THE DEATH OF LLEW
A Seasonal Interpretation
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Not of
father, nor of mother Was my blood, was my body. I was spellbound by
Gwydion, Prime enchanter of the Britons,
When he formed me from nine
blossoms.
'Hanes Blodeuwedd' R. Graves, trans.
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In most Pagan cultures, the sun god
is seen as split between two rival personalities: the god of light and his twin, his 'weird', his
'other self', the god of darkness. They are Gawain and the Green Knight, Gwyn and Gwythyr, Llew and
Goronwy, Lugh and Balor, Balan and Balin, the Holly King and the Oak
King, etc. Often they are depicted as fighting seasonal battles for the
favor of their goddess/lover, such as Creiddylad or Blodeuwedd, who
represents Nature.
The god of light is always born at
the winter solstice, and his strength waxes with the lengthening days,
until the moment of his greatest power, the summer solstice, the longest
day. And, like a look in a mirror, his 'shadow self', the lord of
darkness, is born at the summer solstice, and his strength waxes with
the lengthening nights until the moment of his greatest power, the
winter solstice, the longest night.
Indirect evidence supporting this
mirror-birth pattern is strongest in the Christianized form of the Pagan
myth. Many writers, from Robert Graves to Stewart Farrar, have
repeatedly pointed out that Jesus was identified with the Holly King,
while John the Baptist was the Oak King. That is why, 'of all the trees
that are in the wood, the Holly tree bears the crown.' If the birth of
Jesus, the 'light of the world', is celebrated at mid-winter, Christian
folk tradition insists that John the Oak King (the 'dark of the world'?)
was born (rather than died) at mid-summer.
It is at this point that I must
diverge from the opinion of Robert Graves and other writers who have
followed him. Graves believes that at midsummer, the Sun King is slain by his rival, the God
of Darkness; just as the God of Darkness is, in turn, slain by the God
of Light at midwinter. And yet, in Christian folk tradition (derived
from the older Pagan strain), it is births, not deaths, that are
associated with the solstices. For the feast of John the Baptist, this
is all the more conspicuous, as it breaks the rules regarding all other
saints.
John is the ONLY saint in the entire
Catholic hagiography whose feast day is a commemoration of his birth,
rather than his death. A generation ago, Catholic nuns were fond of
explaining that a saint is commemorated on the anniversary of his or her death because it wasreally
a 'birth' into the Kingdom of Heaven. But John
the Baptist, the sole exception, is emphatically commemorated on the
anniversary of his birth into THIS world. Although this makes no sense
viewed from a Christian perspective, it makes perfect poetic sense from
the viewpoint of Pagan symbolism. (John's earlier Pagan associations are
treated in my essay on Midsummer.)
So if births are associated with the
solstices, when do the symbolic deaths occur? When does Goronwy slay Llew
and when does Llew, in his turn, slay Goronwy? When does darkness conquer
light or light conquer darkness? Obviously (to me, at least), it must be
at the two equinoxes. At the autumnal equinox, the hours of light in the
day are eclipsed by the hours of darkness. At the vernal equinox, the
process is reversed. Also, the autumnal equinox, called 'Harvest Home', is
already associated with sacrifice, principally that of the spirit of grain
or vegetation. In this case, the god of light would be identical.
In Welsh mythology in particular,
there is a startling vindication of the seasonal placement of the sun
god's death, the significance of which occurred to me in a recent dream,
and which I haven't seen elsewhere. Llew is the Welsh god of light, and
his name means 'lion'. (The lion is often the symbol of a sun god.) He is
betrayed by his 'virgin' wife Blodeuwedd, into standing with one foot on
the rim of a cauldron and the other on the back of a goat. It is only in
this way
that Llew can be killed, and Blodeuwedd's lover, Goronwy, Llew's dark
self, is hiding nearby with a spear at the ready. But as Llew is struck
with it, he is not killed. He is instead transformed into an eagle.
