   T H E   D E A T H   O F   L L E W
       A Seasonal Interpretation
   =================================
            by Mike Nichols


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    Not of father, nor of mother
    Was my blood, was my body.
    I was spellbound by Gwydion,
    Prime enchanter of the Britons,
 When he formed me from nine blossoms.

                  --'Hanes Blodeuwedd'
                    R. Graves, trans.

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    In most Pagan cultures, the sun
god is seen as split between two rival
personalities: the god of light and
his twin, his 'weird', his 'other
self', the god of darkness.  They are
Gawain and the Green Knight, Gwyn and
Gwythyr, Llew and Goronwy, Lugh and
Balor, Balan and Balin, the Holly King
and the Oak King, etc.  Often they are
depicted as fighting seasonal battles
for the favor of their goddess/lover,
such as Creiddylad or Blodeuwedd, who
represents Nature.

    The god of light is always born at
the winter solstice, and his strength
waxes with the lengthening days, until
the moment of his greatest power, the
summer solstice, the longest day. 
And, like a look in a mirror, his
'shadow self', the lord of darkness,
is born at the summer solstice, and
his strength waxes with the
lengthening nights until the moment of
his greatest power, the winter
solstice, the longest night.

    Indirect evidence supporting this
mirror-birth pattern is strongest in
the Christianized form of the Pagan
myth.  Many writers, from Robert
Graves to Stewart Farrar, have
repeatedly pointed out that Jesus was
identified with the Holly King, while
John the Baptist was the Oak King. 
That is why, 'of all the trees that
are in the wood, the Holly tree bears
the crown.'  If the birth of Jesus,
the 'light of the world', is
celebrated at mid-winter, Christian
folk tradition insists that John the
Oak King (the 'dark of the world'?)
was born (rather than died) at
mid-summer.

    It is at this point that I must
diverge from the opinion of Robert
Graves and other writers who have
followed him.  Graves believes that at
midsummer, the Sun King is slain by
his rival, the God of Darkness; just
as the God of Darkness is, in turn,
slain by the God of Light at
midwinter.  And yet, in Christian folk
tradition (derived from the older
Pagan strain), it is births, not
deaths, that are associated with the
solstices.  For the feast of John the
Baptist, this is all the more
conspicuous, as it breaks the rules
regarding all other saints.

    John is the ONLY saint in the
entire Catholic hagiography whose
feast day is a commemoration of his
birth, rather than his death.  A
generation ago, Catholic nuns were
fond of explaining that a saint is
commemorated on the anniversary of his
or her death because it was really a
'birth' into the Kingdom of Heaven. 
But John the Baptist, the sole
exception, is emphatically
commemorated on the anniversary of his
birth into THIS world.  Although this
makes no sense viewed from a Christian
perspective, it makes perfect poetic
sense from the viewpoint of Pagan
symbolism.  (John's earlier Pagan
associations are treated in my essay
on Midsummer.)

    So if births are associated with
the solstices, when do the symbolic
deaths occur?  When does Goronwy slay
Llew and when does Llew, in his turn,
slay Goronwy?  When does darkness
conquer light or light conquer
darkness?  Obviously (to me, at
least), it must be at the two
equinoxes.  At the autumnal equinox,
the hours of light in the day are
eclipsed by the hours of darkness.  At
the vernal equinox, the process is
reversed.  Also, the autumnal equinox,
called 'Harvest Home', is already
associated with sacrifice, principally
that of the spirit of grain or
vegetation.  In this case, the god of
light would be identical.

    In Welsh mythology in particular,
there is a startling vindication of
the seasonal placement of the sun
god's death, the significance of which
occurred to me in a recent dream, and
which I haven't seen elsewhere.  Llew
is the Welsh god of light, and his
name means 'lion'.  (The lion is often
the symbol of a sun god.)  He is
betrayed by his 'virgin' wife
Blodeuwedd, into standing with one
foot on the rim of a cauldron and the
other on the back of a goat.  It is
only in this way that Llew can be
killed, and Blodeuwedd's lover,
Goronwy, Llew's dark self, is hiding
nearby with a spear at the ready.  But
as Llew is struck with it, he is not
killed.  He is instead transformed
into an eagle.

