Mythology
The antlered god Cernunnos ('great horned one'), is possibly best known from his
depiction on the danish Gundestrup Cauldron, where he appears holding a ram-headed snake in one hand,
with wolf and stag to either side and, binding them all (including himself) is his ring, or torc,
held in his right hand. Like the Green Man of Knowledge (and the greek
Dionysus), Cernunnos is god of the
wilds, and long associated with wells.
Giant of Cerne Abbas
A shortened form of his name is Cerne (and, though disputed, possibly Herne the Hunter).
At Cerne Abbas in Dorset, he is
carved into the chalk hillside as a huge giant, both of the hunt (Hercules) and fertility
(Zeus-like). His club points upward to the remains of a stone circle (facing
north-east and likely a midwinter alignment of star or moonrise), while below
him is the 'silver well' of his fertility aspect. This combination is logical since his month, Beithe,
includes the winter solstice and therefore symbolises evocatively the rites of womanhood and fertility
meeting the male dominion and wildness at the point of mid winter.
The ancient holy well, once known as the
'silver well', was
renamed St. Augustine's Well after the arrival of Christianity, and the
lewdness of his obvious paganistic sexuality was 'conveniently'
sanitised by the
explanation that St
Augustine is said to have leant on his staff while preaching at the site, which
caused the well to spring forth. Apparently the good people of Cerne
Abbas drove Augustine away, preferring their pagan past, but - the story goes - as
their children were then all born with fishes' tails, they were persuaded to convert
eventually! Unlike many pagan wells subsumed into Christian values, the springs
are still flowing, so that the whole hillside contains the delight of the feminine energy balanced
with the (more aggressive) prowess of the male god on his hill above.
It
was also a very strong symbol of fertility and many festivities are associated
with birch groves, especially at Beltane, when (not that long ago) marriage vows
were lifted for the one day and customs such as the 'handfesting' gave
pagan licence to youth for the day! In a Welsh poem:
Is it true, the girl that I love./
that you do not desire the birch,
/the strong growth of summer?
/be not a nun in spring,
/ascetism is not as good as a bush...
/come to the spreading birch
/to the religion of the trees and the cuckoo
(Fife 1994)
Because
the church eventually outlawed such a custom, it was turned on its head and the
birch tree itself was brought into the village, decorated colourfully and a
spring festival held around it - and so the maypole first appeared in the
thirteenth century. Still concerned by the pagan element, the Church insisted
that sprays of the tree be brought into churches for Whitsun decorations, and so
it was that birch customs gradually adopted their christian aspect. A Whitsun
custom remains in Russia, where a small birch tree is still brought into the
house for three days and in honour of the spirit of returning life. Further
north, in Siberia, birch is honoured as the 'deity of the door', and as the
World Tree, helps shamans cross to and from the spirit world.
Small conical birch bark hats were found on chieftans in the graves of the german Halstatt period, believed to represent the guarding rites of passage through the doors of death and on into rebirth.
Birch also gave its name to the germanic rune berkana. It meant motherhood, bosom and protection and its shape - like a B - is derived from the Neolithic breasts of Mother Earth. .
The
connection of birch with beginnings is long standing. In India the earliest
versions of the Vedas were written on it, while in the Jewish Kabbalah,
beth was the term associated with the beginning and denoted the number 'two' of
Kabbalistic numerology - standing for the power that 'opens creation's process
of taking form'.
Closer to home, in Ireland, beithe/ birch was referred to as the 'mother of learning' and began the alphabet. Lug (of the Long Arm) was warned that his wife was about to be taken to the underworld in the first ogham inscription brought to Ireland and carved onto the birch tree.
Protection by birch is another common theme throughout Europe. Cradles made of it protected babies, particularly from becoming changelings (swapped with a surrogate fairy creature), and a birch broom had both practical and ritual use in brushing out spirits, after which it was hung up by the roof or above the door as charm.