A Witches Bible - Janet Farrar, Stewar Farrar 1981

Yule, 22nd December
The Sabbats
The Sabbats and Rites for Birth, Marriage and Death

At the Winter Solstice, the two God-themes of the year’s cycle coincide — even more dramatically than they do at the Summer Solstice. Yule (which, according to the Venerable Bede, comes from the Norse Iul meaning ’wheel’) marks the death and rebirth of the Sun-God; it also marks the vanquishing of the Holly King, God of the Waning Year, by the Oak King, God of the Waxing Year. The Goddess, who was Death-in-Life at Midsummer, now shows her Life-in-Death aspect; for although at this season she is the “leprous-white lady”, Queen of the cold darkness, yet this is her moment for giving birth to the Child of Promise, the Son-Lover who will re-fertilize her and bring back light and warmth to her kingdom.

The Christmas Nativity story is the Christian version of the theme of the Sun’s rebirth, for Christ is the Sun-God of the Piscean Age. The birthday of Jesus is undated in the Gospels, and it was not till AD 273 that the Church took the symbolically sensible step of fixing it officially at midwinter, to bring him in line with the other Sun-Gods (such as the Persian Mithras, also born at the Winter Solstice). As St Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople a century later, explained with commendable frankness, the Nativity of “the Sun of Righteousness” had been so fixed in order that “while the heathen were busied with their profane rites, the Christians might perform their holy ones without disturbance”.

“Profane” or “holy” depended on your viewpoint, because basically both were celebrating the same thing — the turning of the year’s tide from darkness towards light. St Augustine acknowledged the festival’s solar meaning when he urged Christians to celebrate it for him who made the Sun, rather than for the Sun itself.

Mary at Bethlehem is again the Goddess as Life-in-Death. Jerome, the greatest scholar of the Christian Fathers, who lived in Bethlehem from 386 till his death in 420, tells us that there was also a grove of Adonis (Tammuz) there. Now Tammuz, beloved of the Goddess Ishtar, was the supreme model in that part of the world of the Dying and Resurrected God. He was (like most of his type) a vegetation- or corn-god; and Christ absorbed this aspect of the type as well as the solar one, as the Sacrament of the Bread suggests. So as Frazer points out (The Golden Bough), it is significant that the name Bethlehem means ’the House of Bread’.

The resonance between the corn-cycle and the Sun-cycle is reflected in many customs: for example, the Scottish tradition of keeping the Corn Maiden (the last handful reaped at the harvest) till Yule and then distributing it among the cattle to make them thrive all year; or, in the other direction, the German tradition of scattering the ashes of the Yule Log over the fields, or of keeping its charred remains to bind in the last sheaf of the following harvest.¹ (Here again we meet with the magical properties of everything about the Sabbat fire, including its ashes; for the Yule Log is, in essence, the Sabbat bonfire driven indoors by the cold of winter.)

But to return to Mary. It was hardly surprising that, for Christianity to remain a viable religion, the Queen of Heaven had to be re-admitted to something like her true status, with a mythology and a popular devotion far outstripping (sometimes even conflicting with) the Biblical data on Mary. She had to be given that status, because she answered what Geoffrey Ashe calls “a Goddess-shaped yearning” — a yearning which four centuries of utterly male-chauvinist Christianity, on both the divine and the human level, had made unbearable. (It should be emphasized that the Church’s male chauvinism was not inaugurated by Jesus, who treated women as fully human beings, but by the pathologically misogynist and sex-hating St Paul.)

Mary’s virtual deification came with startling suddenness, initiated by the Council of Ephesus in 431 “amid great popular rejoicing, due, doubtless, to the hold which the cult of the virgin Artemis still had on the city” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, ’Ephesus’ entry). Significantly, it coincided closely with the determined suppression of Isis-worship, which had spread throughout the known world. From then on, the theologians strove to discipline Mary, allowing her hyperdulia (’super-veneration’, a stepped-up version, unique to her, of the dulia, veneration, accorded to the saints) but not latria (the adoration which was the monopoly of the male God). They managed to create, over the centuries, an official synthesis of the Queen of Heaven, by which they achieved the remarkable double feat of desexualizing the Goddess and dehumanizing Mary. But they could not muffle her power; it is to her that the ordinary worshipper (knowing and caring nothing about the distinction between hyperdulia and latria) turns, “now and at the hour of our death”.

