by Kay Broome

Summer Hay Field (photo: Nick Fewings)

At Litha the sun is at his yearly apex.  But the very word apex acknowledges that summer’s hottest days mean an inexorable, if gradual attenuation toward autumn.  And now, especially in July, that most vibrant yellow of months, we frequently experience the year’s most violent thunderstorms.

Here, at the height of the solar year, the Oak King is triumphant, having defeated the Holly King at spring equinox. The Oak King's purview encompasses weather, thus in his season, the elemental struggle between fire and water becomes more apparent. Summer solstice brings seemingly endless, hot summer days, but also those spectacular storms. This is only fitting, as both fire and water are now crucial to Mother Earth. She needs the Sun’s heat to ripen the grain and sweeten the fruit on the bough. She craves too the water that nourishes and gives bounty to the harvest.  And eventually, summer and its element of fire will give way to autumn with its cooling rains.

Lightning Storm on a Farm (photo: Master Wen)

The Sacred Divergence

The ancients were well aware of the contrasts in life. They were more in touch with nature, so it was apparent to them that life – vegetable or animal – must be taken in order to eat and live.  Even then, all your hard work growing crops and raising livestock could turn to nothing if enough precious seed was eaten by birds, or if too many of your animals were devoured by predators or disease. Along with the anticipated bounty was always the threat of famine and chaos.

 Many pagan pantheons illustrate the paradoxes of nature: the Oak and Holly Kings of summer and winter being one of many examples. Others include the gentle Rada Iwa and the harsher Petwo Iwa deities of Haitian Vodun. In Hinduism, the gentle goddess Parvati is connected to but contrasts with the terrifying Kali. Sometimes, a single deity can have two opposing sides. The Greek Persephone, maiden goddess of spring and the growing grain, was equally the stern guardian of the underworld and queen of the dead. In fact, the ancient Greek religion was very fond of opposing dyads. Perhaps their most salient and famous example is that of the solar god Apollo and his half-brother, Dionysus, god of madness and ecstasy.

Etruscan Apollo of Veii (attrib. Vulca, ca. 510-500 BC)

God of Light and Reason

Apollo, the most beautiful of gods, was born of the union of the goddess Leto and mighty Zeus, ruler of the Olympians. His twin sister, Artemis is the goddess of the moon, hunting and the wild.  Apollo is primarily considered a solar god, associated with Helios, the personified sun. Helios, like Leto, was of the Titan pantheon, which predated the Olympians. The amalgamation of traits and personae of Titan gods with Olympian counterparts is an indication of the supplantation and assimilation of an earlier culture and religion by their conquerors.

Apollo and Urania (Charles Meynier, 1798, detail)

As is often the case with solar deities, Apollo’s purview is extensive. His governance includes medicine, science and the arts. As a god of knowledge, he encompasses light, day, reason and rationality. It is believed that Apollo was originally worshipped in Mycenae, but Linear A script found in Crete shows that the ancient Minoans also honoured him.  Some scholars, Mircea Eliade among them, believed that Apollo may have originally been a shamanic god of Eurasia. This is perhaps because crows, although black and brooding, are deemed Apollo's birds. Many eastern shamanic cultures hold these highly intelligent birds as sacred to the sun.  One Greek myth tells of how Apollo sent a raven to spy on his mortal lover Coronis. The bird found her being unfaithful with a mortal man and in jealous anger, Apollo slew Coronis with one of his arrows. Interestingly, Coronis means crow; moreover, crows and ravens, members of the Corvid family, are diurnal birds.  I have frequently found that if you hear a group of crows cawing loudly together on an overcast morning, the sun will invariably come out for the rest of the day. It is almost as if they are petitioning their solar lord to show his face.

Crow Enjoying the Day (photo: Wolfgang Hasselmann)

Apollo was an oracular god.  His temple in Delphi held the famous oracle known as the Sibyl.  However, this temple was originally sacred to the primordial earth goddess, Gaia, older even than the Titans. The new god’s slaying of the python, Gaea’s servant and pet, is yet again, symbolic of the god of a new religion superseding an earlier deity. Interestingly, snakes were also sacred to Apollo, as they were to his half-brother Dionysus. It is possible that Hecate, another lunar goddess, who presided over witchcraft and the underworld, may too have been honoured at Delphi.  As crone of the waning moon, Hecate was often configured in a triad with Apollo’s twin, Artemis of the waxing crescent and Selene, goddess of the full moon. In later Roman times, Hecate was petitioned by the Sibyls at Apollo’s shrine at Cumae in southern Italy.  This temple figures in  a famous scene in the Aeneid in which the hero Aeneas consults Cumae's presiding Sibyl.

The Sibyl and King Aigeus (Kodros painter, Italy, ca. 440-430 BC)

God of Ecstasy and Madness

As with Apollo, Dionysus too may have originated beyond the Hellenic world.  Some believe he came from Asia Minor, for he does have similarities with Adonis the young lover of Cybele, the Great Mother of that region. Both were dying vegetation gods with highly important fertility rites associated with them. Dionysus, as Greek god of wine, will be dealt with in greater detail in the Harvestide blog.  For now, suffice to say that his authority covers ecstasy, epiphany and the theatre.  The dramatic arts were a very crucial element of Greek culture.  Tragedy in particular, was seen as being morally uplifting and cathartic. Dionysus shared Apollo's purview of the arts, as well as aspects of healing. However, if Dionysus represented wine, liberty and the thespian arts, he also had a much darker side as god of madness and chaos. It is noteworthy that he was also worshipped at Apollo’s shrine at Delphi.  Indeed, during the winter months, he stood in for his half-brother while the solar god was away. The honouring of two such disparate gods at Delphi is vividly reflected in the Sibyl's role. Here was a woman held in great honour, who peered through the mists of time in order to grasp the future and bring it forth to light. Yet to do so, she had to sit in a dark cave, imbibing substances that would send her into a frenzy of ecstasy, a seeming madness, which would culminate in her speaking in the voice of the god.  This melding of the logical with the irrational, light with dark, intellect with emotion, well befits the classical Greek tendency to seek balance between two necessary, yet frequently warring opposites – the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

Dionysus Riding a Leopard (Macedonian mosaic, Pella, Greece, 4th century BC)

Locust, Tree of Contrasts

Locusts are members of the far-flung Fabaceae or pea family, which are found all over the world. This huge family includes the acacias and mimosoids of Asia, Africa and Australia, as well as South and Central America.  Few Fabaceae are native to western Europe, as most species favour warm climates. In North America, they are limited mainly to the mesquites, locusts and honey locusts, the latter two growing in the Carolinian forests of the US and Ontario, with black locust even making hesitant forays into the southern part of the boreal forest.

Black Locust near High Park, Toronto (photo: Kay Broome)

In the Talking Forest array, Locust is represented by black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and the honey locust (Gleditsia). Both species grow from slender spare saplings to tall rangy trees with open, mottled canopy.  This attenuated shade is caused by the small, oval leaflets of the compound leaves, and is perfect for a yard that calls for dappled light. Leaves of both black and honey locusts are light green, helping them to stand out against the darker greens of other deciduous trees.  With large furrowed trunks and height of up to 80 feet, black locusts become venerable in old age. Their thorns are small but sharp, often growing in pairs and closely resembling rose thorns.  The fruit, resembling a bean pod, is black, brown or a dark purplish colour.