Sam King

First Church and Parish Dedham

Paganism

December 2, 2007

This morning we celebrated one of First church’s favorite holiday traditions, we’ve decked the halls, and hung the wreaths. If you look closely though, you’ll see, we made a small change. Our new Parish Minister, Rali Weaver, is allergic to balsam pine. So allergic in fact that she didn’t feel that she could be in the meeting house while the wreaths were being hung, and wouldn’t be very happy for the rest of the holiday season. We batted around a lot of ideas, one of which was to have me give the sermon, and the other was to have some other kind of wreath. Rali mentioned that she wasn’t allergic to laurel. As it happened, that that weekend we held our first annual harvest dinner, and you might remember that Lynne Flodin who manages Volante Farms, gave a speech after dinner. I asked Lynne if Volante Farms carried Laurel wreaths. She kindly took down the sizes and said she was sure we could work something out. Well thanks to Lynne, Volante Farms, and her friends at “secret Garden Designs” we have these Lovely Laurel wreaths and Rali can breath easy.

As it happens, Laurel wreaths have a much more potent mythology, than Balsam does. Laurel was sacred to Apollo the ancient Greek archer god. Apollo had been the patron god of Troy, and around the time of its fall, is said to have traveled from Asia Minor to Delphi on the back of a dolphin. There he battled with and killed the giant python, who is suppose to have chased his mother, the Titaness Leto, during her pregnancy. The Python had been the guardian of the sacred oracle at Delphi who breathed in the mystic vapors from a crack in Gaia’s body. Gaia being literally, the earth itself, the first goddess, the mother of the first titans, who were the more human looking of her prodigy, and Python. After Conquering the Python, who was actually more of a dragon than snake for all that she's given her name to the worlds largest serpents, Apollo took over as the oracular god, and the priestess who sat on the three legged stool over Gaia's vent was his. To celebrate Apollo's victory The Pythian Games were held in his honor every four years at Delphi, two ears after the olympics. The winners of The Pythian games won a laurel crown. In addition to athletic contests, there were competitions of music and poetry, for Apollo was also the god of the muses, and when not carrying his Silver bow, frequently held a lyre. In later years laurel crowns are frequently seen on the heads of Roman Emperors. Napoleon famously had a crown of Gold laurel fashioned for his coronation, and here in Boston the winners of the marathon are crowned with laurel flown in from Greece.

The ancient Greeks and Romans had hundreds of gods. Streams, lakes, households had there own small gods, Where today some might say grace before dinning, a roman householder would make a small sacrifice to the house god. Cities, rivers and oceans got the greater gods with better stories. Belief in these gods was not the same as what the new Christians believed. Apollo, Zeus, and even Hades, were not saviors, they just ran certain aspects of the world and underworld. Apollo didn't care if you were his follower or not. Just give him an occasional sacrifice, bone and fat would do, the meat was either eaten or sold, and respect his priests. But beware his wraith. Apollo was also the god of plague and with his arrows sent many a hero down to the underworld.

In the third century, as the new religion took hold, the Christians who were more likely to be dwelling in the city, began referring to those clinging to the old beliefs as Paganus, latin for country dweller, or rustic . So they were calling folks they disliked hicks way back then.

A few years ago when Linda and I were in England we took the early train to Salisbury. After a typical English breakfast a real fry-up as they say, and a walk around town, we went back to the train station, to catch a bus to Stonehenge. The bus driver was quite chatty and told us that for only a few pounds more we could get a day trip ticket, and that if we liked prehistoric sites, we might find the henge at Avebury to be rewarding. So we bought the all day passes, the bus driver giving us directions on how to catch a bus to Avebury. Apon arriving at Stonehenge we were most disappointed. Gone are the lackadaisical 60’s when my friend Doug could spread his sleeping bag and gaze at the stars above the stones at Stonehenge. The site is now surrounded by a six foot fence, and busloads of tourists cough up 15 pounds to get inside. Not that they’re allowed to get close to the stones, a designated walkway keeps them at least 10 yards away. Still closer than Linda or I got. We took our photos from outside the fence. No way were we going to spend that kind of money, when the crass commercialism had utterly destroyed the spirit of the place for us.

We pretty quickly decided to take the drivers advice, and shortly after were off on a 2 hour bus ride to Avebury. Our journey, as the bus wandered the English countryside, took us pass a Tank testing facility. where huge signs marked a, "Tank Crossing." At a well worn dirt track A little further on we passed a hog farm where every pig had its own little house, and a tiny yard. Later we went through Marlborough Downs. Here the fields are fill with enormous sandstone blocks, their edges rising above the long grass, like the bones of the earth. These are the Sarsen stones that years ago the ancient Britons moved 20 miles to the south to build the henge at Stonehenge and some 6 mile to the west to build Avebury. The stones themselves as they lie there are already shaped. You need only pry one from the earth and pop it up on end, and there you got it. Instant monument!

A word about the prehistoric monuments that were built throughout the British isles, most particularly on the plains of Salisbury and Avebury. They were built Twenty-five hundred to three thousand years before Julius Caesar built a roman camp on the banks of the Thames, at a place now called London. We know nothing about how they were used, and little about the builders. But they were not Druids. The Celts wouldn’t arrive for another two thousand years. And they celebrated their rites among oaky woods, not in stone circles on a grassy plain. We don't know to what use the henges were put. Some speculate an astronomical function. At Stonehenge the so called heel stone is lit by a ray passing through a slit in the henge at the dawn of the summer solstice. At Avebury too on the solstice, if you were to rule a line on a map of England from the point on the eastern shore where the sun rises as seen from Avebury, through the center of the circle, it will continue out to the tip of Cornwall. This is the longest such line you could draw across Britain. And Avebury is exactly in the middle.

And so some six miles later, we pulled up at a tavern in the Village of Avebury. The Henge here at a quarter mile in diameter, is the largest in Britain, and it encircles the village and a fair bit of pasture. The outer ring is a large grassy bank about 20 feet high, within it is a ditch, and inside that are the stones. Time, gunpowder, and Puritans have taken there toll on the stones and they are now very irregular in size and shape and fewer. Sadly 71 of the 98 original stones are lost. But as we walked among the remaining ones, we came across a cluster of a half dozen or so, spaced about 40 feet apart, showing enough of an arc to give a sense of how it must have looked. And there is space and quiet and sheep wandering the dunes.. Where the crowds of tourists at Stonehenge had killed my sense of its sprit, here I was able to greet the occasional fellow traveler and wander off to peacefully meditate alone. Other than for sheep, there are no fences, no fees, and if you wished to have a picnic, you could lean back against a monolith with your loft of bread and bottle of wine and meditate on the grandeur of yhe ancients. Not that we did of course. Did I mention? There's a tavern in the middle, and they serve beer. Real ale! And so it was there that we repaired to contemplate sprits and spiritualism, and to drink libations to the gods.