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They
stay up the whole night singing songs and playing the flute, offering these to
the images of the gods; and, when the revelries of the night are over, after
cock-crow, they go down with torches into a subterranean sanctuary and bring up a
carved wooden image, which is laid naked on a litter. On its forehead it has the
sign of the cross, in gold, and on both its hands two other signs of the same
shape, and two more on its knees; and the five signs are all fashioned in gold.
They carry this carved image seven times around the middle of the temple
precincts, to the sound of flutes and tambourines and hymns, and after the
procession they carry it down again into the crypt. But if you ask them what
this mysterious performance means they answer: Today, at this hour, the Kore, that is to say the
virgin, has given birth to the Aeon.
Fourth-Century writer St Epiphanius of Salamis (310 - 402) describes a 2nd-Century
ceremony that took place on the night of January 5/6; translated
by CG Jung
Now, now the mirth comes,
With the cake full of plums,
Where Bean's the king of the sport here;
Besides we must know,
The pea also
Must revel, as queen, in the court here.
Begin then to choose,
This night as ye use,
Who shall for the present delight here,
Be a king by the lot,
And who shall not
Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here.
Which known, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake;
and let not a man then be seen here,
Who, unurg'd, will not drink,
To the base from the brink,
A health to the king and queen here.
Next crown the bowl full
With the gentle lamb's-wool
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,
With store of ale too;
And thus ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.
Give then to the king
And queen wassailing;
And, though with ale ye be wet here,
Yet part ye from hence
As free from offense,
As when ye innocent met here.
Robert Herrick (1591 -
1674), English poet;
'Twelfe Night', from
Christmas Poems of Herrick
The nut-brown ale, the nut-brown ale,
Puts downe all drinke when it is stale,
The toast, the nut-meg, and the ginger,
Will make a sighing man a singer,
Ale gives a buffet in the head,
"But ginger under proppes the brayne;
When ale would strike a strong man dead,
Then nut-megge temperes it againe,
The nut-brown ale, the nut-brown ale,
Puts downe all drinke when it is stale.
'The Player's Song', Histrio-mastix, in 'Specimens of Songs by Dramatic Writers';
Brit. Bibliog. vol. ii. p.167; as cited in Sandys, William, Christmas Carols, Ancient and
Modern, London, 1833
Twelfth Night is the manifestation feast,
the day the Three Wise Men came from the East.
Hallgrimur Petursson, 17th century Icelandic hymnist
Huzza! More people pinned and plenty nailed up!
Street urchins in England used to cry this when they nailed to window sills the coats of Twelfth Night window-shoppers who assembled to admire elaborate decorated cakes (Graham, Eleanor, Happy Holidays, EP Dutton, NY, 1933,
pp 34-5)
Little piece, piece of sausage,
Knife with a black handle,
Piece of pancake,
Eat and let us go.
Housewives' song to shoo away kalikandjari (demons) today, Cyprus
At twelfth day, the days are lengthened a cock's stride.
Traditional Italian weather proverb
Now Christmas is past,
Twelfth Day is the last,
To the Old Year adieu,
Great joy to the New.
Welsh Twelfth Day Carol
More
on Epiphany/12th Night
Mistletoe is, however, seldom found on a hard-oak, and when it is discovered it is gathered with great ceremony, and particularly on the
6th day of the moon (which for those tribes [Druids] constitutes the beginning of the months and the years) and after every thirty years of a generation, because it is then rising in strength and not one half its full size.
Pliny the Elder
(Plinius maior or
Gaius Plinius Secundus; 23 CE -
79), Natural History XVI xcv. 250 (see
Coligny Calendar)
The last of
the mystic twelve days is Epiphany or Twelfth Night, and it has been
selected as a proper season for the expulsion of the powers of evil in
various parts of Europe.
Sir James George
Frazer (1854 - 1941), The
Golden Bough, 1922
Every man cries
"Sciolta", letting himself loose to the maddest of merriments, marching wildly up and down in all forms of disguises; each man striving to outgo others in strange pranks of humorous debauchedness, in which even those of the holy order are wont to be allowed their
share ...
Bishop Hall, on Carnival, in Rome, Triumphs of Rome
Suppose all the stars descended from the sky, and mingled in a wild dance on the earth; the whole accompanied by cries such as are never heard in any other part of the world.
