I've just been looking at Irish's photos (see his thread on monoliths further down) and it raised some interesting theoretical points in my mind. I believe many of these may be'old hat' or previously posted on this forum, but I felt it was well worth bringing on to the boards, especially given it's topicality at this time of year!Facts as I know them to be (from various sources so please correct me if any are wrong) are as follows:
1) The village I used to live - and where my littlest one still goes to school - has an annual Spring Bank Holiday fete. One of the highlights is the Maypole dancing and I've been lucky enough to become involved in this year's preparations. The Maypole is a very old tradition, one the PC brigade tried to outlaw a few years back. Thank god they never succeeded. I'm proud my little one is carrying on one of our old traditions.
2) The Christian festival of Easter is named after the original pre-christian pagan festival of Eostre, and the Maypole reflects the original fertility symbolism of this. All the things we associate with Easter - from chokkie eggs to fluffy bunny rabbits - are a residue of this prechristian concept. The fact that the christian festival is about death and rebirth ties in very nicely with this (which is why, for all the hymns and crosses involved, it is still celebrated at a set TIME on the calender, i.e the Spring equinox, rather than a set date as most Christian festivals are. That's why no one ever knows when Easter is)
3) For those who don't know, the Maypole is a central structure with ribbons hanging down in pairs. The children (or adults), are in pairs of boy and girl. Each takes a ribbon. They then do a compicated - and to my mind, very beautiful - series of patterns in which they dance in and out of the group, interweaving the ribbons into different patterns before unwinding again. The ribbons form intricate lacy patterns around the central pole.
4)Or, in the case of Kingswood pupils weeks 1 - 4, knots.
5) Once mastered, the technique becomes a pagan fertility dance ritual. The grown ups proudly watching do not know this. They think it's all a very pretty and innocent game designed to keep the kiddies amused over the Easter hols. However, the pole (which I believe is a brit version of the totem) is actually - like the totem - a large phallic symbol!
5) Some adults DID know about this, hence the drive to outlaw it by the PC brigade a while back.
It does not worry me in the least that my 7 year old is taking part, since I see nothing wrong in teaching our children to appreciate their place on god's earth. But it did tweak a memory of another spiral dance I discovered a few years back - and the existence of turf mazes in the UK. Some of these mazes are carved from stone. I know for a fact there is at least one well preserved turf maze in the UK where, at this time of year, the locals 'dance the miz maze.' I'm not sure if a pole or totem is involved, but I'm sure that originally there would have been one - perhaps the ribbons were a later addition, to give the dancers a focal point when the mazes fell by the way. Some people walk these mazes if they are having trouble conceiving a child.
Now, it's obvious the Maypole is a relic from those ancient turf processions, in which the 'dancers' would wend their way to the centre of the maze before coming out again (the 'unwinding' of the ribbons) and that the pagan mazes were used in fertility rites. But what I find fascinating is that the spiral, as an ancient art form, is prevalent in carvings across the globe. Which is where I came in, with those carvings on Irish's photos of ancient stone passages. If these are burial chambers, they could symbolise death and rebirth in the same way as the Christian easter festival, or the Maypole rites. Fertility, in the ancient world, was strongly bound up with mortality and the need to replace those (be they human, food animal or food crop orientated) who died.
Not a query then (more of an essay!). It was just that I was wondering about one specific example that would link the most ancient of pagan symbols to the Christian Easter ritual, and I think I've just found it.
And don't you think it fascinating that, of all nature's patterns, the spiral is the most enduring and profound? From the arrangement of leaves on a meadow plant, to the design of the nautilus sea shell, or a summer cloud formation; or the whorls of nebulae in deep space; or our own place on the 'spiral arm' of the galaxy - the spiral formation crops up again and again. No wonder the ancients chose it to represent life, death and birth itself.
I think it is great that you took the time to learn about the history of these festivities. Here is a thread you may find intresting. 