We now interrupt our eclectic romp toward the Age of Spectacle, the eventually forthcoming main act of this substack column, to bring you…even more eclecticism. (We’ll get to “Barbie and the Garden of Eden” next time, promise.) But it’s a further eclecticism with a light line drawn from the previous post, just as the previous post connected lightly back to the post before it.
Last time, you may recall, toward the end of our savoring a prime slice of Biblical exegesis I mentioned the minor, post-Biblical holiday of Tu Bishvat—the Jewish New Year of the Trees—which fell this year on January 26. Let me tell you one little esoteric but entertaining detail about this holiday that circles back to a peripheral point made last time, after which we will launch forward, casting a light line ahead of us, to feature another minor holiday that we in America mark in somewhat whacked out form today as Groundhog Day.
The Tu in Tu Bishvat
Remember how last time we used the unpronounceable neolonym[1] HQBH to stand for the Hebrew phrase haqadosh barukh hu, “the holy one, blessed be He,” because pious Jews have long been zealous to avoid violating the third commandment, not to take the name of the Lord in vain? Remember what we learned about the not-to-be-hardly-ever-pronounced Tetragrammaton, and even the reason that, for associational symbolic purposes, observant Jews write “G-d” in English instead of “God”? And remember how I persuaded you, maybe….that HQBH, because its absence of vowels makes it unpronounceable, resonated humorously with the stigma against pronouncing the Tetragrammaton? Well, the Tu in Tu Bishvat has a kindred origin.
The name of the holiday is rather uninspired; it just translates as the 15th of the month of Shevat, from an Akkadian word meaning “season of heavy rains.” But alas, the use of Arabic numerals—which are actually not Arabic but Indian, since in Arabic different symbols from the ones we use for the numbers are employed[2]—did not come into Hebrew writing until long after Tu Bishvat was born. Instead, the blocky letters of the Hebrew alphabet you recognize in general double as numbers.[3] So the first letter, the alef, is used to mean 1, the second letter, the bet, is used to mean 2, and so on up to the tenth letter, the yud, to mean 10. After that things jump a bit weirdly: The 11th letter signifies not 11 but 20, the 12th letter 30 and on to the 19th letter which signifies 100, but the 20th signifies 200, and, well, never mind that for now because given your clearance status you don’t at the moment have a need to know.
So, the way you might think 15 would be spelled out in this system is a yud (10) plus a hey (5), which would logically follow a yud (10) plus a dalet (4) to make 14. But we don’t do that because using letters as numbers opens the possibility, indeed the high likelihood, that some combinations will be accidentally pronounceable as words.[4] The yud-dalet combination happens to spell the word yad, or “hand,” which is no big deal. But yud-hey spells yah, which is another word for God—excuse me, G-d—as in the Hebrew term that most everyone knows, hallelujah—Praise the Lord—where the “j” is supposed to be but isn’t in English a “y.”
So how to make 15, then? Simple, instead of 10+5 just do 9+6—so tet-vav, and voilà you get the pronounceable syllable Tu….because even though a vav can and often does sound like a “v” it also works in Hebrew as a vehicle to carry a long or a short “o” vowel sound. (Stop complaining; if you’re not into Hesseian glass bead game stuff then why have you read this far anyway? Ah, because you long to get to Groundhog Day and in the meantime will put up with almost anything….well fine, because here we are.)
Hollywood Hacks a Holiday
Today, February 2, is Groundhog Day and, as North Americans know, it’s all about Punxsutawney Phil up there in western Pennsylvania predicting the weather for the next several weeks. As meteorological prognostications go, of course, this is pure bunk; but truth be told, ol’ Phil out-predicts the folks on the television weather stations as often as not. Of course it’s not meant to be taken seriously. It’s a kind of folk vaudeville act at national scale, and I, for one, relish it, for what’s life without a little whimsy now and again?
