otrdiena, 2020. gada 16. jūnijs

The Myth of Son-of-God Jānis


(photo – Andrejs Broks)

              The Latvian Midsummer festival appears to the onlooker to be an unbroken series of playful merriment, and so it is. Nevertheless, to the observers of the ancient Latvian religion, now called dievturība (akin to the Japanese Shintō), it is more.  In ancient days the world over,  the Summer solstice was  among the holiest of holy occasions. The Lettish Sun myth, of which the Jānis myth is a part, still holds the age-old idea.

              Nowadays, we take as our example of how to celebrate Jānis' Day from the the  Latvian farm as it was at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century.  That era has become something of a golden age in our minds, for then we still practised what our dainas sing. Dainas are the approximately one point two million short songs that collectively portray the Latvian soul and that form the largest part of our many thousands-year-old oral tradition.

             Today's festivities necessarily interweave contemporary ways with the ancient. Instead of small groups gathering on a farm, most celebrants nowadays come in huge numbers to a park, in fact, not on foot but in automobiles. Nor do we brew our own mead; we substitute for it beer from a store. The rituals also tend to be a patchwork, taking elements from various historical periods across the centuries, and yet the center holds.

              In fact, strangers who came to rule over the Latvians forbad us our festivals but at Jāņi we drew the line every time. We defied first the crusaders,  later imperial Russia, and recently, the communist regime. Jāņi is the plural of Jānis and that is what we call the festival.  During Jāņi we sing līgo songs [dainas with the refrain līgo] to celebrate the jubilant victory of light over darkness, warmth over cold, fertility over barrenness, moisture over desiccation, the joyful song of the universe over stillness, success over failure, beatitude over turmoil, grace over imperfection, order over chaos, in other words, the plenitude of benefits that the supreme deity Sun (akin to the Japanese Amaterasu) can bestow and that humanity receives.

              The bringer of these gifts, in the myth, is, as one of the dainas tells us,  the Son-of-God Jānis, who has been on his way to his "children", meaning all of us, the whole year, to arrive with his gifts "tonight". Like all foundational rituals, the Jānis' Day ritual is a re-creation of what took place in illo tempore. The deities in the sky and the people on earth interacted synchronously and in interlinked fashion, gods assuming human form and vice versa  throughout the creation, and during the festival's three days we do likewise.

              As befits a major celebration, quite a long time beforehand the farmstead buzzes with many preparations. The jobs of the season about to close, need to have been completed: the summer crops seeded, the winter crop fields tilled, the vegetable garden weeded and hoed, clothing aired and repaired, white goods freshly laundered, all farm implements and utensils repaired, cleaned, oiled and polished, every nook and cranny in every building thoroughly cleaned and aired. Nothing must be left unfinished; everything must be in readiness for the harvest chores to begin immediately following Jāņi. If not, the failing is certain to be pointed out, albeit good-naturedly, in a witty and ironic daina composed on the spot, calling shame upon the perpetrator. No one is allowed to let on that the insult stings, but one must instantly answer in a daina of one's own. You have to be quick about it, too. It is not easy to be a Latvian.
             
              For the occasion itself,  the Lettish sacred drink mead must be brewed, cheese "bound" in the round shape of the sun. The honey of the mead honours the bee, God's sacred animal and messenger. The cheese derives its sacred status from the whiteness of cows' milk, white standing for purity in both the physical and the spiritual sense. Plenty of mead and cheese have to be on hand for offering to the "Jānis' children" as soon as they arrive. Again, shame if there is not enough.

              To all things there is an order, and so it is fitting that it is the very youngest, the least patient, who "ring in" the time of līgo.  The little  shepherds guiding their flocks from lush spot to lush spot in the pasture call out to one another in song from hilltop to hilltop. Līgo is a benediction. The word and the melody express the same thing. The two-syllable word means "let the deities weave and bind every big and little thing into a unified whole by moving  in the wave-like swaying motion characteristic of nature". A līgo daina celebrates the accomplishment in words:  let the sun sway, let the bee sway, let the youths and maidens sway, let the whole wide world sway.  And the humans' motive and duty in singing is to strengthen the deities as humans participate in the dynamism of the world to keep it energetic and strong.

              The voices of young maidens and lads soon join those of  the shepherds. They sing the līgo songs as they work, as they move about the farmstead and the fields. They address one another in song, and receive replies, at times to challenge or provoke one another, at times for the pure joy of their healthy youth and strength and movement. Eventually, their song encourages the older people to join in, until everyone everywhere  is singing from morning to nightfall. Singing will continue up to and during the three days of the Jānis celebration, only to come to a complete stop once "Jānis has departed".

              At the solstice,  the universe is wide open; underground, earth and heaven are equally accessible. This is the glory of a festival but at the same time dangerous too. The witches, evil and mischievous spirits take advantage of the free passage everywhere. To keep everyone safe,  people stick a rowan branch at every sill and gate, around the fields and animal enclosures;  to impede the movement of the evil ones, they strew nettles, thistles and barbed greenery on roofs, along walks and on fences.

              Once all these preparations are well in place, the celebrations can begin. The first day of Jāņi is devoted to bringing the outdoors in.  Garlands of oak and linden boughs and flowers of the field festoon the walls, the furniture and all else in the dwelling house, as well as the animal barns.  The oaks will strengthen the men, the linden the women, and the birches enhance the widening family tree as they stand for cousins, progeny, and relatives-by-marriage far and wide. Together with the aromatic sweet flags on the floors, the greenery exudes the unique Jāņi aroma. (Swedes and Estonians observe the same custom.)  After Jānis' Day, the greenery will be gathered, dried, and kept for feeding to the livestock at needy times such as at a calf's birth or during an illness.