Putting this in the form of a Bardic
riddle, it would go something like this: Who can tell in what season the Lion (Llew), betrayed by
the Virgin (Blodeuwedd), poised
on the Balance, is transformed into an Eagle? My readers who are
astrologers are probably already gasping in recognition. The sequence is
astrological and in proper order: Leo (lion), Virgo (virgin), Libra
(balance), and Scorpio (for which the eagle is a well-known alternative
symbol). Also, the remaining icons, cauldron and goat, could arguably
symbolize Cancer and Capricorn (representing summer and winter), the signs
beginning with the two solstice points. So Llew is balanced between
cauldron and goat, between summer and winter, on the balance (Libra) point
of the autumnal equinox, with one foot on the summer solstice and one foot
on the winter solstice.
This, of course, is the answer to a
related Bardic riddle. Repeatedly, the 'Mabinogion' tells us that Llew
must be standing with one foot on the cauldron and one foot on the goat's
back in order to be killed. But nowhere does it tell us why. Why is this
particular situation the ONLY one in which Llew can be overcome? Because
it represents the equinox point. And the autumnal equinox is the only time
of the entire year when light (Llew) can be overcome by darkness (Goronwy).
It should now come as no surprise
that, when it is time for Llewm to kill Goronwy in his turn, Llew insists
that Goronwy stands where he once stood while he (Llew) casts the spear.
This is no mere vindictiveness on Llew's part. For, although the 'Mabinogion'
does not say so, it should by now be obvious that this is the only time
when Goronwy can be overcome. Light can overcome darkness only at the
equinox -- this time the vernal equinox. (Curiously, even the Christian
tradition retains this association, albeit in a distorted form, by
celebrating Jesus' death near the time of the vernal equinox.)
The Welsh myth concludes with Gwydion
pursuing the faithless Blodeuwedd through the night sky, and a path of
white flowers springs up in the wake of her passing, which we today know
as the Milky Way. When Gwydion catches her, he transforms her into an owl,
a fitting symbol of autumn, just as her earlier association with flowers
(she was made from them) equates her with spring. Thus, while Llew and
Goronwy represent summer and winter, Blodeuwedd herself represents both
spring and fall, as patron goddess of flowers and owls, respectively.
Although it is far more speculative
than the preceding material, a final consideration would pursue this mirror-like life pattern of Llew
and Goronwy to its ultimate conclusion. Although Llew is struck with the
sunlight spear at the autumnal equinox, and so 'dies' as a human, it takes a while before Gwydion
discovers him in his eagle form. How long? We may speculate 13 weeks, when
the sun reaches the midpoint of the sign (or form) of the eagle, Scorpio
-- on Halloween. And if this is true, it may be that Llew, the sun god,
finally 'dies' to the upper world on Halloween, and now passes through the
gates of death, where he is immediately crowned king of the underworld,
the Lord of Misrule! (In medieval tradition, the person proclaimed as
'Lord of Misrule' reigned from Halloween to Old Christmas -- or, before
the calender changes, until the winter solstice.)
Meanwhile, Goronwy (with Blodeuwedd at
his side) is crowned king in the upper world, and occupies Llew's old
throne, beginning on Halloween. Thus, by winter solstice, Goronwy has
reached his position of greatest strength in OUR world, at the same moment
that Llew, now sitting on Goronwy's old throne, reaches his position of
greatest strength in the underworld. However, at the moment of the winter
solstice, Llew is born again, as a babe, (and as his own son!) into
our world. And as Llew later reaches manhood and dispatches Goronwy at the
vernal equinox, Goronwy will then ascend the underworld throne at Beltane,
but will be reborn into our world at midsummer, as a babe, later to defeat
Llew all over again. And so the cycle closes at last, resembling nothing
so much as an intricately woven, never-ending bit of Celtic knotwork.
So Midsummer (to me, at least) is a
celebration of the sun god at his zenith, a crowned king on his throne.
He is at the height of his
power and still 1/4 of a year
away from his ritual death at the hands of his rival. However, at the very
moment of his greatest strength, his dark twin, the seed of his
destruction, is born -- just as the days begin to shorten. The spear and
the cauldron have often been used as symbols for this holiday and it
should now be easy to see why. Sun gods are virtually always associated
with spears (even Jesus is pierced by one), and the midsummer cauldron of
Cancer is a symbol of the Goddess in her fullness. If we have learned
anything from this story from the fourth branch of the 'Mabinogion', it is
about the power of myth -- how
it may still instruct and guide us, many centuries after it has passed from oral
to written tradition. And in studying it, we have barely scratched the
surface. |
