Happy Winter Solstice, everyone. On this strange day, for thousands of years, our Western ancestors in Europe, England, and Ireland celebrated the darkest night of the year with both joy, sorrow, and hope. They sought to celebrate the Earth Mother whose child, the Golden Sun, had died. Then for 5 days his soul would travel through the underworld to be reborn anew on January 1st.
It was this beautiful emotional connection to the movement of the Sun and Earth that gave birth to Christmas and the Yuletide and numerous myths, emotions, and rituals which Western Society now celebrates in earnest without any knowledge whatsoever of why we celebrate them or what they meant to our ancient ancestors.
It took me years and years of research to finally discover many of the hidden themes. They are all based on cyclical sun celebrations that for Northern Hemisphere people decided life and death. And it is that fatalistic view on conflict and change that is the source of ALL western movies, books, stories, and myth.
These pagan ideas are not evil, or about Satan or hate or anything negative. They were and still are simply expressions of our ancient ancestors connection to Nature and the mystery of the cosmos, of birth, death, of endings, and new beginnings in their philosophical approach to life.
Our own “fatal sense of life” comes from where they our ancestors lived in Europe and the far northern hemisphere. And our conflict-based politics, sports, story telling, and movies derives from it, as does our view of relationships, men and women, Love, and tragedy.
Nothing is more powerful and sacred than the thousands and thousands of years of myths and beliefs that have led up to the culture and society we still fashion for ourselves and the world. Each of us should celebrate who we are and where we came from and derive spiritual truth from that, not hide or deny it.
And so I’ve spent many years studying myths and faery tales seeking these hidden truths. Because they form the secret meaning in our lives beyond the current recent Consumerist / Capitalistic Society we now embrace….which is but a facade.
We are Celts and we are DNA. But we are also the sum total of thousands of years of ritual and mythic belief.
– the Author of the Mythopoeia called Phantammeron