Protestantism went to the other extreme and in varying degrees tried once again to banish the Goddess altogether. All it achieved was the loss of magic, which Catholicism, in however distorted and crippling a form, retained; for the Goddess cannot be banished.

(For a fuller understanding of the Marian phenomenon, see Ashe’s The Virgin and Marina Warner’s Alone of All Her Sex.)

The Goddess at Yule also presides over the other God-theme — that of the Oak King and Holly King, which survived, too, in popular Christmas tradition, however much official theology ignored it. In the Yuletide mumming plays, shining St George slew the dark ’Turkish knight’ and then immediately cried out that he had slain his brother. “Darkness and light, winter and summer, are complementary to each other. So on comes the mysterious ’Doctor’, with his magical bottle, who revives the slain man, and all ends with music and rejoicing. There are many local variations of this play, but the action is substantially the same throughout.” (Doreen Valiente, An ABC of Witchcraft) Yuletide mumming still survives locally — for example in Drumquin, County Tyrone, where exotically masked and costumed young farmers go from house to house enacting the age-old theme with words and actions handed down from their ancestors; Radio Telefís Éireann made an excellent film of it as their entry for the 1978 Golden Harp Festival.

All too often, of course, the harmonious balance of the dark and light twins, of necessary waxing and waning, has been distorted into a concept of Good-versus-Evil. At Dewsbury in Yorkshire, for nearly seven centuries, church bells have tolled ’the Devil’s Knell’ or ’the Old Lad’s Passing’ for the last hour of Christmas Eve, warning the Prince of Evil that the Prince of Peace is coming to destroy him. Then, from midnight on, they peal out a welcome to the Birth. A worthy custom, on the face of it — but in fact it enshrines a sad degradation of the Holly King.

Oddly enough, the popular name ’Old Nick’ for the Devil reflects the same demotion. Nik was a name for Woden, who is very much a Holly King figure — as is Santa Claus, otherwise St Nicholas (who in early folklore rode not reindeer but a white horse through the sky — like Woden). So Nik, God of the Waning Year, has been Christianized in two forms: as Satan and as the jolliest of the saints. The Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance (now a September, but once a Yule rite) is based on the parish church of St Nicholas, which suggests a direct continuity from the days when the patron of the locality was not Nicholas but Nik. (On Nik and St Nicholas, see Doreen Valiente’s ABC of Witchcraft)

Incidentally, in Italy Santa Claus’s place is taken by a witch, and a lady witch at that. She is called Befana (Epiphany), and she flies around on Twelfth Night on her broomstick, bringing gifts for children down the chimneys.

An extraordinarily persistent version of the Holly King/Oak King theme at the Winter Solstice is the ritual hunting and killing of the wren — a folklore tradition found as far apart in time and space as ancient Greece and Rome and today’s British Isles. The wren, ’little king’ of the Waning Year, is killed by his Waxing Year counterpart, the robin redbreast, who finds him hiding in an ivy bush (or sometimes in Ireland in a holly bush, as befits the Holly King). The robin’s tree is the birch, which follows the Winter Solstice in the Celtic tree-calendar. In the acted-out ritual, men hunted and killed the wren with birchrods.

In Ireland, the ’Wren Boys” day is St Stephen’s Day, 26th December. In some places (the fishing village of Kilbaha in County Clare on the Shannon estuary, for example), the Wren Boys are groups of adult musicians, singers and dancers in colourful costumes, who go from house to house bearing the tiny effigy of a wren on a bunch of holly. In County Mayo the Wren Boys (and girls) are parties of children, also bearing holly bunches, who knock on our doors and recite their jingle to us:

“The wren, the wren, the king of the birds,

On Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze;

Up with the kettle and down with the pan,

And give us some money to bury the wren.”