              In the evening, the people go to the steam bath house to cleanse themselves physically and spiritually. The bath whisk must include many "Jānis' herbs", the ones with blue flowers (cornflower, blue-collar, etc.) in sympathetic magic of Jānis' phallus, as well as many healing plants, such as valerian. (In England, the preferred plant is bloodwort, reflecting the yellow or "gold" of the sun.)

              At sunrise, Sun begins her three-day "dancing" or "līgo" in the sky;  the first day she appears to be "hovering" at a spot in the south east sky almost on her farthest sunrise point south east, on the second day at the exact location of the solstice, and on the third back in the  spot of the day before, as she resumes her northward journey.

              During the middle day, called "Jāņi eve" hundreds, if not thousands, of the ritual "Jāņi songs" or "līgo songs" will fill the air.  Every feature of the farmstead will receive its due attention according to the age-old liturgy given by the deities. At the rye field the people ask: "What kind of flower does the rye have, līgo, līgo?" And answer:  "The rye flowers with grey blossoms, līgo, līgo".   Then the  wheat, the barley, the flax, the pastures, the fallow lot, gardens, granary, woodlot, bath house, laundry, well, buildings, machinery, implements, each kind of animal. To each there is a question about its characteristic feature, and each answer affirms its unique identity, as they received it when they were created in illo tempore. Moreover, the most important animals, such as the cow, the horse and the sheep receive wreaths about their necks.

              After an evening meal, neighbouring ”Jānis' children”  start arriving.  There is an established custom as to who visits whom; the tendency is to gather in farmsteads that have the highest hillock for reasons we will see in a moment. The neighbours come singing, their arms full of wreaths for every one of the members of the host household, and flowers and grasses for strewing in soliciting blessings for the animals and the important features of the farm.

              Upon arrival, they sing the ritual song -- "have you been expecting the Jānis children?" This is the sign that the host or Jānis-of-the-day must offer mead and the hostess cheese. The cheese is large and round, like the sun. The milk of the cow has been a sacred drink from time the time the Hindu and Lettish ancestors were one people. (Hindus still hold the cow sacred.)

              The wreaths find the heads for whom they are meant, together with the fitting song, starting with that of the local Jānis. But on Jānis' Day, every man is Jānis and every woman is Mother Jānis, avatars of the deity and his wife. In real life this is not as confusing as it sounds.

              During the ensuing walkabout, the guests invoke blessings for everything on the farm, much in the way the home people did earlier. More guests arrive, they blend in, and the singing, welcoming, eating and drinking reach a high pitch. Some may leave for other farms, still more arrive, and so on.

              At sunset it will behoove the head of the farmstead to set alight the pūdele, which is a barrrel full of pitch earlier hoisted to the top of a post on a hilltop. This fire must burn until midnight.  It becomes the sun for the few hours that the physical sun will be behind the horizon. 

              In sympathy of the sun's slow setting, people roll a huge round bundle of burning  hay  down a hillside. At the bottom it lights another fire.

              While the fire at the top of the post (phallus symbol) blesses all the land  that its light reaches, this ground bonfire is for lighting and warming an area for dances, ritual games, and the receipt of fire blessings (fertility). To receive those, people jump over the fire; in ancient days they did so nude so that the fire touched their bodies. Some still do.

              As midnight approaches, some young people slip away to look for the wondrous fern whose mythical flower of gold and silver is said to open at the midnight hour.  Many believe, especially those to whom Jāņi have become a source of secular entertainment, that this custom  of "looking for the Jānis' fern"  is licence for sexual activity, and so to them it has become the Jānis' day mystery. The fern on the forest floor, of course, never blooms, only some fireflies flit about it.

              The real mystery will be happening in the sky, where Jānis will "greet" the Sun Maiden (enact the hieros gamos). The "Jānis children" stand in awe and reverence, their eyes fixed on the constellation Orion (Jānis), lest they miss that brief moment when the constellation against the paling night sky and the thin gold line of the rising sun on the south eastern horizon will be visible simultaneously.

              Sun continues to rise on the heavenly mountain, growing into her full glory at the peak, and then she is the sparkling gold fern flower stroking the earth with her rays of silver.

              The water blessing comes in the cool of the morning.  The sun shines through the dew droplets on every blade of grass and leaf,  transmuting them into her tears. This sacred water, the golden dew, washes peoples' faces and and infuses fertility into their naked bodies as they roll in it.

              Well  may the sun weep this morning, for as a maiden, she will be going to her betrothed's landholding, leaving  behind all the dear people, things and places she has known and loved all her life, perhaps never to see them again. Leaving the rose garden, which she has lovingly tended, is particularly painful; it was the one thing that was truly hers. Of course, it is sweet sorrow, for she also looks forward to becoming the mistress of her own household. One way that Latvians describe the sunset is to say "the Sun goes into God", thinking of God as the entire universe, and one of the līgo dainas tells us that Jānis and Sun spend this day together.

              We, the people, fill this last day of Jāņi singing joyful songs about every living thing under the sun, reveling in the glory of nature's plenitude.  "The sun moves as līgo, the bee moves as līgo, the whole wide world moves in one huge lī-ī-go!"

              And so we continue, moving in groups from one farm to another, singing, eating, drinking at this household and that, in small groups and in large. As evening approaches and it is time for Jānis to ride back into his heavenly vault, we see him off: "Good-bye, Jānis, we take leave of you now. Come again another year!"

               The midsummer miracle has been accomplished. The hieros gamos has taken place.

© Maruta Voitkus-Lukins 2020

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