Alexandre
Dumas, père, on the Carnival in Rome,
The Count of Monte Cristo
I have looked upon the face of Agamemnon.
Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist, born on January 6, 1822; on discovering a gold death-mask at
Mycenae
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Sherlock Holmes, born on January 6, 1854, did not say this in any of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. (He did say
"Elementary!", for example, in
'The
Adventure of the Crooked Man', in
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.)
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
Sherlock Holmes; 'A Case of Identity',
in
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
It is quite a three-pipe problem.
Sherlock Holmes; 'The Red-Headed League',
ibid
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Sherlock Holmes;
The Valley of Fear
I'm writing to tell
you, my friend, that I stayed here (Bucharest) with the intention of
becoming a teacher at the Bulgarian school, but I was sorely disappointed.
I have fallen on such hard times, that I can hardly describe my miserable
state. I'm quite broke, the rags I had aren't fit to wear any more and I'm
ashamed to show myself in the street. I live in a draughty mill on the
outskirts of Bucharest, together with my fellow-countryman Vassil Levski.
It is better not to ask what we eat, because we only once in two or three
days get hold of some bread to still our hunger ... I'm thinking of giving
a lecture at the 'Brotherly Love' reading club one of these days, but I
have no idea in what clothes I shall appear there! In spite of this
critical situation I have not lost my courage and honour ... My friend
Levski, with whom I share my lodging, has an incredible disposition. When
things with us are at their lowest, he is as merry as when they are at
their best. When it is perishing cold outside, and we have gone hungry for
two or three days, he will be merry and sing. He sings while we are
getting into bed in the evening and he sings the moment he opens his eyes
in the morning. Whatever your despair might be, he will cheer you up and
make you forget all your grief and suffering. It is a pleasure to live
with such a character ...
Hristo Botev,
Bulgarian poet and revolutionary hero born on January 6, 1848; Bucharest,
the end of 1868 Source
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
Carl Sandburg, American poet, born January 6, 1878; 'Fog'
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
Carl Sandburg; 'The People, Yes'
I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on the way.
Carl Sandburg
Work is love made visible.
Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-born American author, born on January 6, 1883
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children. They are
the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth.
Kahlil Gibran; ibid
O love, whose lordly hand
Has bridled my desires,
And raised my hunger and my thirst
To dignity and pride,
Let not the strong in me and the constant
Eat the bread or drink the wine
That tempt my weaker self.
Let me rather starve,
And let my heart parch with thirst,
And let me die and perish,
Ere I stretch my hand
To a cup you did not fill,
Or a bowl you did not bless.
Kahlil Gibran; 'Love' from The Forerunner
He has all the hallmarks of a narcissist. I was astonished. My background isn't in psychology, though I guess I know as much as most other lay people. And then I read some specialist books on narcissism, and the list of symptoms, as it were, that they give, fitted Gibran perfectly. He was a chameleon, he could fit in to any contexts, he had great charm and charisma, he could hold people spellbound with his ideas and conversation, but he wanted admiration. This is why he exuded charm, why he allowed himself to fit in to any context.
Robin Waterfield, biographer of Kahlil Gibran (Waterfield, Robin, Prophet:
The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran) Source
In the province of the mind there are no limits.
John C Lilly, American philosopher, born on January 6, 1914
It would be, of course, much better, if this occasion were celebrated with no talk at all, and if I addressed you in the manner of the ancient teachers of Zen, I should hit the microphone with my fan and leave.
Alan Watts, born on January 6, 1915, A Lecture
on Zen
The
separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most.
Rev.
Sun Myung Moon, born on January 6, 1920
Through
the principle of indemnity, Hitler killed 6 million Jews.
Rev.
Sun Myung Moon;
the word 'indemnity' is a reference to Moon's belief that Jews
are largely responsible for the murder of Christ; taken from the speech
'Father's
words and Hoon Dok Hae', March 2, 2003
I
am determined to liberate all the Jewish people and protect them and
restore all of this history.
Rev.
Sun Myung Moon Source
Do
you like the smell of your husband's semen? Answer to Father. Does it
smell good or bad? You may not like the smell of your wife's stool, but do
you smell your own? Why don't you smell your own but you smell your
wife's? Because you are not totally one.
