Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form

The Making of Modern Yule

At Yule 1953, after lunch, Gerald Gardner turned to the then newly-initiated Doreen Valiente and said, “Write us up a nice ritual for this evening, would you my dear? There's a good girl.”

The result of this request, Valiente later told Janet and Stuart Farrar, “was the first chant or invocation I ever wrote for Gerald,” who was, she thought, “deliberately throwing me in at the deep end to see what I could do” (Farrar 148n3).

Gardner later described this ritual in his 1954 book Witchcraft Today:

I have seen one very interesting ceremony: the Cauldron of Regeneration and the Dance of the Wheel, or Yule, to cause the sun to be reborn, or summer to return.....[A] cauldron is placed in the middle of the circle, spirit is put in and ignited....[The witches hold torches, which] are lighted at the burning cauldron, and they dance around in the “sunwise” direction, i.e. clockwise. The chant I heard was as follows, but sometimes others are used:

 

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.

 

Golden Sun of the Mountains,

Illumine the Land, Light up the World,

Illumine the Seas and the Rivers,

Sorrows be laid, Joy to the World. 

 

Blessed be the Great Goddess,

without beginning, without end,

Everlasting to eternity.

I.O. EVO.HE, Blessed Be

(Gardner: 24-5). 

 

Note how Gardner manages to give the impression, without ever actually saying so, that this rite, with its accompanying chant, is both ancient and traditional. Under the circumstances, this is disingenuous at best.

In fact, the bang-on symbolism and authentically archaic feel of Valiente's spur-of-the-moment creativity, which probably inspired Gardner to cite the ritual in the first place, has led it to become a standard of Wiccan Yule liturgy. Its manner of composition illuminates the methods used by the pioneers of the witchcraft revival.

Valiente draws the Wheel Dance with torches directly from Margaret Murray's Witch-Cult in Western Europe, where it is attributed to the Candlemas Eve sabbat (Murray 13). (For the most part, Murray's witches observed only the cross-quarters.) For the chant she drew on Alexander Carmichael's translations of Scots Gaelic poetry in his anthology Carmina Gadelica:

God of the Moon

 

God of the moon, God of the sun,

God of the globe, God of the stars,

God of the waters, the land, and the skies,

Who ordained to us the king of promise.

 

It was Mary fair who went upon her knee,

It was the King of Life who went upon her lap,

Darkness and tears were set behind,

And the star of guidance went up early. 

 

Illumed the land, illumed the world,

Illumed doldrum and current,

Grief was laid and joy was raised,

Music was set up with harp and pedal-harp

(Carmichael 1986, 109).

 

To this Valiente adds a variation on the concluding stanza from the hymn that Carmichael calls Christmas Chant:

Blessed be the King,

Without beginning, without ending,

To everlasting, to eternity,

Every generation for aye.

Ho! hi! Let there be joy!

(Carmichael 1986, 107)

 

In addition, Valiente's phrase “Golden Sun of the Mountains” reflects “Golden Sun of hill and mountain,” drawn from Carmichael's Christmas Carol (Carmichael 1988, 92).

Thus, by drawing on various traditional sources, which she reshapes to her own purposes, Valiente has crafted a work of lasting value. Her Queen of the Moon could rightly be called the first Yule carol of the modern era.

For all its culturally incisive nature, Valiente's poem does not chant well. I offer here a metrically regularized version: due praise to the mighty Mother and her Sun, truly the Child of Promise.

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 us the Child of Promise!

 

It is the Great Mother who giveth him birth,

The Lord of Life who is born again.

Darkness and tears are set aside

When the Sun shall come up early.

 

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 us the Child of Promise!

 

Golden Sun of the Mountains,

Illumine the Land, Illumine the Seas,

Illumine the Rivers, Illumine us all.

Sorrows be laid, Joy to the World.

 

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 us the Child of Promise!

 

Alexander Carmichael, The Sun Dances (1988). Floris Classics.

Alexander Carmichael, New Moon of the Seasons: Prayers from the Highlands and Islands (1986). Floris Classics.

Janet and Stewart Farrar, Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981). Hale.

Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today (1954). Rider.

Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921). Oxford.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last modified on
Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

Comments

Additional information