Many of us relish it, particularly since the terrific and since-become-classic 1993 Harold Ramis movie starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, using Phil and his annual antics as a backdrop, forever altered the aura of the very phrase Groundhog Day. The movie seems also to have introduced a new cultural wrinkle into the holiday mix: Mainly on account of it, a lot of people lately profess to see deep spiritual meaning in February 2.
A vague sort of Brahmin meme has managed to thumb a ride with Groundhog Day. It takes the form of mystical speculation that enlightenment comes in cycles amid worlds that are continuous plural overlays of each other, worlds in which neither matter nor energy is ever lost but both are eternally recycled—rebirthed, perhaps—along a path to some gauzy, indeterminate, but deeply alluring nirvana. It reminds me a little of the ancient Egyptian symbol of the Ouroborus or, maybe better, of the money quote from Deborah Moggach’s 2004 novel The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: “Everything will be all right in the end. If everything is not all right, it is not yet the end.” It takes him many days of ever recurring February 2s, but Bill Murray finally catches the boy falling out of the tree, remember?
Each to their own. I don’t know about any of that stuff, to which we return below. But what’s interesting upon reflection, and a little research, is that Groundhog Day did not start out as the tall-tale, pop-folk falderal it is today. It started out associated with, well, the spiritual—not Egyptian or Brahmin (or Buddhist) spiritualism, but spiritualism of the Gaelic variety. As with so many American folk traditions, Groundhog Day goes back to the Old Country, otherwise known for practical cultural purposes as Europe, but really meaning most of the time Britain. But goes back to exactly what?
Layers within Layers
February 2 is a significant date in the Christian calendar. It’s Candlemas, which is also known, with slight variations according to the range of Christian religious traditions, as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. But in this case the Church calendar appears to be coincidental with or, far more likely, an overlay on much older Gaelic astronomical observations and their associated agricultural-based ritual observances. Candlemas overlays an ancient Neolithic-era celebration called Imbolc (sometimes spelled Imbolg), which later became Brighid’s Day (sometimes spelled Brigid) and later, after Christianization, Saint Brighid’s Day. Imbolc, sometimes referred to in English as Cross-Quarter Day, started at sunset—just as Jewish holidays always do—yesterday, on February 1, and ends at nightfall as February 2 melts into tomorrow.
Much lore and legend is associated with Imbolc, some of it involving Cailleach, the witchy hag of Gaelic tradition, but most of the lore is about Brighid. According to old Wiccan legends, Brighid (or Brigid) was born with a flame in her head and soon commenced to drink the milk of a mystical cow from the spirit world. Some trick. She is also credited with having invented keening, a traditional Wiccan wailing for the dead still sometimes practiced at funerals, usually in more rural areas, by Irish and Scottish women.
And yes, that lore and legend very much include weather prognostication based on the careful observation of the emergence from hibernation of badgers and snakes.
Now, Imbolc is about midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and markings on ancient megaliths testify to its origin in astronomical observation. It was a time thought to be a harbinger of spring on account of the onset of ewes lactating in expectation of spring lambs—Imbolc translates as “in the belly”—and the blossom-setting of certain plants, principally the blackthorn, itself associated with much lore.
Imbolc, however, is only one of four ancient cross-quarter, in-between-solstice-and equinox, festivals. Midway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice is Beltane, marked around May 1. Midway then between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox is Lughnassadh. Midway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice is Samhain. (Samhain later became the Christianized All Souls’ Eve, then Hallowe’en in Old English, now spelled Halloween, a calendar data with which we in America have done things just as silly or even sillier than we have done with Groundhog Day.) And so around and back we come to Imbolc.
So while we present-day Americans note only four main nodes on the solar circle of the seasons, Gaelic tradition and likely the wider Celtic world beyond it—as befits cultures intimate with the cycles of the natural world—noted eight. The cycle never ends; behold, then, the Triskele (look it up please…I can’t seem to plop an image into this format), a symbol roughly as ancient as New Grange.