It used to be ’a penny’, but inflation has outstripped tradition. All holly decorations in Ireland must be cleared out of the house after Christmas; it is considered unlucky to let these Waning Year symbols linger.

The apparent absence of a corresponding Midsummer tradition, where one might expect a hunting of the robin, is puzzling. But there may be a trace of it in the curious Irish belief about a Kinkisha (Cincíseach), a child born at Pentecost (Cincís), that such a person is doomed either to kill or to be killed — unless the ’cure’ is applied. This ’cure’ is to catch a bird and squeeze it to death inside the child’s hand (while reciting three Hail Marys). In some places at least, the bird has to be a robin, and we feel this is probably the original tradition, for Pentecost is a movable feast, falling anywhere from 10th May to 13th June — i.e., towards the end of the Oak King’s reign. It may be that long ago a baby born at this season was in danger of becoming a substitute sacrifice for the Oak King, and what better escape than to find a replacement in the shape of his own bird-substitute, the robin redbreast? And the ’kill or be killed’ danger may be a memory of the Oak King’s destiny of killing at Midwinter and being killed at Midsummer.²

The Waxing Year robin brings us to Robin Hood, cropping up in yet another seasonal festival. “In Cornwall,” Robert Graves tells us, “’Robin’ means phallus. ’Robin Hood’ is a country name for red campion (’campion’ means ’champion’), perhaps because its cloven petal suggests a ram’s hoof, and because ’Red Champion’ was a title of the Witch-god…. ’Hood’ (or Hod or Hud) meant ’log’ — the log put at the back of the fire — and it was in this log, cut from the sacred oak, that Robin had once been believed to reside — hence ’Robin Hood’s steed’, the wood-louse which ran out when the Yule log was burned. In the popular superstition Robin himself escaped up the chimney in the form of a robin and, when Yule ended, went out as Belin against his rival Bran, or Saturn — who had been ’Lord of Misrule’ at the Yule-tide revels. Bran hid from pursuit in the ivy-bush disguised as a Gold Crest Wren; but Robin always caught and hanged him.” (The White Goddess)

Mention of the Celtic tree-calendar (and of Graves’s White Goddess, its most detailed modern analysis) brings us back to the Goddess and the Sun-God aspect. As will be seen in our diagram, Graves’s “Five Stations of the Goddess” are distributed round the year, but two of them (Death and Birth) are together on consecutive days at the Winter Solstice, 22nd and 23rd December. The latter is the ’extra day’ which does not belong in any of the thirteen tree-months. Before it comes Ruis, the elder-tree month, and after it comes Beth, the birch-tree month. The pattern, whose symbolism will repay study (though preferably in the context of the whole year’s calendar) is as follows, around the Winter Solstice:

25th November — 22nd December: Ruis, the elder-tree; a tree of doom and of the dark aspect of the Goddess, with white flowers and dark fruit (“Elder is the Lady’s tree — burn it not, or cursed you’ll be”). Bird, the rook (rócnat); the rook, raven or crow is the prophetic bird of Bran, the Holly-King deity, who is also linked with the wren in Ireland, while in Devonshire the wren is ’the cuddy vran’ or ’Bran’s sparrow’. Colour, blood-red (ruadh). Line from the Song of Amergin: “I am a wave of the sea” (for weight).

22nd December. Death Station of the Goddess: Tree, the yew (idho), and palm. Metal, lead. Bird, eagle (illait). Colour, very white (irfind).

23rd December The Extra Day; Birth Station of the Goddess: Tree, silver fir (ailm), the original Christmas Tree; also mistletoe. Metal, silver. Bird, lapwing (aidhircleóg), the piebald trickster. Colour, piebald (alad). Amergin asks: “Who but I knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen?”