Rev.
Sun Myung Moon; from a speech 'Who was I?',
February 13, 1994
The
white race are the descendants of polar bears. Their ancestors were Viking
pirates. Wherever the white race goes there is always bloodshed.
Rev.
Sun Myung Moon; from a speech 'Where and how do you
want to live your life?' June 9, 1996
Homosexuals
and fornicators are like dirty dung eating dogs.
Rev.
Sun Myung Moon; from the speech 'The family federation
for cosmic peace and unification and the cosmic era of blessed family',
June 4, 1997
January 6 is the 6th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 359
days remaining (360 in leap years).
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Epiphany, the oldest festival on the Christian Church calendar, is a national holiday in at least 15 nations. Celebrations generally are related to children.
The name derives from the Greek word meaning appearance of a god. It commemorates the visit of the Magi, or Three Wise Men, to the baby Jesus in the stable in Bethlehem, and also His baptism as an adult. Because of the latter, many customs today have watery associations, such as the blessing of fishing fleets in harbours around the world.
In the former Yugoslavia, a cross is thrown into a body of water and young men dive after it. This ancient rite echoes even older pagan ceremonies of propitiation of gods of rivers, lakes and oceans.
"The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi has stunning new insight and approach, which finally gives a confident answer to a question that has fascinated all Christians through the ages. ... don't buy any other book on the Star of Bethlehem, because the old astronomical views are guaranteed to be irrelevant."
Prof. Bradley E Schaefer, Yale UniversityCould the purchase of an ancient coin have led to an important clue about the Star of Bethlehem? The above illustration is a Roman coin from Antioch, Syria which shows the zodiacal sign, Aries the Ram.
Revealing the Star of Bethlehem Star of Bethlehem bibliography The UnMuseum: Bethlehem's Star
Was Jesus Christ born on December 25, or another date? See September 15 in the Book of Days
Why is January 6 Twelfth Night in the Book of Days, and not January 5, as some sources say?
Blessing of the waters
In Piraeus,
Greece, the traditional date of the Baptism of
Jesus Christ is commemorated in the water-related ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters. Greek immigrants have transported this tradition to Australia. At
Frankston,
Victoria, a priest of the Church of the Epiphany conducts the rites, which are held to bring bounty and safety to the fishing community and all who work on the water.
Christmas became Epiphany
After the English nation adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, eleven days had to
'go missing', and old Christmas Day fell on January 6, otherwise known
as Epiphany. In 1753, in some parts of England, the conservative anti-Gregorians celebrated Christmas on this day.
Epiphany
was first observed as a separate religious feast in 813. The early
Christians celebrated the twelve days of the Nativity; Christmas day was
the greater Epiphany, and January 6, Twelfth Day, was the lesser Epiphany.
Epiphany's three manifestations
Tradition has it that three manifestations of the Godhead of Christ happened on this day: the appearance of the star of Bethlehem and the Magi; the descent of the Holy spirit in the form of a dove at Christ's baptism; and the first miracle of Jesus turning the water into wine.
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Epiphany was
traditionally a Christian feast to celebrate the 'shining forth' or
revelation of God to humanity in human form, in the person of Jesus
Christ. It included the birth of Jesus
Christ; the visit of the three Magi, Caspar,
Melchior and Balthasar arrived in Bethlehem;
and all of Jesus' childhood events, up to his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. The feast was initially
based on, and viewed as a fulfillment of, the Jewish Feast of
Lights. This was fixed on January 6,
but over time the western churches decided to celebrate Christmas
on December
25. The eastern churches continued to treat 6th January as the day
marking Jesus's birth. This has given rise in the west to the notion of a
twelve day festival, starting on 25th December [actually December 26,
if you do the sum – PW], and ending on 6th January,
called the twelve days of Christmas.
"Today
in Eastern Orthodox churches, the emphasis at
this feast is on the shining forth and revelation of Jesus Christ as the
Messiah and second person of the Holy
Trinity at the time of his baptism. Usually called the Feast of the Theophany, it is
one of the great feasts of the liturgical year; "theophany"
is Greek for "God shining forth".
"An
'epiphany' is
therefore any turning point in a project or scheme, usually for the
good."
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