New Grange
Neolithic folk in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man were no amateurs when it came to astronomical observation, construction, and ritual. If you go to New Grange, in the Boyne Valley, county Meath, as I was fortunate enough to be able to do for the first time just this past October, you will behold a massive mound-shaped structure, only rediscovered in 1699 after around four millennia of forgotten neglect, that had both astronomical and communal ritual functions. Exactly what used to happen in Neolithic times at New Grange as the ages rolled remains a matter of study, speculation, and debate. But some things are known.
The east-facing side of the huge structure has a kind of window incised in its wall, below which large stones with Triskele patterns carved all over them sit silent as if lost in meditation. The window is sited, just as it was uncovered more than three centuries ago, such that dawn and morning’s light just before, on, and after the winter solstice penetrates to the back of a long tunnel. At the terminus of the tunnel, set into a nook carved into rock, are ancient stone structures resembling pedestaled bowls or large birdbaths, suggesting that body parts and/or bones of dead kings or priests were placed there. The idea seems to have been that when the light from the shortest day of the year illuminated the remains, and then as the day grew a bit longer, and then a bit longer still, the annual recreation of the cosmos signaled by the lengthening daylight would carry the illuminated human remains to their own mystical rebirth in some other world.
The tunnel is not that short and it is irregularly narrow and low. Little light penetrates into the interior at any time of the year. The guides at New Grange illuminate the tunnel only minimally, so as to recreate, insofar as possible, the actual experience of being inside the huge mound when it was still in ritual operation. The journey into the bowels of the mound is not for the claustrophobically inclined.
New Grange—and two other similar Neolithic structures found in the Boyne Valley, Knowth and Dowth—probably served also as an ossuary as well as a temple and astronomical calendar, as did many ancient burial structures around the world in times more communally minded than ours. Alas, the third week of December in Ireland tends not to provide many crystal clear-sky mornings, so only the very lucky few ever get to witness the dawn solstice light striking the inner sanctum of New Grange. You can enter a lottery at the visitors’ center to be a lucky invitee to return to the site on December 21. We entered but didn’t win; eh…..probably this past December 21 morn was a cloudy one anyway.
More excitement of the archeological kind may await us at New Grange and surrounds. Only some of the great mound has been excavated, examined, and studied even after all these years. Other windows, tunnels, and inner recesses may have existed in ancient times for all anyone yet knows, perhaps one each for the eight nodes of the annual solar rotation—certainly including Imbolc. Perhaps some lucky archeologist will discover within the remains of an ancient badger, named Pilib, and some badly dilapidated stovepipe hats.
Whether or Not the Weather
Here, anyway, is how the British Almanac of 1828, a copy of which I have open before me at page 10, describes the matter of observing animal behavior to predict the weather, and you will see right away the connection between Imbolc, Candlemas, and Groundhog Day (as well as note the association of what is these days New Year’s Day—New Year’s Day was not always January 1…it was and then it wasn’t and then it was again—with the Festival of the Circumcision):
Our ancestors had a great many ridiculous notions about the possibility of prognosticating the future condition of the weather, from the state of the atmosphere on certain festival days. The Festival of the Circumcision (January 1) was thus supposed to afford evidence of the weather to be expected in the coming year. For St. Vincent’s Day (January 22) . . . . The Conversion of St. Paul (January 25) was . . . Candlemas day (February 2) supplied another of these irrational inferences from the weather of one day to that of a distant period:
If Candlemas day be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight;
But if Candlemas day be clouds and rain
Winter is gone and will not come again.
Translated into the profoundly goofier American idiom, if ‘ol Phil sees his shadow (“fair and bright,” as the old poem has it), we’re in for it; if not (“clouds and rain”), then not.
A much older Gaelic verse goes (in translation) like this:
The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bríde,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground.
Just to make clear, Day of Bríde—Lá Fhéile Bríde in Irish—means St. Brighid’s Day.