24th December-20th January: Beth, the birch-tree; a tree of inception and the driving-out of evil spirits. Bird, pheasant (besan). Colour, white (bán). Amergin proclaims: “I am a stag of seven tines” (for strength).

The Winter Solstice rebirth, and the Goddess’s part in it, were portrayed in ancient Egypt by a ritual in which Isis circled the shrine of Osiris seven times, to represent her mourning for him and her wanderings in search of the scattered parts of his body. The text of her dirge for Osiris, in which her sister Nephthys (who is in a sense her own dark aspect) joined her, can be found in two somewhat different versions in The Golden Bough, and Esther Harding’s Woman’s Mysteries. Typhon or Set, the brother/enemy who killed him, was driven away by the shaking of Isis’s sistrum, to bring about Osiris’s rebirth. Isis herself was represented by the image of a cow with the sun-disc between its horns. For the festival, people decorated the outsides of their houses with oil-lamps which burned all night. At midnight, the priests emerged from an inner shrine crying “The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!” and showing the image of a baby to the worshippers. The final entombment of the dead Osiris was on 21st December, after his long mummification ritual (which began, interestingly enough, on 3rd November — virtually at Samhain); on 23rd December his sister/wife Isis gave birth to his son/other-self Horus. Osiris and Horus represent at the same time the solar and the vegetational God-aspects; Horus is both the reborn Sun (the Greeks identified him with Apollo) and ’Lord of the Crops’. Another name of Horus, ’Bull of Thy Mother’, reminds us that the God-child of the Goddess is, at another point in the cycle, her lover and impregnator, father in due course to his own reborn self.

The lamps burning all night on the eve of Midwinter survive, in Ireland and elsewhere, as the single candle burning in the window on Christmas Eve, lit by the youngest in the house — a symbol of microcosmic welcome to the Macrocosm, not unlike the extra place laid at a Jewish family’s Pesach table (at which table, incidentally, the youngest son, with his question “Father, why is tonight different from all other nights?”, also has a traditional part to play).

The owner of our village pub offers her own microcosmic welcome, following a tradition which she tells us was once widespread among Irish innkeepers. She cleans out a stable stall, spreads fresh straw and leaves there some food, a bottle of wine and a baby’s bottle of milk — so that there shall be ’room at the inn’. She is shy to talk about it but sorry the custom seems to be dying.

A friend who has lived with the Eskimos in Greenland, where Christianity has bulldozed a formerly well-integrated balance of belief and way of life, tells us how Winter Solstice rituals have died without being meaningfully replaced. The Eskimos can hardly be said to celebrate Christmas at all, in comparison with the festival as it is known in the ’older’ Christian countries; yet the traditional solstice rites (which apparently were memorable occasions) are no longer observed because they depend on exact reckoning of the solstice by stellar observation — a skill which the present generation no longer possesses. So much for the blessings of technological civilization!

In Athens, the Winter Solstice ritual was the Lenaea, the Festival of the Wild Women. Here, the death and rebirth of the harvest-god Dionysos was enacted. In the dim past it had been a god-sacrifice ritual, and the nine Wild Women had torn his human representative to pieces and eaten him. But by classical times the Titans had become the sacrificers, the victim had been replaced by a goat-kid, and the nine Wild Women had become mourners and witnesses of the birth. (See The White Goddess) The Wild Women also appear in northern legend; as the Waelcyrges (Valkyries) they rode with Woden on his Wild Hunt.

In the Book of Shadows Yule ritual, only the rebirth of the Sun-God is featured, with the High Priest calling upon the Goddess to “bring to us the Child of Promise”. The Holly King/Oak King theme is ignored — a strange omission in view of its persistence in the folklore of the season.

We have combined the two themes in our ritual, choosing the Oak King and Holly King by lot, as at Midsummer, immediately after the opening ritual — but postponing the ’slaying’ of the Holly King until after the death and rebirth of the Sun.

