnote to this history.
The canonical gospels grapple with this issue of who is the star of the story - Yeshua or The Baptiser. And in newly Christianized northern Europe the residual pagan forces often sided with The Baptiser.
Before Northern Europe was Christianized June 24 was the day of the Greenman or the Wild Man, the symbol of nature's rebirth, and the irrepressible forces of nature. Throughout Northern Europe the face of the Greenman still stares out at us, carved in stone or wood, depicted even on the stained glass windows of Christian Churches.
It is often a grotesque face with plants vigorously sprouting from his mouth, nose, eyes or ears.
At Midsummer the Greenman is at the peak of his wild, potent, nature powers. At this time he is in sexual union with the Goddess. And this sexual union gives birth to all the abundance of nature.
By making June 24 The Baptiser's day, Christianity incorporated the pagan traditions (bonfires, jumping through fires, rolling burning wheels into bodies of water, scheduling marriages at this time) that the church was unable to stamp out - try as they might.
The Baptiser was often portrayed in leafy and rustic attire, sometimes with horns and cloven feet (like Pan) and with the foilage of the Greenman, sprouting from every orifice of his face.
[read blog-style -- first entry at bottom of page]