As the British Almanac quote shows, many days we today in America take no heed of were once believed to be predictive of this and that. We have no secular American equivalent for St. Vincent’s Day, let alone a day set aside to mark the conversion of St. Paul. For some reason, however, Candlemas translated into Groundhog Day—and All Soul’s Eve translated into Halloween, originally Samhain—has stayed with us, except that most likely it is originally Imbolc become Brighid’s Day that has stayed with us, carried to the New World by Scottish and Irish immigrants in the relatively recent 17th and 18th centuries.
That is how we got from Wiccan celebrants making a Brighid Cross out of reeds (look this up, too, please….the image I wanted to show you here won’t cooperate) and fashioning Brighid corn dolls to be burnt in effigy for the expiation of sins, to special-occasion poetry at Candlemas in medieval Britain, to television news reporters converging on Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to record Inner Circle guys in black stovepipe top hats and tuxedoes talking earnestly to an allegedly 129-year old groundhog. Only in America; now, is that progress or what?
A Concluding Sheet Bend
Are we done, then? Not quite, for we’ve said not yet a single word about what Imbolc/Candlemas/Groundhog Day has to do with themes we have attended to in earlier posts. That is not like us, we with our light lines of connectivity skittering off this way and that.
But it’s obvious, isn’t it? Human beings love ritual because we live in a world of symbols, but a world of symbols necessarily swathed in and anchored to nature. Ritual condenses symbols, and the metaphorical concentration that is ritual’s métier makes them powerful. When King David wrote in the Psalms, “Like rivers they raised their voice. . . . More than the roaring of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, art thou HQBH,” he was yoking the symbology of the divine with the magnificence of nature—a formula that simply could not fail, and still does not fail, to move us. It was not for no reason that I heard Martin Luther King, Jr. say, on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial: “No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. . . .” Dr. King knew his Hebrew Bible and he knew how powerful it could be. Deploying its power in his voice that day he performed a political ritual that changed a nation, and so changed the world.
We as a species, as homo sapiens, are like moths in the sense that we are attracted to light, but to the light of the suggestively transcendent, the symbolic light of the wow, and the wow of the unexpectedly spectacular—anything and everything liable to catalyze a cascade of dopamine from our substantia nigra. When primatologists tell us that our hominid ancestors likely sang before they spoke and danced before they walked, we should have every reason from observing ancient and contemporary human practice alike to believe in the ecstatic magnetism of our nature. When cognitive neuroscientists tell us that our evolved novelty bias is so strong that we cannot hope ever to effectively control it, we should be believe that, too—and know for a certainty that we will invariably be attracted to shiny objects in our peripheral vision, whether literal or metaphorical, from neon billboards to subliminal advertising to, for not a few apparently, conspiracy theories.
And when many young Americans today, having been yanked or left to drift from the balm provided by traditional faith communities and their ritual theatrics, go in search of salve for the spirit in enigmatic Hollywood movies, we shouldn’t pretend that we don’t understand why. Now bereft of the shiny objects provided by old rituals many will devise new ones to both cement social intimacies and serve up chemical broths to our brainstems. As I’ve just said, it’s obvious, isn’t it?
So, dear readers, happy Groundhog Day, you North Americans! Or make that Candlemas, you Catholics! Or make that Brighid’s Day, you Wiccans! Or make that Imbolc, you Neolithic wanna-bes! Gosh, with acknowledgements to Jack Nicolson, maybe we all can get along after all, even if only on February 2.
[1] A neolonym is a neologism in acronymic form. I just invented it, so it is a neologism squared, so to speak.
[2] ٩ ٨ ٧ ٦ ٥ ٤ ٣ ٢ ١٠
[3] Actually, the Hebrew letters you recognize compose a script brought back to pre-modern Jerusalem from exile in Babylonia in 536 BCE, called by scholars ktav ashuri as opposed to the original Hebrew script, ktav ivri, which no one uses anymore. Just thought some of you would like to know.
[4] This doubling also means that every Hebrew word can be “counted” letter-by-letter to sum to a number. Doing that arithmetic with words in scripture in search of their mystical allusive meaning is called gematria. Thought you’d like to know that, too.