A problem arises over the Oak King’s crown; while at Midsummer oak and holly leaves are both available, at Yule oak leaves are not. One answer is to gather oak leaves in advance in the Summer or Autumn, press and lacquer them and make a permanent Oak King’s crown for Yuletide use. Another, less fragile perhaps, is to make your permanent crown of acorns when they are in season. Or you can use the winter leaves of the Holm or Evergreen Oak (Quercus ilex). Failing all these, make the crown of bare oak twigs but brighten it with Christmas tinsel or other suitable decoration.

At Yule, the Goddess is the ’leprous-white lady’, the White-Haired One, Life-in-Death; so we suggest the High Priestess should again wear the white chiffon or net tabard we described for Samhain. A dramatically effective addition, if she possesses one or it can be afforded, is a pure white wig, preferably long. If yours is a skyclad coven, she will take off the tabard before the Great Rite but retain the wig if she is wearing one, because it symbolizes her seasonal aspect.

The High Priestess’s lament “Return, oh, return! …” is a slightly adapted form of Isis’s lament for Osiris mentioned above.

If, as is more than likely, you have a Christmas tree in the room, any lights on it should be switched off before the Circle is cast. The High Priest can then switch them on immediately after he lights the cauldron candle.

If there is an open fireplace in the room, a Yule Log can be burned during the Sabbat. It should, of course, be of oak.

The Preparation

The cauldron is placed by the South candle, with an unlit candle inside it, and wreathed with holly, ivy and mistletoe.

Crowns for the Oak King and Holly King are ready beside the altar. A number of straws are laid on the altar — as many as there are men at the Sabbat, except for the High Priest. One of them is longer than the rest, and one shorter. (As at Midsummer, if the High Priestess decides to nominate the two Kings instead of drawing lots, the straws are not needed.)

A blindfold is ready by the altar for the Holly King.

A sistrum for the High Priestess is laid on the altar. The High Priestess shall wear a white tabard and, if she so chooses, a white wig.

If there is a Christmas tree in the room with lights, the lights shall be switched off.

If there is an open fireplace in the room, the fire shall be built up till it is red and glowing, and a Yule Log laid on it just before the Circle is cast.

The Ritual

After the Witches’ Rune, the Maiden fetches the straws from the altar and holds them in her hand so that all the ends are protruding separately but nobody can see which are the short and long ones. The High Priestess says:

“Let the men draw lots.”

Each man (except the High Priest) draws a straw from the Maiden’s hand and shows it to the High Priestess. The High Priestess points to the man who has drawn the short straw, and says:

“Thou art the Holly King, God of the Waning Year. Maiden, bring his crown!”

The Maiden places the holly-leaf crown on the head of the Holly King.

The High Priestess points to the man who has drawn the long straw, and says:

“Thou are the Oak King, God of the Waxing Year. Maiden, bring his crown!”

The Maiden places the oak-leaf crown on the head of the Oak King.

While the crowning is going on, the High Priest lays himself on the floor in the centre of the Circle, curled up in a foetal position. Everyone pretends not to see him doing this.

When the crowning is over, the Oak King says:

“My brother and I have been crowned and prepared for our rivalry. But where is our Lord the Sun?”

The Maiden replies:

“Our Lord the Sun is dead!”

If the High Priestess’s tabard has a veil, she drapes it over her face.

The coven arrange themselves around the perimeter of the Circle.

The High Priestess picks up the sistrum, and the Maiden a candle. They walk together slowly round the High Priest, deosil, seven times. The Maiden holds the candle so that the High Priestess can read her script, and counts quietly “One,” “Two,” and so on up to “Seven” as each circuit is completed. As they go, the High Priestess shakes her sistrum and laments:

“Return, oh, return!

God of the Sun, God of the Light, return!

Thine enemies are fled — thou hast no enemies.

O lovely helper, return, return!

Return to thy sister, thy spouse, who loveth thee!

We shall not be put asunder.

O my brother, my consort, return, return!

When I see thee not,

My heart grieveth for thee,

Mine eyes seek for thee,

My feet roam the Earth in search of thee!