    Putting this in the form of a
Bardic riddle, it would go something
like this:  Who can tell in what
season the Lion (Llew), betrayed by
the Virgin (Blodeuwedd), poised on the
Balance, is transformed into an Eagle?
My readers who are astrologers are
probably already gasping in
recognition.  The sequence is
astrological and in proper order:  Leo
(lion), Virgo (virgin), Libra
(balance), and Scorpio (for which the
eagle is a well-known alternative
symbol).  Also, the remaining icons,
cauldron and goat, could arguably
symbolize Cancer and Capricorn
(representing summer and winter), the
signs beginning with the two solstice
points.  So Llew is balanced between
cauldron and goat, between summer and
winter, on the balance (Libra) point
of the autumnal equinox, with one foot
on the summer solstice and one foot on
the winter solstice.

    This, of course, is the answer to
a related Bardic riddle.  Repeatedly,
the 'Mabinogion' tells us that Llew
must be standing with one foot on the
cauldron and one foot on the goat's
back in order to be killed.  But
nowhere does it tell us why.  Why is
this particular situation the ONLY one
in which Llew can be overcome? 
Because it represents the equinox
point.  And the autumnal equinox is
the only time of the entire year when
light (Llew) can be overcome by
darkness (Goronwy).

    It should now come as no surprise
that, when it is time for Llew to kill
Goronwy in his turn, Llew insists that
Goronwy stands where he once stood
while he (Llew) casts the spear.  This
is no mere vindictiveness on Llew's
part.  For, although the 'Mabinogion'
does not say so, it should by now be
obvious that this is the only time
when Goronwy can be overcome.  Light
can overcome darkness only at the
equinox -- this time the vernal
equinox.  (Curiously, even the
Christian  tradition retains this
association, albeit in a distorted
form, by celebrating Jesus' death near
the time of the vernal equinox.)

    The Welsh myth concludes with
Gwydion pursuing the faithless
Blodeuwedd through the night sky, and
a path of white flowers springs up in
the wake of her passing, which we
today know as the Milky Way. When
Gwydion catches her, he transforms her
into an owl, a fitting symbol of
autumn, just as her earlier
association with flowers (she was made
from them) equates her with spring. 
Thus, while Llew and Goronwy represent
summer and winter, Blodeuwedd herself
represents both spring and fall, as
patron goddess of flowers and owls,
respectively.

    Although it is far more
speculative than the preceding
material, a final consideration would
pursue this mirror-like life pattern
of Llew and Goronwy to its ultimate
conclusion.  Although Llew is struck
with the sunlight spear at the
autumnal equinox, and so 'dies' as a
human, it takes a while before Gwydion
discovers him in his eagle form.  How
long?  We may speculate 13 weeks, when
the sun reaches the midpoint of the
sign (or form) of the eagle, Scorpio
-- on Halloween.  And if this is true,
it may be that Llew, the sun god,
finally 'dies' to the upper world on
Halloween, and now passes through the
gates of death, where he is
immediately crowned king of the
underworld, the Lord of Misrule!  (In
medieval tradition, the person
proclaimed as 'Lord of Misrule'
reigned from Halloween to Old
Christmas -- or, before the calender
changes, until the winter solstice.)

    Meanwhile, Goronwy (with
Blodeuwedd at his side) is crowned
king in the upper world, and occupies
Llew's old throne, beginning on
Halloween.  Thus, by winter solstice,
Goronwy has reached his position of
greatest strength in OUR world, at the
same moment that Llew, now sitting on
Goronwy's old throne, reaches his
position of greatest strength in the
underworld.  However, at the moment of
the winter solstice, Llew is born
again, as a babe, (and as his own
son!) into our world.  And as Llew
later reaches manhood and dispatches
Goronwy at the vernal equinox, Goronwy
will then ascend the underworld throne
at Beltane, but will be reborn into
our world at midsummer, as a babe,
later to defeat Llew all over again. 
And so the cycle closes at last,
resembling nothing so much as an
intricately woven, never-ending bit of
Celtic knotwork.

    So Midsummer (to me, at least) is
a celebration of the sun god at his
zenith, a crowned king on his throne. 
He is at the height of his power and
still 1/4 of a year away from his
ritual death at the hands of his
rival.  However, at the very moment of
his greatest strength, his dark twin,
the seed of his destruction, is born
-- just as the days begin to shorten. 
The spear and the cauldron have often
been used as symbols for this holiday
and it should now be easy to see why. 
Sun gods are virtually always
associated with spears (even Jesus is
pierced by one), and the midsummer
cauldron of Cancer is a symbol of the
Goddess in her fullness.  If we have
learned anything from this story from
the fourth branch of the 'Mabinogion',
it is about the power of myth -- how
it may still instruct and guide us,
many centuries after it has passed
from oral to written tradition.  And
in studying it, we have barely
scratched the surface.
