Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
that fires are made on the 23d; “Boys dress in girls’ clothes; waters are swam
in during the night. Water is fetched in vessels and hung up for purposes of divination;
fern is esteemed by the vulgar because of the seed; . . . . girls gather thistles,
and place a hundred crosses by the same;” for has not the thistle a cap like the lotus,
and is it not a trefoil? These very symbolical sexual pursuits usher in the 24th of
June, which, we must bear in mind, was anciently Midsummer day; and therefore these
ceremonies had no connection with St. John or the other two somewhat unhistorical
personages, whose fete-days follow his. At Midsummer, houses must be adorned with
choicest garments and green birch; and oil lamps, if not fires made of old bones, must
be burnt all night; for as Dr Hickes remarks, “a bonfire is a festive, or trimnphal
fire; it is a Ba-al or Boel-fyr, and hence by legitimate cbange of letters ban-fire,”
or as we now term it a bonfire. People were then to cleanse themselves by leaping over
these fires, running through them, swimming in water, &c., as before mentioned.
On the 24th of June, Midsummer night, or Notte di San Giovanni, as Italians
call it. good Christians of all ranks and ages keep wakeful vigil from sun-set to sunrise
around the ark of IOn, the Baptiser, and at the base of the fine obelisk in the
centre of his Piazza—the St. John Lateran. Witches on this night are supposed to
hold grand conciliabulum round the nut-tree of Benevento, whom the good people conciliate,
putting brooms outside their doors, and carrying in their hands long garlic
onions with root and flowering bulb—“a yard long” if they can get them. These very
phallic-looking objects they hold by the onion-end, and go about shaking at each other
the bulbous flowering extremity. The vegetable is considered provocative of venery.
Snails, a special produce of this Eve, are sacred to Eliza-beth’s child, and as marking Sol’s
power are eagerly collected and much eaten, especially by childless women, for whom,
says Pliny, “they are a valuable remedy.” Lovers seek out and give to each other
bunches of pinks and lavender, which are thought to arouse dormant passions. The
origin of the whole is clear, and no book-faith has any concern with the festival;
a very good account of it will be fonnd in the London Times of lst July 1875.
These popular superstitions retain, says the writer, “a considerable hold upon the minds
of the people, . . . . and it requried but little stretch of imagination to fancy one-
self present at one or other of the great pagan festivals of June and Ju1y.” He thus
describes the crowds in the Piazza of St John. Lateran: “Little strings of men wind
about among the gay rejoicing midnight throngs, playing on lutes and stringed instruments,
suggesting the Quinquatrus Minusculæ of the 13th of June, dedicated to
Minerva, whose cakes, arranged in heaps among the pinks and lavender, would seem
to recall the Matronalia of the 11th, dedicated to Mother Matula; or is it the festa of
the Nonæ Caprotinæ in honour of Juno, once held on the 7th of July?” The questions
are pertinent, and no doubt, Mother Matter and Minerva are still, though not in name,
fervently worshipped by the masses, as neither philosophic nor Christian ideas will
be for many a generation to come.
453