Gods and men weep for thee together.

God of the Sun, God of the Light, return!

Return to thy sister, thy spouse, who loveth thee!

Return! Return! Return!”

When the seven circuits are completed, the High Priestess lays the sistrum on the altar and kneels close to the High Priest, with her hands resting on his body and her back towards the altar. (See Plate 16.)

The coven, except for the Maiden, link hands and move slowly deosil round the High Priestess and High Priest.

The Maiden stands by the altar and declaims:³

“Queen of the Moon, Queen of the Sun,

Queen of the Heavens, Queen of the Stars,

Queen of the Waters, Queen of the Earth,

Bring to us the Child of Promise!

It is the Great Mother who giveth birth to Him;

It is the Lord of Life who is born again;

Darkness and tears are set aside when the Sun shall come up early!”

The Maiden pauses in her declamation, and the High Priestess rises to her feet, drawing the High Priest to his feet. If she is veiled, she throws the veil back from her face. High Priestess and High Priest face each other, clasping each other’s crossed-over hands, and start to spin deosil inside the coven. The coven’s circling becomes joyous and faster.

The Maiden continues:

“Golden Sun of hill and mountain,

Illumine the land, illumine the world,

Illumine the seas, illumine the rivers,

Sorrows be laid, joy to the world!

Blessed be the Great Goddess,

Without beginning, without ending,

Everlasting to eternity, Io Evo! He!⁴ Blessed be!

Io Evo! He! Blessed be!

Io Evo! He! Blessed be! …”

The coven joins in the chant “Ivo Evo! He! Blessed be!”, and the Maiden puts down her script and candle and joins the circling ring. The chanting and circling continues until the High Priestess cries “Down!”

When all are seated, the High Priest stands up again and goes to the altar to fetch a candle or taper. He carries it to the cauldron and with it lights the candle in the cauldron. He then returns the first candle or taper to the altar. If there is a Christmas tree with lights, he now switches on the lights.

He then takes his place in front of the altar, where the High Priestess joins him, and they stand facing the seated coven.

The High Priestess says:

“Now, at the depth of winter, is the waning of the year accomplished, and the reign of the Holly King is ended. The Sun is reborn, and the waxing of the year begins. The Oak King must slay his brother the Holly King and rule over my land until the height of summer, when his brother shall rise again.”

The coven stand and, except for the two Kings, withdraw to the perimeter. In the centre of the Circle, the two Kings stand facing each other, the Oak King with his back to the West and the Holly King with his back to the East.

The Oak King places his hands on the Holly King’s shoulders, pressing downwards. The Holly King falls to his knees. Meanwhile the Maiden fetches the scarf, and she and the Oak King blindfold the Holly King. They both now move away from the kneeling Holly King; the High Priestess walks slowly round him deosil, three times. She then rejoins the High Priest in front of the altar.

The High Priest says:

“The spirit of the Holly King is gone from us, to rest in Caer Arianrhod, the Castle of the Silver Wheel; until, with the turning of the year, the season shall come when he shall return to rule again. The spirit is gone; therefore let the man among us who has stood for that spirit be freed from his task.”

The High Priestess and Maiden step forward again and help the Holly King to rise. They lead him to the West candle, where the Maiden removes his blindfold and the High Priestess his crown, laying them beside the candle. The man turns and again becomes an ordinary member of the coven.

The Great Rite is now enacted, the Maiden standing by with the athame and the Oak King with the chalice. (If the Sabbat is skyclad, the Maiden will first help the High Priestess to take off her tabard — which, being white, may then suitably be used as the veil laid over her body for the first part of the Great Rite.)

After the wine and cakes, the cauldron is moved to the centre of the Circle, and everybody jumps over it in the usual manner before the party-stage begins.

Next day, when the fire (if any) is cold, the ashes of the Yule Log should be gathered up and scattered on the fields or garden — or, if you live in town and have not even a window-box, on the nearest park or cultivated ground.